A new EU law that allows EU officials to censor websites in the US that that with content that includes communications between Americans. The criteria for censorship are very broad and include “hate speech”, “disinformation”, “anti-vaccine falsehoods”. Penalties for big tech companies who violate the provisions are severe including multi-billion-dollar fines and/or loss of access the EU.
For background, here is a link to the text of the new EU law.
Federal law prohibits conspiracies that “threaten or intimidate any person in any state” to prevent “free exercise and enjoyment of any right or privilege secured . . . by the Consititution or laws of the United States”. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are among those rights.
Should EU officials who attempt to enforce the new EU law against the constitutional rights of Americans face extradition and prosecution to the US?
They aren’t censoring information in America, they are censoring information from America. Google, or Twitter, or whatever will just have to throttle what information makes it to European shores
I assume that the EU would not have moved forward with this new law without at least tacit approval of the White House.
I suspect that the law is really a backdoor way for the Biden Administration to impose media censorship ahead of the 2024 election. Only information that supports the official narratives from Washington and Brussels will be allowed on big tech platforms.
For example, Twitter/X could block viewing of posts that violate EU law based on the IP address origin of the viewer. Of course, a VPN could get around that, and the potential fines are enormous if the EU decides there is a violation. New interpretations of the vague statute could be timed to coincide with the weeks before the US election or other event.
The reality is that the US government is colluding with the EU to censor US media in ways that would violate the Constitution. Of course this is done in the name of “defending democracy and freedom”.
…and each of those are a matter of someone’s opinion. So whose opinion is to be the standard of what is considered to be factual? Governments around the world are absolutely out of control. Applying this insane standard, it would still be being pushed that COVID came from eating bat soup in a wet market.
