Every time you get behind the wheel, your car is collecting data about you. Where you go, how fast you’re driving, how hard you brake, and even how much you weigh.

All of that data is not typically available to the vehicle owner. Instead, it’s gated behind secure restrictions that prevent anyone other than the manufacturer or authorized technicians from accessing the information. Automakers can use the same digital gates to lock owners out of making repairs or modifications, like replacing their own brake pads, without paying a premium for manufacturer service.

The Repair Act, a piece of pending legislation discussed in a subcommittee hearing at the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, would mandate that some of that collected data be shared with the vehicle owners, specifically the bits that would be useful for making repairs.

“Automakers are trying to use the kind of marketing advantage of exclusive access to this data to push you to go to the dealership where they know what triggered this information,” Nathan Proctor, senior director of the campaign for the right to repair at PIRG, says. “Repair would actually be quicker, cheaper, more convenient if this information was more widely distributed, but it’s not.”

Today, the US House’s Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing called (deep breath) “Examining Legislative Options to Strengthen Motor Vehicle Safety, Ensure Consumer Choice and Affordability, and Cement US Automotive Leadership.” The session covered potential legislation about improving road safety, regulating autonomous vehicles, and helping people protect their catalytic converters from theft.

The hearing took on a contentious tone when the discussion turned to the Repair Act. The House bill, introduced in early 2025 by Representatives Neal Dunn of Florida and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, calls for automakers to give vehicle owners and third-party repair shops access to telemetry, or the ability to access all the data collected by modern vehicles. The act has been supported by organizations representing vehicle suppliers as well as auto care shops.

Bill Henvy, CEO of the Auto Care Association, who has long called for automakers to share vehicle owner’s data, testified in the hearing to say that the threat to owners’ data has been growing over the past decade.

“The need for the Repair Act is critical and real,” Hanvey said in the hearing, calling today’s vehicles essentially computers on wheels that produce data that manufacturers then gate off to block consumers from accessing. “Make no mistake about it, automakers unilaterally control the data, not the owner of the vehicle. It may be your car, but currently it is the manufacturer’s data to do with whatever they choose.”

The Repair act has been opposed by vehicle manufacturers and car dealerships, who cite concerns about their intellectual property being used by third parties. They say they have done enough to make their data and tools accessible and that if you need to get your car fixed it’s not too hard to find somebody authorized to peek inside its digital brain.

“Vehicle owners should be able to get their vehicles fixed anywhere they want,” said Hilary Cain, senior vice president of policy at the automaker industry group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, in testimony at the hearing. “The good news is that automakers already provide independent repairs with all the information, instruction, tools, and codes necessary to properly and safely fix a vehicle.”

Cain says ultimately automakers support a comprehensive federal right-to-repair law, albeit one that protects company intellectual property and “doesn’t force automakers to provide aftermarket parts manufacturers or auto parts retailers with data that isn’t necessary to diagnose or repair a vehicle.”

In President Donald Trump’s second term, everything is content. Videos of immigration raids are shared widely on X by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), conspiracy theories dictate policy, and prominent right-wing podcasters and influencers have occupied high-level government roles. The second Trump administration is, to put it bluntly, very online.

Trump and his supporters have long trafficked in—and benefited from—misinformation and conspiracy theories, leveraging them to build visibility on social media platforms and set the tone of national conversations. During his first term, Trump was famous for announcing the administration’s positions and priorities via tweet. In the years since, social media platforms have become friendlier environments for conspiracy theories and those who promote them, helping them spread more widely. Trump’s playbook has adjusted accordingly.

Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says that social media, particularly right-wing social media ecosystems, are no longer just a way for Trump to control conversations and public perception. The administration, he says, is now actively making decisions and shaping policy based primarily on how they’ll be perceived online. Their priority is what right-wing communities care about—regardless of whether it’s real.

WIRED spoke to Moynihan, who argues that the US has entered a new level of enmeshment between the internet and politics, in what he calls a “clicktatorship.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

WIRED: To start us off, what is the “clicktatorship”?

Don Moynihan: A “clicktatorship” is a form of government that combines a social media worldview alongside authoritarian tendencies. This implies that people working in this form of government are not just using online platforms as a mode of communication, but that their beliefs, judgement, and decisionmaking reflect, are influenced by, and are directly responsive to the online world to an extreme degree. The “clicktatorship” views everything as content, including basic policy decisions and implementation practices.

The supply of a platform that encourages right-wing conspiracies and the demand of an administration for people who can traffic in those conspiracies is what’s giving us the current moments of “clicktatorship” that we’re experiencing.

The “clicktatorship” is generating these images to justify the occupation of American cities by military forces, or to justify cutting off resources to states that did not support the president, to do things that would have truly shocked us a decade ago.

Trump’s first presidency was characterized by a sort of showmanship. How is that different from what we’re seeing now?

The first Trump presidency might be understood as a “TV presidency,” where watching The Apprentice or Fox News gave you real insight into the milieu in which Trump was operating. The second Trump presidency is the “Truth Social or X presidency,” where it is very hard to interpret without the reference points of those online platforms. Some of the content and messaging that the president or other senior policymakers use is stuffed with inside references, messaging that doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re already in that online community.

Modes of discourse have also changed. We’re seeing very senior policymakers exhibit the patterns and habits that work online. Pam Bondi going to a Senate hearing with a list of zingers and printed out X posts as a means of responding to a traditional accountability process, reflects how this online mode of discourse is shaping how public officials view their real life roles.

There’s been a lot of research about the polarizing and harmful nature of social media. What does it mean that our political leaders are people who have not only been successful in manipulating social media, but have themselves been manipulated by it?