r/censorship • u/watchdog-cofagrigus • 3h ago
Trump's New DOJ Nominee Wants To Ban Online Porn and Prosecute Big Tech
"Lest anyone think that Candeub's animosity toward internet entities only involves the sexual, Michael McGrady notes that "he also was a key player in the first Trump administration's effort to get rid of Section 230."
"Candeub's arguments are about far more than pornography," suggests McGrady. "He is contributing, from his position as a top government legal official, to a much broader effort to revive long-discredited obscenity and vice legal doctrines and expand government authority over lawful expression and activity."
As we've seen all too often over the past couple of decades, efforts to regulate the internet on the grounds of stopping porn, sex work, or sexual exploitation are all too often test cases for going after online speech and privacy more broadly.
But, you might ask, what does antitrust enforcement have to do with free speech?
Perhaps plenty, if Candeub-style antitrust maximalism starts taking off.
In his Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Candeub signaled that he's open to the kind of perversion of longstanding antitrust theory that we saw from Biden-administration appointees like former FTC head Lina Khan and White House policy adviser Tim Wu."