Brussels has delivered yet another blow in its war against free speech. Last Friday, it slapped Elon Musk’s X with a hefty €120 million fine. Musk’s transgression is what the EU has called “transparency failures” for neglecting to comply with the draconian Digital Services Act (DSA). These include the apparently deceptive design of its blue checkmark for verified accounts, the lack of transparency of X’s advertising repository and its failure to provide researchers access to public data. The fine is a culmination of a two-year investigation into X, and a long battle between Musk and the Eurocrats.
U.S. government figures have roundly denounced the sanctions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments” and vowed that “the days of censoring Americans online are over.” Vice President JD Vance also stepped in, before the EU’s final decision had been made, to slam Brussels for punishing X “for not engaging in censorship.”
European Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen maintains that the “DSA is having nothing to do with censorship,” but it’s hard to imagine what else it could be. We need only look at Musk’s previous skirmishes with the EU to see that the DSA is clearly intended to have a chilling effect on free speech online. Ahead of last year’s U.S. presidential race, then-internal market commissioner Thierry Breton cautioned Musk that streaming his planned Donald Trump interview on X might breach the DSA. That could expose the platform to massive penalties—even the risk of being shut out of the EU entirely. In the eyes of the EU, allowing the former American president and then presidential candidate to speak publicly was so dangerous that it might have been illegal. The bloc has also floated a €1 billion fine over X’s refusal to provide data demanded under the DSA. So it seems like Musk has gotten away somewhat lightly with ‘just’ a €120 million fine.
Anyone who has been paying attention since the DSA came into force in 2022 will know that this law is far from neutral. Rather, it has routinely been weaponised against the EU’s critics—especially from the Right. The DSA, like most attempts to censor the online world, was framed as a vital means of keeping children safe. It was sold as a way of protecting them from content that is either outright illegal or otherwise harmful. Today, it is used to silence those who speak out against Brussels’s hegemony.
Just look at how the DSA handles elections and ‘crisis’ moments. The Commission’s election-risk guidance asks very large platforms to anticipate and mitigate threats to electoral processes and civic discourse during specific campaign periods. This effectively pushes them to pre-empt ‘information manipulation’ before it spreads, and inevitably catches lawful but politically inconvenient views. As far as most social media platforms are concerned, the safest compliance strategy (and the most effective way to avoid penalties) is to turn the dial down on disruptive populist messaging.
Under Article 22, national regulators can certify “trusted flaggers” to survey the web for illegal and harmful content. Once they’re approved, their reports must be fast-tracked by platforms across the EU. In theory, this is a technocratic tool aimed at nimble removal of illegal content by expert bodies, which are meant to be accurate and accountable. In practice, this system creates an agenda-setting machine, handing certain bodies the power to decide what can stay and what must be taken down. These include NGOs such as HateAid, which was granted trusted flagger status by the German government this summer. Its CEO has previously appeared on a CBS documentary, expressing her belief that unlimited free speech is a danger to the masses. Another example from Germany is REspekt, an NGO that proudly boasts of reporting an average 31 cases of online ‘hate speech’ to police each day in 2024. This ecosystem of left-wing, totalitarian-minded fact-checkers and digital hall monitors feels purpose-built to crack down on dissent—and right-wing dissent most of all.
Ask Brussels, though, and it will somehow insist that Europeans are free to say whatever they please online. Last week, Austrian MEP Helmut Brandstätter wrote on X, in response to JD Vance: “There is No censorship in Europe, and everybody has to follow our rules. Trump fights the free press, suing newspapers and TV stations. So leave us alone.” A day later, after wrestling in the mud with random anonymous accounts who disagreed with him, Brandstätter demanded of one user, without a hint of irony: “You are a liar. Give my [sic] your real Name and an Adress [sic] for my lawyer.”
So it always goes in Europe, where politicians’ immediate response to criticism is often not to debate or argue, but to threaten legal action. It emerged last weekend that, while he was still leader of the opposition, now German chancellor Friedrich Merz had filed almost 5,000 criminal complaints against people who criticised him online—some of whom ended up having their homes raided by police and their electronic devices confiscated. In Germany, where insulting a politician can get you up to three years in prison, this is not an unusual occurrence. When Robert Habeck was economy and environment minister, his department filed 805 criminal complaints over alleged insults or threats against him. And as foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock filed 513 such complaints. In France, a woman was similarly put on trial and faced a fine of €12,000 for describing President Emmanuel Macron as “filth” in a Facebook post. The case was, thankfully, thrown out, but “insulting the president of the republic” remains a crime in France.
How can anyone believe there is free speech on a continent where it is possible to receive a prison sentence for calling a politician an idiot, or where social media platforms are compelled to censor their users? Even democratic elections across the EU face meddling at the hands of Brussels bureaucrats. The so-called Democracy Shield, formally presented last month, will act as a pretext to crack down on populism across Europe. On paper, the shield is supposed to “protect and reinforce free speech, independent media, resilient institutions and a vibrant civil society,” but in practice, it will quash dissent and ensure that voices critical of the EU are labelled as fake news or misinformation. Rest assured, any democratic process that sees voters attempt to push back against Brussels’s encroachment on their national sovereignty will be dismissed as being under the spell of bad actors and electoral interference. Far from strengthening democracy, this scheme will further erode it.
As much as Europe’s elites would like to pretend otherwise, the EU is facing a serious free-speech crisis. The U.S. can clearly see that, and is right to criticise both EU institutions and national governments for so brazenly policing people’s opinions. The only question remains is whether Europeans will continue to accept this carefully managed version of public life, or if they will fight back, before it is too late.
