They will be bad choices for sex and technology. I don’t need some kind of crystal ball with the 2024 election results to make that prediction with confidence. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have a history of making bad moves in these areas, and both have a group of supporters eager for them to make even worse moves in the future.

Who would be worse, from a libertarian perspective? Good…

Trump would be worse on sexual politics

Let’s start with sex.

Harris has a history of crack down on sex work and opposing its decriminalization. She was a big proponent of weakening Section 230 (the federal communications law that, among other things, helps protect web platforms from some liability for user content) to go after platforms that allow sex work ads. she routinely Spreading falsehoods about the classified ad platform Backpage, which is favorable to sex work. and, as California attorney general, he twice arrested its founders on absurd pimping charges that a federal judge twice rejected. Later, as a senator, she was one of the co-sponsors of the law that would become FOSTAwhich made life more difficult for sex workers and severely chilled all types of online content related to sexuality. Harris also has a history of spreading panic over sex trafficking, including pass off a fake sex trafficking story as reality.

Trump signed FOSTA into law. He represents a party whose influential core wants to ban pornography, and members of that party have a plan to do so through The “back door” route of age verification laws.. He has repeatedly spread falsehoods about sex trafficking at the southern border and sex trafficking by undocumented immigrants, and their supporters have promulgated some absolutely crazy sex trafficking conspiracy theories, like QAnon. Trump also represents a party that is full of people trying to define all types of LGBTQ content as “harmful” to minors and restrict access to it on those grounds.

All that said, neither Harris nor Trump seem personally animated by broad hostility toward sex work, LGBTQ people, sex workers, or sexuality in general. For both, any attack on these things has seemed more opportunistic than ideological. Harris used what was then a hot topic of sex work ads and Backpage to gain national attention. Trump uses an alleged epidemic of cross-border sex trafficking to promote his anti-immigration agenda. Etc.

This is not cool, by any means; in fact, I would call it quite despicable. But it is qualitatively different – ​​and bodes better for sexual politics – than situations in which politicians seem driven by a deep personal or ideological repulsion towards sex in the public sphere.

If I had to speculate, I would say that Trump probably has less dangerous personal convictions on this front, since Harris does. seem truly harbor some paternalistic attitudes towards sex workers.

But Trump is almost certainly further of a threat to sensible sexual politics than Harris, simply due to the fact that she represents the Republican Party. The hysteria around sex is definitely a bipartisan phenomenon, but conservatives are still much worse on this front. And Trump, while politically idiosyncratic in some ways, has a tendency to fall victim to some of the strange fixations of the people around him. In any case, it seems unlikely to me that, for example, he would veto an attempt to federally verify age for porn platforms or restrict books about sex in libraries if a Congress controlled by the Republican Party send it his way.

And if we broaden our focus here to include things like contraception and abortion in the realm of sexual politics, a Trump presidency looks even worse. Harris has some bad ideas. about who should pay for condoms and other forms of contraception, and that could increase costs. But overall, a Harris presidency would be generally good for reproductive freedom.

A Trump presidency would not. while Trump can He does not have a personal desire to ban abortion nationwide (he has a checkered history about this), to restrict access to mifepristone, or to make it more difficult for people to access contraception or assisted reproduction, he is infinitely more likely to appoint judges who are sympathetic to some or all of these things, and to sign bills that restrict reproductive freedom.

With technology, it’s harder to say who’s worse

Let’s move on to technological policy and, by extension, the policy of expression.

Both Harris and Trump represent parties that yearn for greater technology regulation. Both Republicans and Democrats want to use the federal government to “break up” big tech companies. Both parties seek more control over online speech. And both the Biden/Harris administration and the previous Trump administration have a history of attacking Section 230, attacking TikTok, and generally acting hostile toward popular and/or free speech-enabled technologies.

This is especially concerning in light of the fact that the president can actually have a significant effect on technology policy, in terms of who he appoints to agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). ) and in terms of executive orders that tell federal agencies to prioritize certain types of regulation and enforcement.

President Joe Biden’s FTC has been incredibly hostile toward tech companies, driven by President Lina Khan’s staff. antitrust antitechnology agenda. And while it’s not a given that Harris would keep Khan around, Harris has so far refused to indicate otherwise, even in the face of some Democratic bigwigs. urging her to do it. “In calls with his staff and at fundraisers, deep-pocketed donors have repeatedly singled out Khan… as a drag on the tech sector and other lucrative parts of the economy.” Bloomberg reported in September. But “no clear communication has been given to donors about Harris’ position on Khan.”

The Trump administration It was also bad in the area of ​​bringing dubious antitrust actions against technology companies, but he was not as prolific in this as Democrats have been in recent years. I think a Harris FTC is more of a technological threat than a Trump FTC.

The slight advantage for Harris here is that, being from California (and particularly the San Francisco Bay Area), she has a lot of support in the tech industry and faces pressure not to pursue policies that could harm it.

Meanwhile, Trump has a history of bad actions related to technology. he wanted the FCC to undermine Section 230. He urged Congress to pass legislation limiting or abolishing Section 230. He attempted kill tiktok. And although since then was reversed On that note, it’s unclear whether this represented a genuine change of heart or was just an attempt to criticize Biden, who signed an anti-TikTok bill into law.

Trump has truly authoritarian instincts when it comes to media and online platforms he doesn’t like, as he demonstrated most recently in his comments on remove broadcast licenses of television media that, in his opinion, are too partisan. I have no doubt that a Trump 2.0 presidency would result in extreme attempts to stifle free speech and Internet freedom through executive and regulatory actions.

But the Democrats have no particular love for free speech online any. Democrats in general, and the Biden/Harris administration in particular, have a history of attacking online speech under the auspices of limit “misinformation” or “hate speech” (two categories that lend themselves to vague and opportunistic definitions, and are generally protected by the First Amendment). I don’t think any sensible observer would describe Harris as a great defender of free speech, online or otherwise.

Trump has worse impulses on issues related to speech and technology, and will try to implement worse policies. The good thing here is that their attempts on this front are often so unconstitutional that they face a lot of legal and popular resistance. Perversely, they can be Too bad to be a real threat..

A Harris administration is less likely to attempt speech and technology actions that are so blatantly authoritarian that they will obviously be rejected by regulators, courts, and members of her own party. But that could make her further dangerous on this front than Trump, because it will be much easier for Democrats to sell anti-tech and pro-censorship measures as simple matters of common sense and protection.

Indeed, Trump attempt more bad technology policies; Harris will do it get away with more of them.

More news about sex and technology

• “I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI-generated content or AI-summarized content or an existing type of content put together by AI in some way,” Mark Zuckerberg he supposedly said last week on a call with investors.

• AI is coming for fashion models.

• In “the unfulfilled promises of USB-C“.

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