This incident sheds light on the broader implications of the fight against online “misinformation,” particularly how premature labeling of claims can potentially suppress legitimate grievances and criticisms that later prove to have been based on some truth, something that happened often in 2020 and the Covid era.

The controversy surrounding a FEMA employee who allegedly directed a relief team to ignore homes displaying support for then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has sparked outrage and demands for a thorough investigation by legislators. As first reported by The Daily Wire, the employee, who has now been fired, instructed team members to bypass these homes, an action condemned by FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell as a “clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

Criswell’s confirmation of the dismissal came through a post on X, following online reports about the employee’s conduct. While she didn’t specify which hurricane’s relief efforts were affected, ABC News and The New York Times reported it was during the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in Florida. This hurricane struck shortly after the catastrophic Hurricane Helene.

The rush to curb the spread of misinformation online is a top priority for many pro-censorship platforms and legacy institutions claiming to protect public discourse from false narratives. However, this incident exemplifies the complexities and risks inherent in these efforts. Initially, the claims regarding any of FEMA’s discriminatory practices were quickly categorized as baseless and part of an online misinformation campaign. This not only stifled debate but potentially delayed the scrutiny necessary to uncover and address any wrongdoing.

But at least as far as words, “mother” and “father” are concerned, this inclusivity seems to, paradoxically, work by exclusion.

Gone are the days when Word offered spelling and grammar checks. Now, for people who like their writing software to nudge and prod them during the writing process by suggesting “more suitable” replacements, Word has something called “Inclusivity Checker.”

The repository of terms contained in the tool, that are recommended to be replaced, is only growing.

A modern update takes a dim view of the expression “maternity leave” on “gender-inclusivity” grounds, and suggests that it be replaced with “birth-related leave,” “parental leave,” or “childbirth leave.”

Fathers who go on paternity leave should instead be described as taking “child-bonding leave,” Microsoft thinks. All this is explained as a way to make sure that the writer is inclusive of “all genders.”

Is all this really necessary? Microsoft thinks it is. According to the Free Speech Union, one of the terms writers who, for some reason, use Word are advised to replace is Postman Pat: it should be “Postal Worker Pat,” according to those behind this effort.

In that case, the intent is to avoid the possibility of gender bias. The same goes for “biologically female” – a phrase best avoided, according to Microsoft.

The feature is at this time not hard-coded into Word: the software is “inclusive” of both opt-ins (this seems to be the default) and opt-outs. “Problematic” words are underlined in blue and then recommended alternatives pop up.

Right now, there is no auto-correct function, either. But, if critics compare this sort of thing as moving ever closer to Orwell’s dark dystopian world ruled by extreme censorship and government control – one never knows what’s around the corner.

And if you don’t like it, and thought you might switch to, oh, Google Docs? Bad news: this giant also has a similar feature, introduced in 2022.

Google frowns at terms such as “housewife” and “landlord” and would rather you write, “stay-at-home spouse” and, “property owner.”

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It is a dark place of “AI” (machine learning, ML) mass surveillance, which Ellison wants to make sure is served by his company by way of providing the fundamental infrastructure. It isn’t irrelevant to this story that Oracle’s portfolio also includes multi-decade contacts with the US government.

Oracle is not often mentioned when Big Tech is talked about, but it is one of the biggest in the industry. The reason for staying out of the limelight is that, unlike its peers with big stakes in the social media space, Oracle’s business is database software and cloud computing.

This is the reason Ellison sees the opportunity to place his company, already involved in building AI models, at the center of producing the tools to make this nightmarish scenario of real-time ML-powered surveillance a reality.

Ellison spoke during the Oracle financial analyst gathering to suggest that the company’s databases will become indispensable for the AI infrastructure, and that proof for that is in companies like X and Microsoft having already picked Oracle to provide this service.

“Maximizing AI’s public security capabilities” is what’s on Ellison’s mind, and he decided to sell this by giving police accountability as an example.

The system would prevent police abuse, he said – but the way “AI” combined with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure arrives there is perplexing, to say the least. It involves police body cameras that are always recording (including in bathrooms, and during meals), always transmitting back to Oracle – and with no option to stop this feed.

“Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times” – that’s another way of putting it, and Ellison did.

But who would build such an expensive and elaborate surveillance system just to use it in law enforcement? Not Ellison.

The cops will be on their best behavior, but so will (the rest) of the citizens, he promised. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting,” Ellison added.

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NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has teamed up with 15 large financial and state institutions, as well as tech companies, to research and develop a way of integrating Mobile Driver’s License (mDL) into financial services. But according to NIST, this is just the start and the initial focus of the program.

The agreement represents an effort to tie in yet more areas of people’s lives in their digital ID (“customer identification program requirements” is how NIST’s announcement describes the focus of this particular initiative). These schemes are often criticized by rights advocates for their potential to be used as mass surveillance tools.

This statement echoes his previous comments on the matter, where he has consistently expressed strong opposition to the idea of a CBDC. He believes that such a currency would give the government too much control over people’s money and could potentially lead to financial tyranny.

Trump’s views on CBDCs seem to be part of a broader narrative that he’s building around protecting individual freedoms and liberties. It’s a message that resonates with many in the cryptocurrency community, who see digital currencies as a way to decentralize power and reduce government control.

Trump has previously called CBDCs a “dangerous threat to freedom.”

Trump’s firm stance underscores the escalating discussions surrounding CBDCs, a significant matter among global governmental bodies. To date, only a few countries have officially adopted such currencies. However, the digital currency landscape continues to evolve, with China advancing the implementation of its digital yuan, India progressing towards a digital rupee, and the European Central Bank initiating a preparatory phase for a potential digital euro.

CBDCs represent a significant evolution in the architecture of money. These digital forms of fiat currency, issued and regulated by a country’s central bank, promise enhanced efficiency in transactions and greater financial inclusion. However, they also pose potential risks to civil liberties that merit careful consideration. Here are some of the primary concerns:

1. Privacy

CBDCs could fundamentally alter the landscape of financial privacy. Traditional cash transactions allow for anonymity. With CBDCs, even small transactions might be traceable and recordable by the central bank. This could lead to a scenario where governments have access to detailed records of every individual’s financial life, raising significant privacy concerns unless robust safeguards are implemented.

2. Surveillance

The transition to a fully digital currency could potentially give governments unprecedented capabilities to monitor and surveil citizen behaviors. In regimes with weaker protections for civil liberties, this could be exploited to track political dissent or suppress opposition. The potential for surveillance not only impacts privacy but also freedom of expression and association.

3. Financial Censorship

With the centralization of currency issuance and transaction management, a CBDC could make it easier for governments to implement financial sanctions against individuals or groups without due process. Accounts could be frozen or transactions blocked more efficiently, which could be used as a tool for political repression or social control.

4. Exclusion

Despite the potential for greater financial inclusion, the reliance on digital infrastructure might marginalize those without access to technology or reliable internet, such as rural populations or the economically disadvantaged. This could exacerbate existing inequalities and restrict access to essential services for those on the fringes of the digital economy.

5. Cybersecurity Risks

The concentration of financial data in a central digital system increases the risk of systemic failures due to cyberattacks. A successful attack could compromise the integrity of a nation’s entire financial system. Moreover, the implications of such attacks extend beyond economic damage to potentially crippling impacts on individual financial security and privacy.

6. Centralization of Power

CBDCs concentrate monetary control significantly. This centralization of financial power could reduce the checks and balances provided by a more distributed banking system, increasing the potential for abuse by those in power, particularly in undemocratic regimes.

7. Legal and Ethical Implications

The implementation of CBDCs raises several legal and ethical questions, including the scope of government intervention in personal finances, the rights of individuals under a digital currency system, and the balance between national security and personal freedoms.

Hoffman has also been vocal about his disdain for current tariffs and his preference for the US to revert to its longstanding free trade policies, which he discussed in a CNN interview.

CNN reporter Matt Egan highlighted Hoffman’s specific grievances against FTC Chair Lina Khan, whom he accused of harming American businesses. Hoffman hoped that under a Harris presidency, Khan would be replaced.

“Lina Khan is…a person who is not helping America,” Hoffman told CNN. “I would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her.”

