John Rosenthal has a very interesting free speech piece in the Claremont Review of Books.
Make Speech Free Again
How the U.S. can defeat E.U. censorship.
On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order: “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The bad old days of the “censorship-industrial complex,” allegedly responsible for suppressing online speech under President Joe Biden, were over.
Except they weren’t. The driving force behind online censorship had never been the U.S. government, which meant that freedom of speech could not be restored by the stroke of a president’s pen. Rather, the European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans and other English-speakers. The E.U. has not violated the free-speech rights of Americans, since it has no obligations under the U.S. Constitution. But it has vitiated those rights, essentially nullifying the First Amendment in cyberspace.
How the U.S. can defeat E.U. censorship.
On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order: “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The bad old days of the “censorship-industrial complex,” allegedly responsible for suppressing online speech under President Joe Biden, were over.
Except they weren’t. The driving force behind online censorship had never been the U.S. government, which meant that freedom of speech could not be restored by the stroke of a president’s pen. Rather, the European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans and other English-speakers. The E.U. has not violated the free-speech rights of Americans, since it has no obligations under the U.S. Constitution. But it has vitiated those rights, essentially nullifying the First Amendment in cyberspace.
The whole piece is quite long but well worth reading for the detail it provides about the widespread effects of EU censorship. Here in the UK, we did not escape that via Brexit.
Some supporters of President Trump might find this hard to believe. After all, the president’s most prominent ally and advisor is Elon Musk, whose purchase of Twitter in 2022 was said to be motivated by a desire to restore free speech to the platform. But Musk has always insisted that “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach,” and there’s the rub. Using platform algorithms to restrict reach artificially is a form of censorship, one that is not only compatible with the DSA but even encouraged by the E.U.
1 comment:
We did not escape ... I lay that at the door of May first up.
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