As if you wished every other motive to stop posting on Facebook. The Trump administration is reportedly running in collaboration with the Social Security Administration to implement a plan for combing through social media posts for proof, whatever meaning, that those receiving positive varieties of government benefits must have the one’s benefits denied. That’s proper; your ‘gram-worthy vacation snapshots may want to reason you to lose your disability coverage advantages.
So reports the New York Times, which cites “management officials” as confirming that the White House is “actively” working on making this authoritarian fever dream a truth. The Times notes that the concept is not new, having been discussed in an earlier Social Security price range request; however, this new reporting confirms that it has moved past the conceptual stage.
Mostly, the idea is predicated on the belief that people with disabilities can do energetic bodily things and that all disabilities are visible. It also overlooks the natural truth that no longer all snapshots published to Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter are, in fact, current.
Imagine a photo of you smiling and protecting a golf club after any other character on a sunny day. No matter the extenuating circumstances — the clubs have been virtually a present for your dad on Father’s Day, for example, or the photograph was taken years ago — you may get pegged for committing fraud. You, someone with incapacity for back troubles, ought to be lying approximately your health status consistent with the plan’s logic.
What you publish to social media could be mined and used in opposition to you by some opaque agency is an idea as vintage as social media itself. Credit card agencies studied our online posts for years, and we’ve all heard the horror tales of universities and schools looking at candidates’ Twitter and Facebook feeds. What makes this ultra-modern plan so poisonous is that we’re now not talking about a credit card software getting declined.
Instead, the problem is a financial gain being pulled out from under someone all due to a poorly taken into consideration Facebook put up. Of path, this does not even take into consideration the ability for a new shape of trolling to get up in reaction to the Trump administration’s plan: faux social media money owed set up with the express motive of focused on those receiving incapacity bills and getting them flagged for synthetic fraud.
If you do not assume it is a real problem, you haven’t spent enough time online (and you should probably stay with that healthful lifestyle choice).
For now, the best real protection we can have in opposition to this form of governmental overreach is no longer posting personal images or revealing information of any kind to social media. Which, frankly, is a great concept no matter something insanity this administration chefs up. And good day, apps like Signal work wonderfully for sharing seashore pictures.
