In an attempt to defend the controversial Digital Services Act (DSA), European Commissioner for Technology Henna Virkkunen has shifted the focus toward the United States. In a recent interview, she claimed that U.S.-based platforms remove far more content based on their terms and conditions than is required under European legislation. Yet her argument, rather than being persuasive, reveals a deeper problem: the growing normalization of institutional censorship in Brussels and Silicon Valley.
The DSA was promoted as a tool to protect users from illegal content, counterfeits, disinformation, and digital risks. In reality, it is becoming a powerful bureaucratic instrument, centralizing control in Brussels. Claiming to ensure “uniform application,” the European Commission threatens legal action and sanctions against states that delay or resist implementing its provisions.
Virkkunen hides behind the numbers: between September 2023 and April 2024, 99% of content removals on platforms such as Meta and X were due to their own internal rules. In contrast, only 1% came from European entities designated as “trusted flaggers” under the DSA, and a mere 0.001% of those cases ended in removal by national authorities. But her numbers fail to differentiate between censorship trends under the Biden administration and changes—including promises made by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg—since Donald Trump took office.
Claiming that the U.S. censors ‘more’ does not turn Brussels into a guarantor of free speech. Freedom is not measured by takedown percentages but by the principle that no one, neither governments nor platforms, has the right to suppress ideas simply because they are inconvenient.
Figures like Elon Musk and Republican Congressman Jim Jordan have criticized the DSA for opening the door to a centralized model of control over what citizens can or cannot say online. Far from disproving this, Commissioner Virkkunen confirms its very essence: it is a tool that allows semi-public bodies and institutions to flag “illegal” content—a term so vaguely defined that it can easily be extended to dissenting opinions.
For example, the Commission, troubled by the unrestricted free speech on his X platform, warned Musk over his support of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ahead of the German elections, urging him to follow DSA rules. In particular, they voiced concerns ahead of Musk’s live talk with AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, dispatching 150 officials to monitor the platform’s compliance, including in its internal communication and algorithms. Framing it as a defense of “EU citizens and European democracy,” leftist and liberal MEPs also called for a parliamentary debate on the talk, denouncing it as a “threat to democracy.”
During her recent trip to Washington, Virkkunen sought to convince her interlocutors that the European system is more transparent than that of the U.S.-based platforms. However, transparency in censorship does not make it any more legitimate. That the DSA only applies within European territory is no consolation to EU citizens, whose fundamental rights should be above Brussels’ legislative engineering.
Pointing to the puritan rigidity of U.S. platforms that remove, for instance, artistic depictions involving nudity, does not absolve the EU. Censorship is still censorship.
Virkkunen claims that the platforms’ commercial interests drive many criticisms. However, defending the European model also stems from a clear interest: to hold the ultimate control over public discourse in an era of polarization and uncertainty.
The core issue is not whether Silicon Valley censors more than Brussels. It is whether citizens can continue to trust that their freedoms will be respected, or whether they must resign themselves to living under a vague form of surveillance that rewards self-censorship and punishes dissent.
