As far as I understand it, the requirement would be for foreign travelers to enter information about the social media that they use, but not their account passwords.
If you have a Twitter account and you provide that information (your Twitter handle), what practical difference does it make? Twitter posts are public by default. Anybody can see your Twitter posts; you don't even have to be a follower, so I don't quite see what difference it makes to tell the US government the name of your Twitter account.
Can somebody point out the error(s) in my thinking?
The change is that the CBP agent will now look at your past public twitter statements, and (if facebook lets them) the semi-private communications of your known associates, and then use that to decide if they should detain you, deny access, etc. I imagine this will be implemented in a questionable fashion, like keyword search or "deep" learning, since the agent won't have time to actuall read stuff for each traveller.
So, you find yourself stranded in an airport because some acquaintance you haven't talked to since high school made an anti-American comment (typoed "top" as "tpp" next to an expletive) and shared it with their facebook friends. This will clearly have a chilling effect on freedom of speech (and Trump says he wants to add some border test to make sure you have "American values" shudder). Anyway, your business trip is cancelled, so you can't do your job moving forward and have no recourse.
The fact that they are looking at this stuff for foreign travelers is already way outside historical standards for acceptable government behavior. In all likelihood, they will/are running similar tests against US citizens for things like the terrorist watch list (and they want to expand the implications of being on that list, taking away more constitutional rights without trial, or any sort of due process).
A lot of people on Twitter don't associate their twitter handle with their real name. That anonymity provides them safe haven to say things they might not say in public.
Plus Twitter is just one social media platform. Reddit, 4Chan, Facebook, Hacker News, and so on are also considered social media. And once this becomes mandatory you risk getting in trouble for neglecting to provide some or all. Plus once they're tied to your real life identity they can use that information indefinitely.
As an aside, I find it ironic all the people posting from anonymous accounts "why is this a big deal?" Why do you have anonymous accounts if you feel that way? Hugely hypocritical.
Immigration officials have already demanded that people enter their phone's passcode so that they can access its contents, I don't see why social media accounts would be any different.
If you have a Twitter account and you provide that information (your Twitter handle), what practical difference does it make? Twitter posts are public by default. Anybody can see your Twitter posts; you don't even have to be a follower, so I don't quite see what difference it makes to tell the US government the name of your Twitter account.
Can somebody point out the error(s) in my thinking?