Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
Under the direction of President Donald Trump, “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” have become banned words in the federal government. Trump wants to eliminate DEI and the employees who worked on initiatives related to it from the government, and he’s leaving no stone unturned.
The president’s purge has put everyone under the microscope. Besides watching what they do and say at work, some employees might be feeling anxious about their personal communications and posts on social media. In recent days, a right-wing group published a “DEI Watchlist” with the names of federal employees who it claims supported diversity or criticized Trump on social media.
While refusing to use technology is impossible during these times, there are some precautions you can take to protect yourself and your communications.
Be careful about what you post on social media. As noted by The Washington Post, one the first things you can do is simply stop posting. It’s true that social media enabled people to connect and create communities, but it also allowed others to take screenshots of what you said. Those screenshots can be used against you or even taken out of context.
This doesn’t mean you need to take a vow of silence online. Just think about what you want to say and how it could possibly affect you in this political climate. If you think it could be misconstrued, don’t post it.
Another option is to make all of your social media profiles private and scrub Facebook and Instagram of old posts. Scrubbing is generally a good practice to carry out every year or so. After all, it’s unlikely you agree with whatever your teenage self said in the 2010s.
Avoid sharing too much personal information on social media. Besides LinkedIn, most social media doesn't require in-depth information about you. There's no need to share your location, your place of work, or photos of yourself for the whole world to see. Think hard about the details you share about yourself. If you don't need reveal it to post, consider keeping it to yourself.
Be wary of friend requests from random people. Given that it's 2025, I assume we all know what a "finsta" is. (For those still wondering, it stands for a "fake Instagram" profile). If you have your social media profiles set to private, be careful about accepting friend or follow requests from people you don't know, even if you share connections. These profiles could belong to people with questionable intentions who are trying to get more information about you.
Don’t write emails. This advice applies to any type of sensitive communication you’re carrying out at work on government devices or government-managed apps. On this note, it’s important to act as if everything you write, whether it be a message in an email or Teams, can turn up in discovery at court. Many companies keep of record of employee communications and the federal government is no different.
As such, if you need to talk about sensitive issues, it’s best to do it in a video chat (that’s not being recorded) or in person. Overall, be careful about what you put in writing. Even jokes can be taken the wrong way.
Use an encrypted chat app. Normal SMS messages can be intercepted by third parties. Because of this, it's important to use a messaging app with end-to-end encryption. This means that no one, not even the company providing the service, can read what you're saying. Furthermore, encryption also prevents your messages from being stored on a company's servers.
Signal is a great option and is available for iOS and Android. The app is owned by a nonprofit and is frequently recommended by privacy experts.
To go a step further, enable disappearing messages on Signal. This will automatically delete your messages after a certain period of time and is a good way to ensure there's minimal records out there of what you've said. To set this up on Signal, go to Settings > Privacy > Default timer for new chats on the app.
Be careful when attending protests. While protesting is a protected right in the U.S., the Trump administration has indicated that it will take action against employees who don’t adhere to its ideology. With this in mind, it’s important to take precautions when attending protests as a federal employee.
This is especially important given the amount of technology around us. If you’re attending a protest, try to cover your face as much as you can to keep police from using facial recognition algorithms to ID you. For example, you can wrap your face in an old t-shirt.
Another good practice is to leave your phone at home and invest in a burner phone. (It goes without saying that a government device shouldn’t be anywhere near a protest). Burner phones collect less data than smartphones and can be used to avoid geolocation systems.
Image | Jonas Leupe
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