The Decade of European Censorship

This decade-long global censorship campaign threatens free speech worldwide, says Rep. Jim Jordan.

A group of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress wrote a report about how leaders in Europe are telling big tech companies like TikTok, X (Twitter), and YouTube to block certain posts and videos. They looked at secret company emails and found that Europe has been doing this for 10 years. From 2015 to 2025.

They say Europe wants to control what people talk about online, even though it often blocks real facts and normal opinions about things like vaccines, moving to new countries, and elections.

It all started with meetings and lists of rules called “codes of conduct.”

Europe told the companies to remove “hate speech” and “fake news,” but they also blocked funny jokes, cartoons, and talk about politics they didn’t like.

Companies felt they had to join these meetings or they might get fined later. Then Europe made a big law called the Digital Services Act (DSA).

This law says companies must change their rules for the whole world — not just Europe — or they could get huge fines or be blocked in Europe. Because most companies use the same rules everywhere, things blocked in Europe also get blocked for kids and families in the United States.

For example, Europe pushed companies to hide posts questioning COVID vaccines or talking about U.S. elections. They even warned Elon Musk about interviewing the U.S. president and later fined X (Twitter) over $100 million. The report says this hurts Americans’ right to speak freely and that Congress wants to find ways to protect free speech in the U.S.

Through document subpoenas from ten Big Tech companies (e.g., Meta, Google, TikTok, X), the Committee obtained thousands of internal records revealing a decade-long EU campaign culminating in the Digital Services Act (DSA, effective 2023).

The EU framed anything they didnt like as combating “hate speech” and “disinformation,” efforts targeted true information and lawful political speech on COVID-19, vaccines, mass migration, transgender issues, and elections, establishing significant control over global narratives.