Rep. Jim Jordan and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson vs. the EU

The classical liberal philosophy of limited government, free markets, and respect for the individual’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property originated in Europe. Unfortunately, the modern liberal idea that government should abridge natural rights for the people’s own good also originated in Europe and continues to displace classical liberalism. As in America, this has led to the sacrifice of much economic liberty in service of a massive welfare-regulatory state. Now, those who once were staunch defenders of personal liberty—particularly free speech—have become champions of censorship, especially of online speech.

For example, the European Union (EU)’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is an assault on online speech. The DSA requires “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) to block posts containing “information manipulation.” This is defined as material “inconsistent with European law or the law of any member state.” By criminalizing speech violating the laws of any member state, the EU’s DSA makes the most anti-free speech law the de facto standard for VLOPs. The DSA also bans hate speech, defined as any speech intended to promote hate. Since most speech is intended to persuade the audience to agree with the speaker—any speech whose message an EU bureaucrat decides is “hateful” can be banned. Note that the DSA does not merely ban hate speech intended to incite violence—it punishes speech even if the speaker does not advocate violence.

The DSA defines a VLOP as a site with over 45 million users per month. This includes all of the major American social media companies, including Google, Facebook, X, and Booking.co. The DSA could affect American social media users because some VLOPs may decide to apply the DSA’s standards to all their users in order to avoid inadvertently violating the law.

Fortunately, some US officials are pushing back on the EU’s censorship, For example, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson has been an outspoken critic of the DSA. Last August he sent a letter to leading American social media companies reminding them that censoring their American users on behalf of a foreign government could be a violation of federal consumer protection laws. Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has used his position to shine a spotlight on the European censors.

Under Chair Jordan’s leadership, the Judiciary Committee has held hearings and released two reports on EU censorship. The first report, released last year, focused on the Digital Services Act. The second report, released in February, uses documents obtained via subpoena to expose the EU’s decade-long efforts to censor American social media companies. The report details how, since 2020, the European Commission held more than 100 meetings with representatives of American social media companies. The point of these meetings was to pressure these companies to “strengthen their content moderation policies” in order to censor their users—including American citizens.

The fact that the EU’s censorship push started in 2020, the same year as the Covid pandemic, is no coincidence. One of the EU’s priorities was silencing those who questioned the effectiveness of masks, vaccines, and lockdowns. The EU bureaucrats also demanded that American social media companies ban “hate speech.” Among those the EU wanted censored for promoting “hate” were those opposing mass immigration and taking a traditional stance on transgender issues. It is not surprising that the Committee found that the EU was much more likely to target conservative sites than liberal ones.

The report also details instances where the EU commission used its power to shape the outcome of European elections. Social media companies were also being pressured by the Biden Administration to censor dissenting views about Covid and other stories the administration wanted to suppress. Lina Khan, who chaired the Federal Trade Commission during the Biden years, spent taxpayer money to send FTC staffers to Brussels to implement the Digital Markets Act (DMA)—another EU regulatory scheme that would harm big tech companies by, among other things, forcing them to share their intellectual properties with their smaller competitors.

While Andrew Ferguson is far from a consistent champion of free speech, he, like the rest of the Trump Administration including President Trump himself, is a staunch opponent of the EU’s war on online free speech. Hopefully, the Trump Administration will follow the lead of Chair Jordan and become consistent defenders of the First Amendment.