Skincare aficionados have gone to great lengths to achieve perfect skin, from snail mucin to diaper cream. The latest fad is apparently beef tallow. But this esthetician has a warning about it.

Lydia Rose, LE (@theegeminiglow) posts skincare content for her 24,000 followers.

“I have to immediately share this experience as an esthetician and as someone who notices beef tallow becoming a trend,” she starts the clip that has been viewed 1.4 million times.

Then, she recalls one of her regulars trying out the trend. “I know that she usually comes from the gym, and I know she comes in sweaty," she says.

However, she says she smelled something unusual this latest visit.

“The steamer hits her face, and within 2 minutes, the room starts smelling like back of the house. Like, it starts smelling like fryer grease,” she recalls. “I don’t think it’s a gross smell. It’s not a regular human body smell.”

This, the content creator says, prompted her to ask, “‘Are you using beef tallow?’”

Where did her client discover this? None other than TikTok. “‘I just saw it on TikTok, and I was just trying it. Of course, if I smell like a fryer, I want new recommendations for skincare,’” she recalls the client saying.

“Please know some brands or some beef tallows will make you smell like a french fry oil vat,” Rose warns.

"FYI for beef tallow users," she adds in the caption.

Viewers divided in the comments section

In the comments section, beef tallow users defended using it on their skin.

“Been using beef tallow moisturizer and soap for 2 years. My skin has never been so clear and and moisturized. Healed my acne and I get compliments all the time on my skin and how it doesn’t smell,” one viewer wrote.

“Ngl it worked for me beef tallow cleared my skin better then cerave moisturizer that destroyed my skin and I kinda like the smell,” a second agreed.

However, some opposed the trend.

“As a cosmo/mua it makes makeup really hard to stick bc the skin is so dehydrated. Its not hydrating skin, it’s suffocating it,” one user shared.

“There's no way yall continue to think rubbing literal grease into your face is a good idea,” another remarked.

A third shared, “I almost fell for the beef tallow trend and then my roommate’s dog came and licked my whole face. Immediately returned it.”

Potential pros and cons of beef tallow

There is conflicting information on whether beef tallow is beneficial for the skin. Some sources claim the fatty acids in beef tallow can reduce acne and moisturize skin.

Sharma Skin & Hair Surgery dermatologist Dr. Anil Sharma shared with Healthline some of the potential benefits. “Due to its make-up, beef tallow closely mimics the skin’s natural oil. Its natural and lipid-rich composition can make it an effective moisturizer and healing agent for those with eczema-prone or extremely dry skin. Tallow’s essential fatty acids and antioxidants can also be helpful with inflammation,” Sharma said.

On the other hand, others state it can clog pores, worsen acne, and make skin drier, especially for those with oily or acne-prone skin.

“Because tallow is an extremely thick, animal fat-derived moisturizer, it can be comedogenic — meaning it can clog pores,” Florida-based dermatologist Dr. Anna Chacon told NBC. “If someone has either acne-prone or oily skin, I would not recommend tallow as moisturizer.”

In addition, it can reportedly cause skin to become more sensitive to sunlight. 

@theegeminiglow FYI for beef tallow users #estheticiantiktok #fyp #estheticiansoftiktok #foryoupage #skincaretips #beeftallow ♬ original sound - Theegeminiglow

The Daily Dot reached out to Rose via Instagram direct message and TikTok comment.

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The post ‘Now that it’s getting warmer’: Esthetician issues warning for anyone who uses beef tallow as lotion appeared first on The Daily Dot.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship, to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The March 5 notice raised alarms from immigration and free speech advocates because it appears to expand the government’s reach in social media surveillance to people already vetted and in the U.S. legally, such as asylum seekers, green card and citizenship applicants — and not just those applying to enter the country. That said, social media monitoring by immigration officials has been a practice for over a decade, since at least the second Obama administration and ramping up under Trump’s first term.

Below are some questions and answers on what the new proposal means and how it might expand social media surveillance.

What is the proposal?

The Department of Homeland Security issued a 60-day notice asking for public commentary on its plan to comply with Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The plan calls for “uniform vetting standards” and screening people for grounds of inadmissibility to the U.S., as well as identify verification and “national security screening.” It seeks to collect social media handles and the names of platforms, although not passwords.

The policy seeks to require people to share their social media handles when applying for U.S. citizenship, green card, asylum and other immigration benefits. The proposal is open to feedback from the public until May 5.

What is changing?

“The basic requirements that are in place right now is that people who are applying for immigrant and non-immigrant visas have to provide their social media handles,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, managing director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University. “Where I could see this impacting is someone who came into the country before visa-related social media handle collection started, so they wouldn’t have provided it before and now they’re being required to. Or maybe they did before, but their social media use has changed.”

“This fairly widely expanded policy to collect them for everyone applying for any kind of immigration benefit, including people who have already been vetted quite extensively,” she added.

What this points to — along with other signals the administration is sending such as detaining people and revoking student visas for participating in campus protests that the government deems antisemitic and sympathetic to the militant Palestinian group Hamas — Levinson-Waldman added, is the increased use of social media to “make these very high-stakes determinations about people.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service said the agency seeks to “strengthen fraud detection, prevent identity theft, and support the enforcement of rigorous screening and vetting measures to the fullest extent possible.”

“These efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies,” the statement continued. USCIS estimates that the proposed policy change will affect about 3.6 million people.

How are social media accounts used now?

The U.S. government began ramping up the use of social media for immigration vetting in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In late 2015, the Department of Homeland Security began both “manual and automatic screening of the social media accounts of a limited number of individuals applying to travel to the United States, through various non-public pilot programs,” the nonpartisan law and policy institute explains on its website.

In May 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued an emergency notice to increase the screening of visa applicants. Brennan, along with other civil and human rights groups, opposed the move, arguing that it is “excessively burdensome and vague, is apt to chill speech, is discriminatory against Muslims, and has no security benefit.”

Two years later, the State Department began collecting social media handles from “nearly all foreigners” applying for visas to travel to the U.S. — about 15 million people a year.

How is AI used?

Artificial intelligence tools used to comb through potentially millions of social media accounts have evolved over the past decade, although experts caution that such tools have limits and can make mistakes.

Leon Rodriguez, who served as the director of USCIS from 2014 to 2017 and now practices as an immigration attorney, said while AI could be used as a first screening tool, he doesn’t think “we’re anywhere close to where AI will be able to exercise the judgment of a trained fraud detection and national security officer” or that of someone in an intelligence agency.

“It’s also possible that I will miss stuff,” he added. “Because AI is still very much driven by specific search criteria and it’s possible that the search criteria won’t hit actionable content.”

What are the concerns?

“Social media is just a stew, so much different information — some of it is reliable, some of it isn’t. Some of it can be clearly attributed to somebody, some of it can’t. And it can be very hard to interpret,” Levinson-Waldman said. “So I think as a baseline matter, just using social media to make high-stakes decisions is quite concerning.”

Then there’s the First Amendment.

“It’s by and large established that people in the U.S. have First Amendment rights,” she said. This includes people who are not citizens. “And obviously, there are complicated ways that that plays out. There is also fairly broad authority for the government to do something like revoking somebody’s visa, if you’re not a citizen, then there’s steps that the government can take — but by and large, with very narrow exceptions, that cannot be on the grounds of speech that would be protected (by the First Amendment).”

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