How Foreign Censorship Threatens American Free Speech

On the eve of a highly-anticipated live X “Spaces” conversation between Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump, the powerful European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton warned in August that authorities would be “monitoring” the conversation for “content that may incite violence, hate, and racism.”

While reminding Musk that the EU was already investigating X for alleged failures “to combat disinformation,” Breton said he and his colleagues “will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox … to protect EU citizens from serious harm.”

The European Commission distanced itself from Breton, who would eventually resign his post while facing scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers for threatening Musk and Americans’ free speech and interfering in domestic politics. But the EU probe of X, which could result in crippling fines, persists.

Although litigation, congressional oversight efforts, and reportage led by the Twitter Files have helped expose the U.S. government’s efforts to pressure social media companies to censor protected political speech, the recent rumblings from Europe underscore the escalating challenges American-based social media platforms are facing from foreign authorities – not just from repressive regimes such as China and Iran, but also from the EU, the U.K., Brazil, and other democracies.

Free speech advocates warn that foreign demands that tech companies comply with their censorious legal and regulatory standards that violate the First Amendment’s protections will hamper the ability of Americans to communicate freely in the digital public square. Facebook’s Community Standards, for example, “apply to everyone, all around the world.” Academics have termed the tendency of companies to apply the strictest local guidelines globally as the “Brussels Effect.”

Mike Benz, a former State Department cyber official and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, argues that foreign efforts to cast populist narratives on matters such as election integrity, immigration, and public health as mis- and dis-information constitute a surreptitious “transatlantic flank attack” on American speech.

However, evidence suggests that U.S. authorities and U.S.-supported NGOs that have sought greater restrictions on speech have, at minimum, indirectly supported these foreign efforts, creating a backdoor method to suppress protected speech at home.

For instance, the White House pressured platforms to censor content pertaining to COVID-19 and election integrity. Agencies from the Justice Department to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Communications Commission have probed Musk’s enterprises during the Biden years.

Defining Illegal Content

The U.S. government has used the FBI and the State Department, among other agencies, to coordinate counter-disinformation efforts globally with other nations. The goal is said to build “a more resilient global information system, where objective facts are elevated and deceptive messages gain less traction,” in the words of  Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

As a State Department spokesman told RealClearInvestigations, “The United States is committed to advancing a rights-respecting approach to technology that mitigates potential harms while maintaining the free and open use of digital platforms.”

“We are concerned by actions to limit access to information anywhere in the world,” the spokesman added.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act is seen by champions of stringent content moderation standards and critics alike as the strongest global effort to regulate speech.

Adopted in 2022 and praised by former President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the measure imposes a slew of regulatory requirements on the more than a dozen social media platforms and search engines that have at least 45 million users in the EU.

It requires these platforms to take measures to counter “illegal content online,” not only responding to user-flagged posts but those fingered by “specialised ‘trusted flaggers’” for removal, according to a European Commission Q&A.

“Illegal content,” the Commission writes, includes “illegal hate speech” and other prohibited rhetoric, pursuant to EU law or those within any of its 27 member states. Platforms also must take “risk-based action,” including undergoing independent audits to combat “disinformation or election manipulation” – with the expectation those measures should be taken in consultation with “independent experts and civil society organisations.” The Commission says these measures are aimed at mitigating “systemic issues such as … hoaxes and manipulation during pandemics, harms to vulnerable groups and other emerging societal harms” driven by “harmful” but not illegal content.

The DSA also references a Code of Practice on Disinformation, under which Big Tech companies such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft have agreed to demonetize purported disinformation pursuant to European Commission guidance.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/10/08/global_crackdown_how_foreign_censorship_threatens_american_free_speech_1063521.html

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