In conversation with the State Department’s chief data and AI officer Matthew Graviss, he cited a number of initiatives – such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Washington’s Enterprise AI Strategy as the foundations for the ultimate goal – using AI to “advance our foreign policy.”

The second part of the push to equip the State Department with AI tools is to – “strengthen this institution.”

According to Blinken, his department is a leader within the government when it comes to testing and “harnessing” the technology. Some reports speak about this as combating whatever happens to be considered foreign disinformation.

And while on the subject of meddling, the Washington Times says AI tests are “part of an ambitious media monitoring and analysis project that spans the globe.”

As sinister as that may sound, packaging the message as the need to combat (only) “foreign disinformation” certainly makes the policy more palatable at home, where the department’s past activity features in congressional probes into government-orchestrated online censorship.

This scrutiny is presented as something hindering the Department of State’s “anti-disinformation” work – while the tools now in development are quite openly described as a possible different means “to pursue the same goals.”

Blinken’s remarks reveal how the technology is used seemingly innocuously as a (translation and summarization) tool “in multilateral organizations;” but then he praised the ability of AI-powered tools to make mass surveillance (“monitoring”) cover a much larger number of media, making its scope and scale “vast,” as the report put it.

And also – combat “disinformation” – which Blinken quite dramatically refers to as “one of the poisons in the international system today.”

“We have one program that we’re using that is able to basically ingest a million articles every day from around the world — to be able to do that in a couple hundred countries in over a hundred languages — and then immediately translate, synthesize and give you a clear picture of what’s happening in the information space immediately,” the secretary is quoted as saying.

But given the scale of the operation, and the shortcomings of the current limitations of AI – those in the know might wish Blinken good luck with the accuracy and reliability of getting that “immediate, clear picture.”

However, when the “AI weapon” is pointed at online platforms as a means of identifying and censoring “disfavored” speech, it is objectively more likely to be efficient.

And the State Department is no stranger to such – strange given its mission – activities: after all, it is the home of the investigated-by-Congress and highly controversial Global Engagement Center.

Pavlovski sought to identify free speech as the core component in the historic achievement of the US civil rights movement. “It all comes down to one thing, freedom, freedom of speech. That’s where it comes from,” he said.

Pavlovski compared his platform’s struggle to remain open to freedom of expression to the efforts of those fighting for civil rights decades ago, and said this gave him and others at Rumble “a sense of purpose.”

At the same time, Pavlovski doesn’t think that governments of some leading Western countries are staying true to that crucial building block of their democracies.

The Rumble CEO “named and shamed” just a few – the US, the UK, Australia, and Ireland, where he said censorship laws that criminalize speech, all the way to putting people in jail, are either being drafted or enacted.

“That’s a scary place to be. That’s not a place I want to grow up in,” Pavlovski said. “But that’s what these laws are aiming to do. They’re giving the power to the government to determine what you can and cannot say. And that is a place that we have known throughout history, is a very bad place to go. And we need to do everything in the world to stop it.”

In the context of Western countries failing the very foundations of democracy, he also mentioned freedom of expression protections as part of not only the First Amendment in the US but also the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As for the way these governments get away with blatant violations of their own founding postulates – and laws – Pavlovski spoke about the Covid pandemic as an event that was used to “take away more rights from everybody, they use that as an excuse to infringe and take more power for them(selves).”

And in this context, Pavlovski asserted that his is the only platform that pushes back against such abuses – which he referred to as, “encroachment.”

Another issue that came up during the conversation was whether or not YouTube is carrying out censorship on behalf of yet another government – this time, that of Russia.

He noted that, unlike YouTube, Rumble is among those that got banned in Russia, something happened well after Russian outlets like RT got banned in the West – and after Rumble itself was previously “criticized” for refusing to censor RT (by Western countries).

Trying to make sense of this unholy mess, Pavlovski noted, “All of a sudden now Russia bans Rumble and YouTube is still operating there. So what is YouTube doing? Why isn’t the media writing about that? Why don’t they care about that?”

“They seem to care when we stand on the principle of free speech. But they don’t care when there’s actual cooperation happening. Not at all. They still only care about trying to knock us down,” said the Rumble CEO.

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