Everything coming out of the mouths of Europe’s disinformation police is disinformation. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:
After returning recently from speaking at the World Forum in Berlin, I testified in the Senate Judiciary Committee and warned about the building threat to free speech from the use of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan has taken up the issue and received a letter from the EU’s Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen. The letter is both evasive and deceptive.
In my book, The Indispensable Right, I detail how the DSA has been used to allow for sweeping speech investigations and prosecutions. In direct contradiction to past statements by the EU, Virkkunen denied any effort to regulate speech or enforce the DSA outside of Europe.
What is particularly maddening is the false claim that the EU remains “deeply committed to protecting and promoting free speech.” Many in the free speech community view the EU and the DSA as the greatest threats to free speech in the West.
In his letter, Jordan correctly raised the concern that the DSA could “limit or restrict Americans” constitutionally protected speech in the United States by compelling platforms to crack down on what the EU considers “misleading or deceptive” speech.
In her response, Virkkunen bizarrely describes the DSA as “content-agnostic” while insisting that the DSA “applies exclusively within the European Union.”
That is not what EU officials previously said or what the law itself allows. Articles 34 and 35 of the DSA require all sites to identify, assess, and mitigate “systemic risks” posed by content, including any threats to “civic discourse”, “electoral processes,” and “public health.” It is up to the EU to define and judge such categories in terms of compliance.
