Report: E.U. Censorship Laws Mostly Suppress Legal Speech

European speech regulations reach way too far to muzzle perfectly acceptable content.

Among those who think the United States is an unseemly cesspool of unrestrained opinions voiced by those people, Europe is often touted as an alternative for speech regulation. European Union law, following in the footsteps of national legislation, imposes enforceable duties on private platforms to purge "hate speech" and "disinformation"—or else. But free speech advocates warn that these laws are clumsy and dangerous tools that threaten to muzzle expression far beyond the bounds of their nominal targets. They're right, and they now have receipts.

Europe's Intrusive Speech Regulations

In a new report, Preventing "Torrents of Hate" or Stifling Free Expression Online?, The Future of Free Speech, a think tank based at Vanderbilt University, points out that online regulation changed in 2017 with Germany's adoption of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), "which aimed to combat illegal online content such as defamation, incitement, and religious insults." That law inspired lawmakers around the world, as well as similar E.U.-wide legislation in 2022 in the Digital Services Act (DSA). "The underlying assumptions surrounding the passage of the DSA included fears that the Internet and social media platforms would become overrun with hate and illegal content," notes the report.

But "hate" and other forms of unacceptable content are often in the eyes of the beholder. And the power to punish platforms for allowing forbidden speech encourages suppressing content.

The DSA "gives way too much power to government agencies to flag and remove potentially illegal content and to uncover data about anonymous speakers," cautioned the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2022.

"The Digital Services Act will essentially oblige Big Tech to act as a privatized censor on behalf of governments — censors who will enjoy wide discretion under vague and subjective standards," Jacob Mchangama, now executive director of The Future of Free Speech, warned that same year.

Now, here we are with these laws in effect. What does the new report find about their implementation?

Banned but Legal

"Legal online speech made up most of the removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France, Germany, and Sweden," according to the report. "Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible. The highest proportion of legally permissible deleted comments was observed in Germany, where 99.7% and 98.9% of deleted comments were found to be legal on Facebook and YouTube, respectively."

Keep in mind that Europe isn't a First Amendment zone; speech laws are more restrictive there, and people can be punished for saying things that would barely raise eyebrows among Americans. Germany, for example, arrested a comedian for insulting Turkey's president before dropping the case in the face of ridicule. Denmark banned the burning of holy texts after a series of Koran-torchings. Still, most of the content being removed from social media is permissible even under local laws.

"A substantial majority of the deleted comments investigated are legal, suggesting that – contrary to prevalent narratives – over removal of legal content may be a bigger problem than under removal of illegal content," add The Future of Free Speech authors.

Big Incentives To Muzzle Speech

In the case of Germany, where NetzDG's restrictions are in effect, the report speculates that social media companies "may over-remove content with the objective of avoiding the legislation's hefty fine."

But online companies have every reason to be leery not just of German officials but of the broader European Union bureaucracy, which is forever investigating and fining big tech firms. Last year, Facebook was slapped with a $1.3 billion penalty over alleged data-privacy violations.

"The fine trailed only two levied against Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) in 2018 and 2017, respectively," commented Investopedia's Mack Wilowski. "It is the largest fine so far this year."

In July 2023, European Union Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton warned internet firms that "if they don't act immediately" to remove content government officials consider unacceptable "at that point we'll be able not only to impose a fine but also to ban the operation [of the platforms] on our territory."

Given the prospect of massive fines and even outright proscription from Europe, it's no wonder that internet companies might be a little overenthusiastic about yanking content from their servers. It's not exactly heroic, but it's certainly safer to field public complaints and criticism from civil liberties groups than to draw the attention of sniffy and punitive Eureaucrats.

News You Can't Use

Unsurprisingly, high-profile current events featured prominently in the suppressed content. "In general, the Russian invasion of Ukraine emerged as a prominent subject in the deleted comments across all three countries," notes the report. Additionally, many of the memory-holed French comments addressed the police killing of a 17-year-old and subsequent rioting.

Which is to say, it appears that discussing the news of the world is a good way to get censored in the European Union.

But how common is suppression overall, even allowing that much censored content violates no rules? Of all comments, according to the report, 3.4 percent were deleted. That rate varies across the three countries studied from 0.83 percent in Sweden to 3.18 percent in France and 4.53 percent in Germany. Interestingly, Swedes rank as highly tolerant of controversial speech in a separate index of free speech approval; the country comes in at number four, just after the United States. France and Germany, by contrast, rank at a mediocre 14 and 15, respectively. Enforcement of speech regulation may be ham-handed across the board, but it's seemingly more common in cultures less tolerant of free expression.

