Some Things To Prepare For
This week has been hectic, but I wanted to make sure I got out a second newsletter. This one will probably not be as elegantly written as past posts.
דעם מאַשין קילז פאַשיסץ
Some Things to Prepare For
A Trump presidency is bad in untold ways. We know this because we already had one. People who would not have otherwise suffered will likely suffer. Our tenuous democratic experiment will prevail, but under dire stress and only through the sleepless commitment of resistance. The country is likely to be less healthy and less educated.
The tech and media industries are in for an interesting few years. As individual consumers and producers in these industries, here are some things to prepare for.
Elon Musk is about to be even more annoying
It is a core editorial tenet of Arachne that Elon Musk sucks and is bad. Hurray for the First Amendment, because I'm gunna be saying that over and over the next four years. The ways in which he currently sucks will be exacerbated by his close proximity to the president-elect.
You may wonder why Elon Musk has thrown his heaving billions behind Donald Trump. Other than the fact that decadent piss-babies whose own families despise them tend to run in the same circles, Musk is trying to curry favor with Trump in order to advantage his own businesses. The Biden administration, your typical bureaucratic executive branch, has mostly allowed the tools of the federal government to operate normally. Democrats love The Rules, after all. This often means that Elon's brilliant ideas about his cars that can't drive themselves or his satellites that are actively aiding the Russian military campaign in Ukraine run up against regulatory power and the many gears and levers of a half functioning federal government. Under Trump, as under all authoritarians, it is most important to caress the ego of just one guy. Armed with Supreme Court decisions that basically said "Trump appointed judges can decide they know better than the EPA" and "The president can do whatever they want in their actions as president," Musk is hoping that his standing with Trump will clear the path for all of his dumbest possible bullshit.
For example, Elon would really love to relax safety standards for American automobiles. Simply, Tesla is bad at making cars. The legacy automakers have been able to dramatically close the gap on Elon's electric advantage, and consumers have responded. In order to increase productivity, Elon wants to stop worrying about every little detail of his cars abiding by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. He also doesn't want to work with union labor. Union labor is what built the American automobile industry.
There are other ways Musk is about to be insanely annoying. Twitter will continue circling the drain until all that's left is alt-right muck and propagandist bots running on a ChatGPT API. Starlink will continue to provide 2G speeds to warmongers around the world. xAI will autogenerate Pepe the Frog smut. SpaceX will take billions of dollars to get people to Mars and won't get halfway there.
The worst possible people will get rich. The rich will be the worst possible people.
Anti-trust will probably come to a screeching halt
While Trump and Vance have spent plenty of airtime talking about how much they want to break up big tech, I highly doubt that this will happen. Whereas the Biden administration's anti-trust efforts appear rooted in genuine consumer interest, Trump and Vance seem more interested in forcing the tech companies to further capitulate to the will of the powerful.
There is a long standing gripe on the right that these companies are engaged in some sort of targeted censorship campaign against right wing ideas. They are not. The American Right now encompasses dangerous lies and deliberate information manipulation. Google and Meta are companies with business incentives toward the truth. A Trump administration will probably threaten these companies with breakups if they don't give equal footing to the lies off of which the right profits.
As tech executives line up to obsequiously lick Trump's boots, I am pessimistic that these companies will hold the wellbeing of the American democracy over their ability to continue operating. A Trump presidency may threaten Big Tech with the kinds of lawsuits the Biden DOJ has brought forth, but I expect the Zuckerbergs of the world to capitulate at every turn.
We are super not getting a national data privacy law
While it was unlikely under a second Democratic presidential term, it is even more unlikely under a second Trump presidency.
What would a national data privacy law do? The big thing is it would restrict the ability of data brokers to trade on your data without your explicit consent. Remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal? In that case, data from Facebook users was being taken from users via deceptive means. That data was then bought and sold in a number of ways that were, uh, bad, including to Russian operatives. A national data privacy law would make it illegal for companies to do this.
A national data privacy law would be bad for a Trump presidency in a few ways:
- Authoritarians love the surveillance state. Under an exploitative landscape in which citizen data is constantly being sucked from our pockets and keystrokes, people can be more easily tracked, their beliefs more easily targeted, their resistance more easily thwarted. A country without a data privacy law is a country in which the government can more easily subpoena your personal information from tech companies.
- AI suffers under privacy regulation. While OpenAI has already pilfered the entirety of the internet to train ChatGPT, they'd really love it they didn't have any barriers to collecting future data. Seeing as the AI industry is positioning itself as integral to US defense, innovation, and productivity, Trump won't want to push back against them.
- The media industry that made Trump thrives on the exploitation of your data. Whether it's YouTube redpilling or the TikTok manosphere, the ease with which companies can take advantage of user data brings more people, especially more young people, into Trump's right wing fascistic bubble.
- Russia and China really want information about Americans. Trump is pretty friendly with American adversaries. Hell, they helped him get elected both times. In the next few years Russia and China will continue to attempt to undermine American civic life. As in the Cambridge Analytica case, it's actually pretty darn easy for them to attain highly detailed data about American citizens! Without a national law that limits data companies from selling American data, this will continue.
JD Vance loves cryptocurrency
Now I don't want to make a blanket dismissal of cryptocurrency. I actually think that under certain circumstances and with proper regulation, cryptocurrency can be a net good for economic development around the world. What I do want to dismiss is the rampant speculation that comes with an unregulated currency. There are a number of examples of the following: Person/people make unregulated crypto coin or exchange, they market the hell out of it, evangelize about how you can get rich in this alternative market, people give unregulated crypto coin or exchange USD money, coin goes to zero, company gets to keep USD. These are broad strokes.
JD Vance is one of these crypto evangelists, and the Trump administration will allow scammers to convince Americans to pour their hard earned dollars into money that is made of whispers and air.
Alright here's a lightning round
- The expansion of broadband internet access will slow
- One of the great successes of the Biden administration is the expansion of broadband internet access to underserved communities. It is unlikely a Republican adminstration will give a shit about this.
- Russia and China will continue to exploit our infrastructure
- They've done it before. They will continue to do it. They will likely not face any consequences, and no efforts will be made to protect American citizens.
- Tariffs on foreign goods will drive up prices
- Mentioned this last week. If Trump gets his tariffs, all types of goods imported from overseas will get more expensive for consumers.
- The main broadcast networks will be further undermined
- Trump wants to use the FCC to strip the major broadcast networks of their broadcast licenses if they aren't nice to him.
In conclusion...
A Trump presidency will force users of the internet (all of you) to be vigilant and thoughtful. There are countless ways in which his administration will bring hardship upon people, especially trans people, immigrants, and women. Our advocacy must extend into the streets, but with so much of our lives intertwined with the tech we carry every day we must also do what we can in ~cyberspace~.
I'll leave you with a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization I follow that advocates for the First Amendment, data privacy, and the dismantling of the surveillance capitalist system.
Aaron Mackey
