Free speech is a problem – not so much for the general population, but for the establishment class and their grip on social influence. Much like the invention of the printing press that created an information revolution in the Middle Ages, the internet has created a global platform which almost anyone on the planet can access and speak, hypothetically, to millions or even billions of people. This level of information sharing is unprecedented in human history, so it is no surprise that governments and globalists want the ability to filter what is said and what is heard to their benefit.
To this end, the EU Commission, using the covid event as a convenient cover, heralded the passage of the “Digital Services Act” (DSA) in early 2022. The DSA was presented as a tool for the EU to “rein in” the power of social media corporations, but in reality its primary purpose is to give the EU legal precedence to force Big Tech companies to apply EU censorship standards to their platforms even if they are not European based businesses. In other words, the goal is to force the entire Western world to accept the European governance of online speech while ignoring national boundaries and constitutional protections.
Similar to China’s “Great Fire Wall”, the EU plans to use the DSA as a means to shut down domestic access to offending websites and content. But where the EU situation is unique is in their focus on controlling speech outside of Europe as well. That is to say, information and speech among non-Europeans could still be identified as a threat to their leftist sensibilities and cited as a reason for sanctioning a website altogether.
The 2022 Disinformation Code contains a series of 44 “Commitments,” some of which are further subdivided into “Measures.” When a company becomes a signatory, it submits a subscription document identifying which Commitments (and, more specifically, which Measures) it is signing up for. Twitter’s June 2022 subscription document indicates that Twitter has committed, among other things, to: “defund the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation,” “prevent the misuse of advertising systems to disseminate misinformation or disinformation,” and “put in place or further bolster policies to address both misinformation and disinformation.”
Read More: EU’s Draconian Social Media Censorship Laws Are Now Officially Enforceable
