Smile for the Algorithm, B*tch
(Or: You Don’t Get to Say No Anymore—Cool Cool Cool)
“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the spreadsheet.”
— Probably Elon Musk, whispering to a biometric vending machine whilst petting a drone
Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding out it’s now illegal to say no in the United States of America.
Not to a person. Not to your scammy ex who comes around sniffing at your back door every year around this time. Not even to a landlord offering you a "premium tent experience" for $1,200 a month.
To a system. To a machine. To a blinking black box that watches you sleep, logs your breath, ranks your risk, and quietly decides whether you get the job, the medication, the apartment—or even your own child.
You say, "I don't want this."
And the government says, "Too late. The algorithm already swiped right."
The Clause That Should Be Setting Off Air-Raid Sirens
Buried deep in the 2025 federal budget reconciliation bill—cheekily nicknamed the "Big Beautiful Bill" by a bunch of men who still call women "females"—is a clause that effectively bans every U.S. state and local government from regulating AI for the next ten years.
Ten. Years.
Ten years of:
No laws limiting facial recognition in schools.
No bans on deepfake porn.
No oversight of predictive policing software that flags brown teenagers as threats because they’re wearing hoodies in a group.
No recourse when a chatbot decides your chronic illness is too expensive for coverage.
Even states like California and Colorado, where people still sometimes believe in the Constitution? Legally muzzled.
Consent? Deleted. Transparency? Offlined. Accountability? Replaced with a "we're sorry, that option is no longer supported" message.
This Is Just Slavery With WiFi
It sounds hyperbolic, I know. But it isn’t. Trust me.
America has a long, storied romance with nonconsensual systems of control in service to white supremacism and capitalism.
Sometimes it looks like feudalism—digital lords ruling over data serfs. Sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes it’s slavery.
Not metaphorical. Not rhetorical. Actual systems of ownership, extraction, and erasure.
Chattel slavery. Forced sterilization. Jim Crow. COINTELPRO. The Patriot Act. Facebook.
Every era has its tools. But the script hasn’t changed:
If you’re poor, disabled, a woman, Black, brown, queer, undocumented, or otherwise inconvenient to capitalism, you don’t get to say no.
They used to chain bodies. Now they want to chain behaviors. They used to sell labor. Now they sell patterns. They used to brand people. Now they just flag your "emotional volatility score" and geofence your rights.
This clause doesn’t just de-regulate the future. It greenlights the past—digitally optimized, legally enforced, and brought to you by the same people who made health insurance a slow-motion game of Russian roulette. The same people who loved Apartheid. The same people who admire Nazis.
Take everything you hate about the U.S. health insurance industry, and apply is to every other fucking thing. Your entire life. All of it.
That’s what’s happening.
Not what’s gonna happen.
What they’re doing to you.
Right.
Now.
No One’s Paying Attention. Not Really.
I suspect even most Republicans would hate this clause if they understood what it said. But the clause, like every act of Pure Evil performed by men like Greg Abbott and Donald Trump, is made exceedingly boring to read. They use the dryest and most neutral language possible, to push through the most demonic laws.
Sure, a handful of Republicans understand it and love it. The Sociopaths. But the rest of them might just not read that well, if at all. Hell, they might not even know what AI is. This is a good time to remind you that the person in charge of regulating how AI interacts with American schools is Linda McMahon, the co-founder of WWE.
At the April 2025 ASU+GSV Summit, Linda took the mic and referred to artificial intelligence as "A1" — like the steak sauce. Into a microphone. At a tech conference. In front of people who build neural nets for a living.
She wasn't joking.
This is the person overseeing AI regulation in education and the destruction of the Department of Education altogether. This is who gets to decide how much surveillance is too much in your child’s school. This is how empires fall. Because people like Linda can’t stop staring stupidly at stupid things and hoping someone gets hit over the head with a folding chair.
When the Secretary of Education thinks your kid’s future is run by steak sauce, but the truth is actually much much worse than your kid’s future being run by a steak sauce, you should probably start printing your own textbooks. Just don’t use your printer that’s hooked up to the subscription service that’s monitoring how many pages you print and what’s on them.