The EU’s Censorship Regime Is Coming for X—Again
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Brussels has delivered yet another blow in its war against free speech. Last Friday, it slapped Elon Musk’s X with a hefty €120 million fine. Musk’s transgression is what the EU has called “transparency failures” for neglecting to comply with the draconian Digital Services Act (DSA). These include the apparently deceptive design of its blue checkmark for verified accounts, the lack of transparency of X’s advertising repository and its failure to provide researchers access to public data. The fine is a culmination of a two-year investigation into X, and a long battle between Musk and the Eurocrats.
U.S. government figures have roundly denounced the sanctions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments” and vowed that “the days of censoring Americans online are over.” Vice President JD Vance also stepped in, before the EU’s final decision had been made, to slam Brussels for punishing X “for not engaging in censorship.”
European Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen maintains that the “DSA is having nothing to do with censorship,” but it’s hard to imagine what else it could be. We need only look at Musk’s previous skirmishes with the EU to see that the DSA is clearly intended to have a chilling effect on free speech online. Ahead of last year’s U.S. presidential race, then-internal market commissioner Thierry Breton cautioned Musk that streaming his planned Donald Trump interview on X might breach the DSA. That could expose the platform to massive penalties—even the risk of being shut out of the EU entirely. In the eyes of the EU, allowing the former American president and then presidential candidate to speak publicly was so dangerous that it might have been illegal. The bloc has also floated a €1 billion fine over X’s refusal to provide data demanded under the DSA. So it seems like Musk has gotten away somewhat lightly with ‘just’ a €120 million fine.
Anyone who has been paying attention since the DSA came into force in 2022 will know that this law is far from neutral. Rather, it has routinely been weaponised against the EU’s critics—especially from the Right. The DSA, like most attempts to censor the online world, was framed as a vital means of keeping children safe. It was sold as a way of protecting them from content that is either outright illegal or otherwise harmful. Today, it is used to silence those who speak out against Brussels’s hegemony.
Just look at how the DSA handles elections and ‘crisis’ moments. The Commission’s election-risk guidance asks very large platforms to anticipate and mitigate threats to electoral processes and civic discourse during specific campaign periods. This effectively pushes them to pre-empt ‘information manipulation’ before it spreads, and inevitably catches lawful but politically inconvenient views. As far as most social media platforms are concerned, the safest compliance strategy (and the most effective way to avoid penalties) is to turn the dial down on disruptive populist messaging.
Under Article 22, national regulators can certify “trusted flaggers” to survey the web for illegal and harmful content. Once they’re approved, their reports must be fast-tracked by platforms across the EU. In theory, this is a technocratic tool aimed at nimble removal of illegal content by expert bodies, which are meant to be accurate and accountable. In practice, this system creates an agenda-setting machine, handing certain bodies the power to decide what can stay and what must be taken down. These include NGOs such as HateAid, which was granted trusted flagger status by the German government this summer. Its CEO has previously appeared on a CBS documentary, expressing her belief that unlimited free speech is a danger to the masses. Another example from Germany is REspekt, an NGO that proudly boasts of reporting an average 31 cases of online ‘hate speech’ to police each day in 2024. This ecosystem of left-wing, totalitarian-minded fact-checkers and digital hall monitors feels purpose-built to crack down on dissent—and right-wing dissent most of all.
Ask Brussels, though, and it will somehow insist that Europeans are free to say whatever they please online. Last week, Austrian MEP Helmut Brandstätter wrote on X, in response to JD Vance: “There is No censorship in Europe, and everybody has to follow our rules. Trump fights the free press, suing newspapers and TV stations. So leave us alone.” A day later, after wrestling in the mud with random anonymous accounts who disagreed with him, Brandstätter demanded of one user, without a hint of irony: “You are a liar. Give my [sic] your real Name and an Adress [sic] for my lawyer.”
So it always goes in Europe, where politicians’ immediate response to criticism is often not to debate or argue, but to threaten legal action. It emerged last weekend that, while he was still leader of the opposition, now German chancellor Friedrich Merz had filed almost 5,000 criminal complaints against people who criticised him online—some of whom ended up having their homes raided by police and their electronic devices confiscated. In Germany, where insulting a politician can get you up to three years in prison, this is not an unusual occurrence. When Robert Habeck was economy and environment minister, his department filed 805 criminal complaints over alleged insults or threats against him. And as foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock filed 513 such complaints. In France, a woman was similarly put on trial and faced a fine of €12,000 for describing President Emmanuel Macron as “filth” in a Facebook post. The case was, thankfully, thrown out, but “insulting the president of the republic” remains a crime in France.
How can anyone believe there is free speech on a continent where it is possible to receive a prison sentence for calling a politician an idiot, or where social media platforms are compelled to censor their users? Even democratic elections across the EU face meddling at the hands of Brussels bureaucrats. The so-called Democracy Shield, formally presented last month, will act as a pretext to crack down on populism across Europe. On paper, the shield is supposed to “protect and reinforce free speech, independent media, resilient institutions and a vibrant civil society,” but in practice, it will quash dissent and ensure that voices critical of the EU are labelled as fake news or misinformation. Rest assured, any democratic process that sees voters attempt to push back against Brussels’s encroachment on their national sovereignty will be dismissed as being under the spell of bad actors and electoral interference. Far from strengthening democracy, this scheme will further erode it.
As much as Europe’s elites would like to pretend otherwise, the EU is facing a serious free-speech crisis. The U.S. can clearly see that, and is right to criticise both EU institutions and national governments for so brazenly policing people’s opinions. The only question remains is whether Europeans will continue to accept this carefully managed version of public life, or if they will fight back, before it is too late.
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