ShareFacebookX (formerly Twitter)In a Trump-like move, Opposition leader Angus Taylor’s proposed immigration policy would require every visa applicant, including tourists, to provide access to their social media accounts as a condition of entry to Australia. As a social media researcher, I can say with some confidence that it would be a pointless exercise.Social media is designed to elicit emotional reactions and it then sets those fleeting moments in stone. From humour to outrage, studies show emotional responses to stimuli drive what we post and engage with online. This means, for most of us, our social media accounts are not an accurate record of our beliefs and values, and they don’t reflect who we are and how we behave in our everyday lives.What people post and engage with online is also highly context specific. Sarcasm, in-group jokes, exaggeration and memes — some of the most common features of online communication — all carry specific meanings, in time and place. Often, sarcasm is one of the hardest things to pick up on when learning a second language because it’s so culturally specific. Accurately assessing a person’s character by reading through their social media posts would requires sophisticated cultural and linguistic expertise, and a great deal of time. Doing this for tourist visa applications would appear to be a particularly poor use of public resources. There is no way an immigration officer assessing a visa application from a person living in a country whose humour, idioms and online vernacular they do not share, will be able to do it without substantial training and expert advice.It is also not something that can be easily automated. The most advanced AI-based sarcasm detection systems are known to regularly misclassify ambiguous or culturally specific statements. In 2018, in the United States, where visa applicants are asked to list all the social media handles they’ve used in the past five years — in what was called “extreme vetting” — ICE attempted to procure AI software to automate its analysis of applicant’s social media accounts. It was unsuccessful and has had to continues to rely on human reviewers.Want the best of Religion & Ethics delivered to your mailbox?Sign up for our weekly newsletter.Email addressSubscribeYour information is being handled in accordance with the ABC Privacy Collection Statement.We also know that the utility of this type of social media analysis, for national security purposes, is limited. Multiple internal US government sources have noted that it has failed to yield significant national security information, especially relative to the administrative burden the task places on immigration services.The only clear utility of the policy, it would seem, is as a blunt, political instrument. Since Trump returned to office, there have been reported cases of travellers to the United States being questioned or denied entry after searches of their personal devices revealed they’d made comments critical of the Trump administration. Immigration lawyers now routinely advise travellers that ironic or sarcastic social media posts could be used as grounds to deny a visa application. This is the model the Coalition proposes to import to Australia. A burdensome administrative regime that’s unlikely to increase our national security and could deter tourists. There is a particular irony, however, in the Coalition dressing this policy in the language of Australian values. We’re a nation known for dry humour, irony and understatement — the qualities that make social media posts unreliable points of data about us. I’d suggest the Coalition, and indeed all politicians, if they really do care about Australian values, should refrain from borrowing ideas from Donald Trump.Joanne Gray is a digital technology policy and governance scholar. She is Chair of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney.Posted 8h ago8 hours agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 11:52pm, updated 8h ago8 hours agoMon 20 Apr 2026 at 12:02amShareFacebookX (formerly Twitter)Coalition's migration proposal faces practical questionsPrivacy concerns over US proposing travellers reveal social media historyTrump plans to make Australians hand over social media data to enter USWhy social cohesion is a platform problemAre Australia’s social media age restrictions working?To combat misinformation, focus on the architecture of social media platformsAnthropic versus the Pentagon — what it means for AustraliansSocialisation in the hands of AI companions?Social Media, Immigration, Political PartiesBack to top