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So­cial ac­tivist Abeo Jack­son is de­scrib­ing the lat­est re­quire­ment when ap­ply­ing for a Unit­ed States visa as a form of black­mail.

In a tweet on Wednes­day, the US Em­bassy stat­ed: “Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, all in­di­vid­u­als ap­ply­ing for an H1‑B or H4 non-im­mi­grant visa are re­quest­ed to ad­just the pri­va­cy set­tings on all of their so­cial me­dia ac­counts to ‘pub­lic’ to fa­cil­i­tate vet­ting nec­es­sary to es­tab­lish their iden­ti­ty and ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty to the Unit­ed States un­der US law.”

In June, the US State De­part­ment re­vealed that stu­dent visa ap­pli­cants will now be re­quired to un­lock their so­cial me­dia ac­counts for gov­ern­ment re­view.