The European Union’s Digital Services Act is a heavy-handed power play designed to silence dissenting voices from the global digital dialogue.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act is a heavy-handed power play designed to silence dissenting voices from the global digital dialogue.
F or more than 200 years, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has stood as a bulwark against censorship by our government. No matter the political leanings or partisan affiliation of those in power, dissent and discourse still thrive in our nation, where the freedom to speak and live according to one’s deeply held convictions is held sacred by both the governing and the governed.
This exemplary virtue has been America’s greatest gift to the world. President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War description of America as the “shining city on a hill” is as relevant in the 21st century as it was in the 20th. Today, technology like social-media platforms and mass communication has enabled the exchange of ideas to connect the world more closely than in any other time in history.
In this new era, a new question arises for the American people and those we entrust with just powers derived from our consent: Who will protect American speech from foreign censorship?
Unfortunately, we cannot allow our imaginations to be so limited as to preclude the possibility. The European Union’s Digital Services Act is a heavy-handed power play designed to silence dissenting voices from the global digital dialogue. The DSA employs amorphous terms like “hate speech” and “disinformation” to impose government-approved narratives on a wide array of issues.
Topics subject to Orwellian “newspeak” regulation could include, but are by no means limited to: immigration; public health; basic ethical, religious, or political views on sex or gender; and even verified news stories that can change the course of an election. The government censors’ reach is constrained only by the limits of their imagination when it comes to “protecting” citizens from the “danger” of thought-provoking ideas.
The DSA’s lowest common denominator approach to censorship means that the nearly 500 million citizens of the EU member states could be blocked from seeing or making determinations on any speech that the laws of a member state deems “hateful” or “disinformation.” The totalitarian impulse exemplified by the DSA is made all the more astonishing by the limitless hubris of its reach. The DSA threatens so-called “very large online platforms” like X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Meta products like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram with crippling financial penalties for non-compliance. It also leaves these platforms with no serious means to appeal or opt out of the requirements.
Moreover, the technological incapability to delineate American users of these platforms from European users means foreign censorship will reach the digital shores of scores of countries — including the land of the free.
Just over a year ago, Canadian citizen “Billboard Chris” Elston posted his objections to a controversial World Health Organization appointee on X, linking to a U.K. Daily Mail article. The Australian government then demanded that X censor the post under its DSA-style Online Safety Act, which provided the rationale for Billboard Chris’s speech to be deemed “cyber abuse.”
Billboard Chris, with the legal support of Alliance Defending Freedom International, took on the Australian government and won. That victory against technocratic petty tyrants who enlisted Australia to censor a Canadian speaking on an American platform and citing a British newspaper article was completely ignored by the European Union. To DSA proponents, this multinational crackdown on Billboard Chris is not a cautionary tale to heed but an inspirational instruction manual — and a baseline for further action.
Current EU Commissioner Henna Virkkunen, who serves as the European Commission’s tech chief, has defended the DSA’s ability to silence dissent as “based on our European values.” History has shown that there are lots of “European values” to choose from, however — ranging from the free and open exchange of, say, Enlightenment-era salons to the outright repression of 1930s Germany. The EU’s latest actions reflect values far closer to the latter. They are certainly anathema to American ideals and must be met with the full might of American diplomatic and economic power. Freedom is dying in Europe once again. This generation of American leadership must answer freedom’s call once more.
As the censorial instinct of those in power around the world continues to grow, the darkness of totalitarianism seems to be on the rise again. But when the world grows dark, it is all the clearer where the light still shines. In this digital age, may the light of liberty glow from America as it has in the past so that freedom in word and deed may light the way into the future.