Killing freedom to save it

On Tuesday, there was a European Parliament plenary debate on the need to use the Digital Services Act (DSA), an EU regulation, to “protect democracy” from alleged “foreign interference” and crack down on so-called “misinformation”, “disinformation” and “hate speech” online. 

The DSA garnered controversy following a clash between X-owner Elon Musk and the European Commission this summer, after the Commission said X does not comply with the regulation and Mr Musk accused them of offering X an “illegal secret deal” to “quietly” censor speech. 

This week’s debate was called in large part due to concerns in Brussels over Mr Musk’s maximalist free speech policy on X. Both he and Mark Zuckerberg were mentioned during the debate. 

Comments from MEP Iratxe García, leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, sum up these concerns well: “In recent months, we have seen how Elon Musk and his social network X have become the main promoter for the far right by supporting Donald Trump and Alice Weidel’s AfD party through fake news and hate messages.

“We have also witnessed Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to remove fact-checking programs on Meta as an act of complicity with lies and manipulation… We must ensure the effective application of our rules and we must sanction those who break the rules.”

Such overtly political statements show the problem with vague terms such as “misinformation”, “disinformation” and “hate speech”, which the DSA aims to tackle. 

They are loose and subjective, and MEPs voiced well-founded worries this week that, in practice, enforcement of the DSA would amount to the censorship of views disfavoured by those in power. 

It was also notable during the debate that fears from across the political spectrum about threats posed to free speech by the DSA seem to be at an all-time high. 

MEPs from Italy, who initially were in favour of the legislation, are now more nuanced, and vocal in their criticism. And Tomislav Sokol, a member of the centrist European People’s Party, voiced his concern: “The fight against fake news must not turn into restricting freedom of speech and cracking down on ideological dissenters.”

Despite this mounting opposition, the Commissioner responsible for implementing the DSA, Henna Virkkunen, doubled down on the Commission’s intention to enforce it. 

She even announced new measures in the form of the revived European Democracy Shield and the Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online, which she said would be used to further crack down on “hate speech” and “disinformation”.

The Commission says these measures are necessary to “protect democracy” from “foreign interference”.

But there are serious concerns about how enforcement of the DSA could itself threaten democracy and actually amount to foreign interference. 

Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, part of the ECR Group, said: “Recently, in an interview, [former Commissioner] Thierry Breton claimed that the annulment of the elections in Romania was the result of the application of the Digital Services Regulation, saying: ‘We did it in Romania, we must do it in Germany, if necessary.’ 

“That is to say, to annul the elections if they do not go according to plan…. Why would it be necessary, then, to strengthen the DSA? So that the anti-democratic precedent created in Romania can be repeated?”

He then called on the DSA to be annulled if its “hidden purpose” is to “neutralise the principle of representative democracy”.

And this summer, Mr Breton himself engaged in activity that some in the US saw as foreign interference, when he wrote an extraordinary letter to Mr Musk, warning him ahead of his interview with Mr Trump to not breach the DSA. 

American Congressman Jim Jordan, chairman of the influential House Judiciary Committee, wrote a strongly worded letter to Mr Breton in response, where he said: “In light of your recent threats of reprisal toward X Corp., an American company, for facilitating political discourse in the United States, we write to demand that you stop any attempt to intimidate individuals or entities engaged in political speech in the United States and that you take no action to otherwise interfere in the American democratic process.”

In the DSA, the Commission has a powerful tool to compel social media companies to tackle so-called “misinformation”, “disinformation” and “hate speech”, as corporations can face massive fines of up to 6 per cent of global annual turnover for non-compliance.

But this desire to control online discourse is not unique to the EU. The UK has become notorious around the world for the dire state of free speech in the country.

… democracy is impossible unless free speech is protected in the new digital public square of social media 

The Online Safety Act poses threats similar to the DSA to online free speech in Britain. It places content moderation obligations on social media platforms, which can face fines of up to 10 per cent of global annual turnover for non-compliance with the act.  

Political elites argue tackling “misinformation”, “disinformation” and “hate speech” online — terms they define and which invariably amount to views they oppose — is necessary to “protect democracy”. 

But the opposite is true — democracy is impossible unless free speech is protected in the new digital public square of social media.