UNCLE SAM DEPLOYS DIGITAL THOUGHT POLICE TO DEPORT STUDENTS FOR SPICY MEMES
In a move that’s shocked absolutely no one with more than three functioning brain cells, the US State Department is now using a glorified TikTok algorithm to decide which foreign students get to finish their outrageously expensive American educations.
SILICON VALLEY MEETS SALEM WITCH TRIALS
Officials confirmed Thursday that specialized digital snitches will now scan through social media accounts of international students faster than a college freshman downing free pizza, looking for anything that might possibly suggest sympathy for Hamas. Because nothing says “land of the free” like deporting people for their Instagram stories.
“We’ve developed a totally infallible system that definitely won’t have any false positives whatsoever,” explained Dr. Hugh R. Kidding, the State Department’s newly appointed Director of Pre-Crime. “The algorithm is trained to detect dangerous threats like posting sad face emojis about civilian casualties or using the words ‘human rights’ and ‘Palestinians’ in the same paragraph.”
TERMS AND CONDITIONS NOW INCLUDE “ACCEPTABLE POLITICAL OPINIONS”
The initiative follows Donald Trump’s January executive order that critics have called “that f@#king thing that manages to violate both the First Amendment and common sense simultaneously.” The former president has promised to deport any non-citizen students who dared to exercise what they foolishly thought were protected constitutional rights.
“We’re simply ensuring that foreign visitors understand American values,” said Eileen Wright, undersecretary for Not Getting The Irony At All. “And nothing says ‘American values’ like using surveillance technology to monitor private speech and punish people for having the wrong opinions!”
MACHINE LEARNING TO DISCRIMINATE
According to insiders, the sophisticated technology can scan up to 17,000 posts per second, flagging anything from Palestine flag emoji to liking a tweet criticizing Israeli military policy. The system reportedly assigns each student a “Potential Troublemaker Score” based on complex factors including how many times they’ve used the word “occupation” and whether they’ve ever shared articles from non-approved news sources.
“Our digital watchdogs are 99.97% accurate,” insisted Tech Chief Ben Dover, “except for that small glitch where it flagged 3,000 students for posting falafel recipes, which the system categorized as ‘suspicious Middle Eastern activity.'”
EXPERTS PREDICT ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER
Professor Ima Skeptic from the Institute of Obviously Bad Ideas called the program “a breathtakingly stupid approach that combines the worst aspects of surveillance capitalism with xenophobia.”
“Historically, using automated systems to make life-altering decisions about people based on poorly understood algorithms has worked out perfectly every single time,” noted Skeptic, rolling her eyes so hard they nearly fell out of her head. “Just ask anyone who’s ever dealt with the IRS automated system or Facebook’s content moderation.”
ALTERNATIVE DIPLOMATIC APPROACHES CONSIDERED TOO COMPLICATED
Sources say the State Department briefly considered other approaches like “engaging with complex geopolitical realities” or “not treating college students as national security threats,” but these were deemed “way too much work” compared to just teaching a computer to recognize bad words.
An anonymous official who agreed to speak with us from inside a janitor’s closet confessed, “Look, it’s much easier to deport some 20-year-old engineering student for retweeting the wrong news article than to address the actual issues causing global tensions. Plus, have you SEEN how expensive deportation equipment is? We need to justify that budget somehow!”
At press time, the algorithm had accidentally flagged 89% of Middle Eastern studies professors, three Israeli peace activists, and somehow, Betty White’s old Twitter account, proving once again that American innovation truly knows no bounds when it comes to finding creative new ways to undermine its own stated values.
