Vice President Kamala Harris Faces a Faster, Uglier Version of the Internet

The internet was spewing racist and sexist attacks long before Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) began her presidential campaign, including when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sought the job. Since the last major election, however, it has become even more noxious—and more central to American politics. In 2008, then-Sen Obama (D-IL) Obama faced an ecosystem in which Facebook had millions of users, not billions, and the iPhone was just a year old. In 2016, Clinton’s campaign monitored a handful of social media platforms, not dozens. In 2020, when then-Sen Harris was Joseph Biden Jr.’s running mate, it was far harder to use artificial intelligence to produce the fake pornographic renderings and misleading videos that now claim to portray her. False narratives and conspiracy theories about her have ricocheted across the digital landscape. Much has changed in the lead-up to 2024. Such claims are now turbocharged, fueled by an increasingly aggressive tone of political speech endorsed by top politicians, powered by artificial intelligence and other new technologies, and let loose across a far more fragmented online landscape crowded with unmoderated platforms.