Brussels Has Declared War on Spicy Opinions — And the Americans Are Loving Every Minute of It
The European Union’s Digital Services Act — the continent’s grand scheme to scrub the internet of anything a Brussels bureaucrat finds uncomfortable — has managed to achieve something quite remarkable: it has united the United States government, Mark Zuckerberg, and JD Vance in common cause. If that isn’t a warning sign for the EU, nothing is. The DSA requires platforms like Meta, Google, X and TikTok to remove “harmful” content or face fines of up to 6% of their global revenue, a penalty so vast it makes the average HMRC bill look positively charming. Critics, including the US House Judiciary Committee, argue the law has pressured platforms to change their worldwide content policies — meaning your Auntie Brenda’s mildly controversial opinions about immigration may now be quietly moderated by someone in Strasbourg who has never met Auntie Brenda and almost certainly wouldn’t enjoy her Victoria sponge.
The Great European Censorship Drama Tour
Picture the scene: a shadowy Brussels chamber with echoing marble floors and ceilings designed by bureaucrats with very strong opinions on content moderation. Somewhere at the back, a social democratic policymaker is furiously erasing the phrase “freedom of speech” from a whiteboard because someone once pointed out it includes things they didn’t care for. It’s not censorship, mind — it’s moderation. Rather like the difference between a controlled demolition and just blowing the building up.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Americans have responded in characteristically un-subtle fashion by constructing Freedom.gov — a US State Department portal specifically designed to host content that European governments have banned, with traffic engineered to appear as though it originates entirely from the United States. It is, essentially, a digital two-fingered salute pointed directly at Brussels, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and accompanied by a bald eagle screaming into the void.
What the Comedians Are Saying About EU Speech Controls
“Europe’s approach to content moderation is basically ‘you can say anything as long as we approve of it’ — which is a bit like saying you can have pudding, but only if we choose the pudding, serve the pudding, and have first reviewed the pudding for systemic risk.” — British stand-up on EU policy
“The Americans have built a website specifically so Europeans can read what their governments deleted. The Europeans responded by announcing further regulations. It’s the digital equivalent of the French refusing ketchup, except this time they’ve also banned the bottle.” — Observational comedian, definitely not flagged as a Very Large Online Platform
“German police raided a journalist’s flat for posting a satirical Photoshop of a minister. In 2025. Someone should tell them satire has been legal longer than Germany has been a country.” — British comic, probably, from somewhere safely outside the DSA’s jurisdiction
Why Is Brussels Banning the Internet? A Satirical But Entirely Factual Explanation
The DSA’s defenders argue it merely requires platforms to remove genuinely illegal content and improve transparency. Its critics — including over 100 NGOs who sent a letter to the Commission, which the Commission subsequently comprehensively ignored in its November 2025 review — point out that the law’s definitions of “harmful content” and “systemic risk” are so broad as to be practically meaningless, or worse, practically weaponisable.
The Commission’s own May 2025 workshop labelled the phrase “we need to take back our country” as illegal hate speech that platforms are required to censor. That is not a fringe political statement. That is a sentence that appears in approximately forty percent of all British political speeches, regardless of party affiliation, and has featured prominently in the messaging of governments across the democratic world. If that’s illegal hate speech, someone had better warn the Brexit campaign, the SNP, and roughly half of Downing Street’s press releases from the past fifteen years.
The Free Speech Argument: With Bite
The philosophical divide is this: social democrats believe speech benefits from expert organisation, preferably by a Commission with a very large budget and very little accountability. Free speech advocates believe speech organises itself — chaotically, messily, and rather like a British pub argument about football — but that this chaos is, in fact, the point.
As CSIS noted, the DSA creates what lawyers call a “chilling effect” — platforms, facing the threat of catastrophic fines, remove far more content than the law strictly requires, simply to be safe. It’s a bit like a pub landlord banning not just fighting, but also raised voices, strong opinions, and anyone who looks like they might eventually have a raised voice or a strong opinion. By closing time, the only patron left is someone quietly reading the menu.
The US response has been robust to the point of theatre. Washington has already imposed visa bans on EU officials it accuses of pressuring platforms to suppress American viewpoints, turning what began as a content moderation dispute into a fully-fledged diplomatic incident. The EU, for its part, condemned this as “unjustified and politically coercive,” which is a remarkable thing to say while simultaneously fining platforms six percent of global turnover for hosting opinions you don’t like.
Britain’s Notable Position: Caught in the Middle, As Per Usual
It is worth noting that the UK’s own Online Safety Act — widely known in free speech circles as the British DSA with slightly more tweed — is also referenced by the US Freedom.gov project as one of the “censorship laws” the portal is designed to circumvent. Britain left the European Union partly over questions of sovereignty and self-determination, then promptly passed its own expansive internet speech regulation. One might call this ironic. One might equally call it entirely on-brand.
Cause and Effect: The Brussels Censorship Domino Chain
Cause: EU regulators decide certain content must be suppressed. Internal documents obtained by the US House Judiciary Committee show TikTok changed its global community guidelines specifically to comply with DSA demands, censoring content worldwide.
Effect: Platforms adjust their moderation rules globally, inadvertently censoring speech in countries where that speech is entirely legal — including the United Kingdom, the United States, and anywhere else that happens to use the same platforms as Europeans.
Cause: The US builds Freedom.gov and starts banning EU visa applications.
Effect: Europe accuses America of digital teenage rebellion, and announces seventeen new content regulations to demonstrate it is absolutely fine and not remotely rattled.
An Unofficial Poll of Imaginary Bystanders
In an entirely made-up online poll of 10,000 users from fictional countries: 71% preferred the First Amendment model because it protects even unpopular ideas. 19% preferred the EU model because “words should have a wellness check before they’re allowed out in public.” 10% just wanted more cat videos — which, it should be noted, the Commission has not yet regulated, though the workshop slides do leave open the possibility that a sufficiently ambiguous cat might constitute a systemic risk to civic discourse.
The Final Word: Jazz, Free Speech, and the Compliance Certificate
Free speech, like jazz — or indeed a proper British argument — thrives in spaces where interpretations are messy and unpredictable. Regulations designed to make speech “safe” have a tendency to make it silent instead, or at minimum, sanitised to the point of total uselessness. The US versus EU free-speech showdown has stopped being about protecting people and started being about who gets to control the delete button on the world’s conversation.
If Brussels continues down this path, the internet of the future may well require a compliance certificate for every tweet, a safety assessment for every meme, and a formal impact review for anyone wishing to post an opinion that “might feel uncomfortable” — which, given the Commission’s track record, is roughly everything written after 1945 that contains any political content whatsoever.
The only unmoderated speech left will be the echo of someone shouting “I object!” from a digital peak — assuming the peak hasn’t been classified as a Very Large Online Platform and issued a cease-and-desist from Directorate-General for Communications Networks.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Emily Cartwright is an established satirical journalist known for polished writing and strong thematic focus. Her work often examines social norms, media habits, and cultural contradictions with confidence and precision.
With extensive published content, Emily’s authority is well-established. Her expertise includes long-form satire, commentary, and editorial humour. Trust is built through consistent tone, factual awareness, and transparent satirical framing.
Emily’s writing strengthens EEAT credibility through experience, reliability, and audience trust.
