Posted on 02/05/2026 9:11:26 AM PST by MtnClimber
The House Judiciary Committee’s recent findings present a simple but unsettling conclusion. American speech is being curtailed in the United States, not because Congress has changed the First Amendment, but because foreign governments have learned how to route around it. Europe’s Digital Services Act, presented as a domestic regulatory framework, has in practice become a lever for global speech control. Its effects now reach deep into the American public square.
To see how this happens, begin with a basic fact about the modern internet. Major platforms operate with global content moderation rules. They do so not out of ideology but out of necessity. Country-by-country speech codes are technically burdensome, expensive, and often incompatible with user privacy. As a result, when a regulator with real enforcement power demands changes to platform rules, those changes are implemented worldwide. This is the pressure point that the European Union has exploited for more than a decade.
The Digital Services Act did not emerge in isolation. It is the culmination of a long campaign by European regulators to shape online discourse. Long before the DSA took effect, the European Commission convened so-called voluntary codes on hate speech and disinformation. These forums were framed as cooperative and consensual. Internal documents now show they were neither. Platform executives understood that participation was mandatory in practice and that failure to comply would invite retaliation once binding law arrived. The DSA was that law.
Under the DSA, platforms face fines of up to 6% of global revenue and, in extreme cases, expulsion from the European market. These penalties are not theoretical. In December 2025, the Commission imposed its first major DSA fine against 𝕏, €120M, nearly the statutory maximum, in a decision that reads less like neutral enforcement than a warning shot. The message was unmistakable. Platforms that resist Europe’s preferred speech norms will pay a price.
What norms are being enforced. The House Judiciary Committee’s report documents repeated pressure to suppress lawful political speech, satire, and even true information. During the COVID pandemic, European officials pressed platforms to rewrite their moderation policies to silence debate over vaccines, transmission, and public health measures. Many of the censored claims later proved accurate. The point is not hindsight. It is that governments asserted the authority to decide which views could be expressed at all.
The same pattern appears in debates over migration, gender ideology, and elections. European regulators encouraged platforms to demote or remove content that was not illegal but deemed harmful to civic discourse. Terms like harmful, misleading, or undermining public trust are inherently subjective. They function as tools of discretion, not law. Once embedded in global moderation rules, they restrict what Americans can say and hear on platforms used every day.
One might object that Europe is entitled to regulate speech within its own borders. That is true. The problem arises when European law is enforced extraterritorially through global platform rules. When Brussels demands a change to community guidelines, Americans feel the effect instantly. A user in Ohio is governed by the same speech code designed to satisfy regulators in Brussels or Paris. This is foreign regulation by proxy.
France offers a vivid illustration. French authorities, working alongside European institutions, have taken an increasingly aggressive posture toward platforms that refuse to bend. In Paris, authorities and Europol raided 𝕏’s offices, demanding internal records and cooperation. French officials have also sought to compel Elon Musk to appear for interrogation, signaling that resistance will be met not only with fines but with personal pressure. These tactics are not aimed at protecting French citizens from crime. They are designed to enforce ideological conformity.
The United Kingdom has followed a similar path. Its Online Safety Act mirrors many of the DSA’s core mechanisms. British regulators now claim authority to punish platforms for hosting speech that is lawful in the United States but disfavored in London. The arrest of individuals over online speech and threats to block platforms like 𝕏 underscore how quickly safety rhetoric slides into coercion.
The House Judiciary Committee’s report draws an unavoidable conclusion. Big Tech companies are not independently choosing to censor Americans. They are responding rationally to overwhelming regulatory pressure from foreign governments. Faced with the choice between access to European markets and the full protection of American speech norms, many companies choose compliance. The First Amendment constrains Congress. It does not constrain Brussels.
This creates a constitutional asymmetry. American lawmakers are bound by the First Amendment. European regulators are not. Yet through global platform governance, European standards increasingly prevail. The result is a de facto rewriting of American speech norms without democratic consent.
What is to be done. Congress cannot regulate European speech. But it can protect American speech. It can make clear that compliance with foreign censorship demands cannot be imposed on US users. It can require transparency when platforms change rules at the behest of foreign governments. It can prohibit the transfer of American user data to foreign regulators seeking to enforce speech codes. And it can condition market access or liability protections on respect for American free expression.
None of this requires hostility toward Europe. It requires clarity about sovereignty. The First Amendment is not a parochial relic. It is a constitutional commitment that speech is not a privilege to be managed by bureaucrats. When foreign governments seek to export censorship through economic leverage, Congress has both the authority and the obligation to respond.
The stakes are not abstract. Speech norms shape political outcomes. The same mechanisms used to suppress debate about vaccines or migration can be turned on elections, dissent, and opposition. The report documents how European officials pressed platforms ahead of US elections, asking about preparations and moderation policies. That alone should concentrate the mind.....SNIP
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Satan just told Hitler that he won.
I beg to differ. Impressment was a catalyst for the War of 1812. If Europe is using such roundabout ways to force its whims in Americans (or doing so in concert with elements in the US), I would equate it to what the British were doing pre 1812.
Good article. Thanks for posting.
This little rhetorical sleight of hand has been played many times now. with the UK in the lead, France and Germany following close behind. One notes this travels via Leftists and Muslims. But it is the same game as played by US Democrats these days, wherein "harm" is asserted from words and views.
What dies a death at the hands of this malicious idiots: "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Good post.
Foreign governments seeking to impose restrictions on Americans in America is an act of war.
“Major platforms operate with global content moderation rules.”
There are no global content rules.
The US should cut off flights to the UK and EU like flights to Cuba and Venezuela are.
I think the author meant that platforms formulate their own content rules for the set of global rules in place for countries they want to operate in. These are not technically First Amendment violations since the US Government did not generate the censorship rules. What the US congress should do is pass laws that have severe sanctions against countries that fine US companies for internet content. If these countries want to control content then they need to scan their internet content and do their own censorship..... or else disconnect from the internet. And good luck dealing with Starlink.
>blockquote> The reason for this mass global censorship is that the first thing a kidnapper does is gag the victim so that they cannot sound the alarm. Give up your free speech at your peril. Once they are able to silence you, the game is over. The loss of all of your other freedoms will fall like dominos after. Anyone that advocates to censor you, or to unmask your anonymity is your adversary. Treat them like one - no matter what else they say.
Exactly.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is total infringement on International boundaries is a pernicious and hateful on free speech and free thinkers
The federal government needs to pass a law stating that large social media platforms are considered to be part of the digital public square. As such, censorship is not permitted any more than it would be permitted in the physical public square.
That would gut content moderation at a stroke rendering it illegal except for clearly illegal speech such as pornography, threats against specific individuals, calls for the violent overthrow of the government, etc. That would at a stroke make all of the content moderation requirements of the DSA expressly illegal in America.
If the Yurps, Canucks and Aussies want to build digital firewalls around their countries like the Great Firewall of China, that is their business. The American internet must be free of European censorship every bit as much as American public spaces are free of European censorship.
Gagging free speech is like handcuffing your hands behind your back. Once that happens you have lost control over your life.
This, but a throat-punch in the wallet speaks volumes as well. I propose all that you said, in addition to a 300% tariff on all goods coming from countries that curtail freedom of speech, especially those that try to impose their will internationally.
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