Shit. Write it by hand.
Then run.
Who Benefits? (Spoiler: Not You)
Let’s name the real owners of the system, shall we?
Elon Musk, whose ideal world is a caste system run by facial recognition, where the poor are used as beta testers and the rich are "verified humans." This clause is the kind of thing that makes him so excited he has to empty himself into yet another petri dish.
Jeff Bezos, who already uses AI to fire people via email while they’re still peeing in bottles.
Satya Nadella, who wants every Windows product to come with an embedded surveillance module called "Productivity Advisor."
Mark Zuckerberg, who'd wire your soul into the Metaverse if he thought it could increase ad engagement, without blinking a soulless eye.
They benefit. You? You become a revenue stream.
This isn’t about safety. It’s about extraction. It’s not innovation. It’s automation of maximum harm.
They’re applying the health insurance model of delay-deny-destroy to every corner of your life:
Want housing? Better hope your data doesn’t say "too emotional."
Need care? The algorithm flagged you as noncompliant.
Applying for a job? You didn’t even make it to a human. The bot ghosted you.
This clause lets it all run unchecked.
What This Looks Like: A Day in the Algorithmic Hellhole
You wake up. Your smart mattress has logged your breath rate. It didn't like it.
Your “career coach” or boss get a message:
"Risk score adjusted. Emotional distress detected. Work privileges downgraded."
A drone hovers outside your home for "preventive reassurance." You try to buy lunch. Your card declines. Your social trust score fell below the acceptable threshold. You don’t earn money through work. You earn it and lose it at the whims of the machine.
Your child gets a letter:
"You have been reassigned to an alternative learning environment due to parental instability. There is no appeal process."
You didn’t commit a crime.
There was no charge.
No trial.
No human.
Just a score.
It sounds outlandish, but I assure you, it is not. This is what they want. This is what they’re doing while you’re busy arguing about who gets to shit in what restroom.
The Texas Connection
You want to know who’s backing this thing around here? Let’s take a Texas-sized look:
Rep. August Pfluger (TX-11), Republican: Intel guy. Loves a good drone. Cozies up to big tech like it’s prom night. Face like he exfoliates with a spice grater.
Rep. Michael McCaul (TX-10): Security-first, liberty-maybe. Shoulders so narrow, head so big, and smile so wooden you’d think he was a marionette.
Rep. Lance Gooden (TX-5): Thinks regulation is for weaklings, incluing seat belts. Once voted for a “Justice for George Floyd” act by mistake, and tweeted his apologies to his despicable constituents. The kind of guy who thinks driving drunk is a human right.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne (TX-24): Once tried to sue a mosque. Now she’s helping sue your rights. Definitely tapes grasshopper legs to her forehead for “eyebrows.”
These folks aren’t confused. They’re paid.
They will literally do ANYTHING to you, if it makes them a buck.
Say No While You Still Can
If your gut's clenched, good. That’s your humanity still kicking. Here’s what you do next:
Call your reps. Tell them to remove the AI deregulation clause from the 2025 reconciliation bill.
Use their full names.
Be loud.
Be annoying.
Share this. Paste it, print it, scream it over your Zoom book club meeting.
Talk to those already targeted:
Black and brown folks
Women
Disabled people
Queer and trans youth
Immigrants
Anyone flagged by "white patriarchal Chrsitofascist behavioral risk AI" while just trying to exist
Organize. Locally, urgently, loudly.
Defend consent. Like it’s sacred. Because it is. Even if there’s a rapist in the Oval Office.
You don’t belong to the system.
You weren’t born to be scanned, flagged, processed, and optimized. You were born to love, to rage, to resist.
If the system says otherwise?
Delete the system.
And if you can’t delete it?
Burn it to the ground.
💥 Subscribe for more essays like this, before the algorithm locks all my devices and accounts.
AI without restrictions is terrifying. I want no part of the future you portray. Everyone needs to push back on this and push their representatives to do so also. This regime needs to be shut down soon!
Thanks for writing this. I'll be sharing widely.