"A system has been created which undermines freedom of expression on the basis of shallow empirical evidence with governments giving (private) social media giants the key and, increasingly, the obligation to steer the speech of billions, essentially dictating digital discourse," concludes the report from The Future of Free Speech.

That's a problem for those of us who favor freedom. Whether government officials agree that intrusive censorship is a problem is another matter.

Comments

[SQRLSY One]

All Hail Section 230! For ONCE, USA Government Almighty wisely restricted its own powers!

[mad.casual]

“The underlying assumptions surrounding the passage of the DSA included fears that the Internet and social media platforms would become overrun with hate and illegal content,”

Good thing they passed a law to prevent the internet from being overrun and shut down by hyperlitigious, venemous, evil, disinformative, dishonest trolls and sea lions. They had to regulate speech on the internet in order to save speech on the internet.

[Chumby]

Western Europe is mostly part of the unipolar NAFO globohomo hegemony, so suppressing any speech that interferes with that falls under “totes ok.”

[Heedless]

You nitwits somehow manage to be worse than the DEIJ people in your embrace of jargon and gobbledygook.

English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

[Rick James]

Check out the new guy.

[Heedless]

Been here since STEVE SMITH was still haunting the comment section. I just don’t post very often.

But please, keep trying to condescend. It’s cute.

[mad.casual]

Rick James: “Check out the oblivious FNG.”
Heedless: “I AM NOT NEW HERE! I’VE BEEN LURKING OFF AND ON SINCE BEFORE THE SUGARFREE DAYS! QUIT TRYING AND FAILING TO INSULT ME BY SAYING I’M NEW HERE!”

LOL.

[Heedless]

Thank you for demonstrating the other irritating mannerism of your particular brand of nitwit: The internet persona of a pouting 13-year-old.

I want you to imagine your father reading what you just wrote, and then I want you to imagine him hanging his head in shame.

Because he would be.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

LOL, Jesus Christ, you sound like the biggest fem-barking harpy on the planet. It’s a post on the internet. It doesn’t mean shit.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

You nitwits somehow manage to be worse than the DEIJ people in your embrace of jargon and gobbledygook.

Ah, the “I know you are but what am I” retort spouted by leftists when their dialectic is called out.

English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

You haven’t offered up an alternative so far.

[Heedless]

“NAFO Globohomo hegemony”

If you can’t recognize that this is gobbledegook, then you need to apologize to whoever tried to teach you English (or possibly they need to apologize to you).

There is no “What am I?” I despise Chumby and the DEIJ morons for the same reason – they have invented or adopted impenetrable (or what passes for impenetrable among nitwits) jargon to signal their political allegiance and to attempt to disguise the weakness of their reasoning. They are a blight on the English language.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

If you can’t recognize that this is gobbledegook, then you need to apologize to whoever tried to teach you English (or possibly they need to apologize to you).

I see far worse crap at the academic conferences I attend every year. If you think you’re being particularly insightful here, you should really get over yourself.

There is no “What am I?” I despise Chumby and the DEIJ morons for the same reason – they have invented or adopted impenetrable (or what passes for impenetrable among nitwits) jargon to signal their political allegiance and to attempt to disguise the weakness of their reasoning.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen Chumby make a post like that. The neo-marxist academics of the New Left have been doing that shit for 50 years. There’s absolutely no valid comparison here.

They are a blight on the English language.

Yeah, I’ve heard the “boaf sydez” shit for several decades now, too. Try something else.

[Heedless]

Are you kidding me?

Most of Chumby’s posts are like this. The man is a linguistic garbage dump.

And if you attend academic conferences where they talk like that, that is not a defense of “globohomo.” It is the universe screaming in your ear that you need to find a more worthwhile academic discipline or better yet get a real job.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Most of Chumby’s posts are like this. The man is a linguistic garbage dump.

No, most of Chumby’s posts are puns. The fuck you think you’re kidding here?

And if you attend academic conferences where they talk like that, that is not a defense of “globohomo.” It is the universe screaming in your ear that you need to find a more worthwhile academic discipline or better yet get a real job.

If you weren’t acting like some smooth-brained “boaf sydez”-spouting dumbass, you’d realize that I was referring to the DEI nonsense that’s practically theological dogma amongst that social class. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume you’re only playing dumb about academia ‘s political affiliations, and the cultural Marxist lunacy they’ve produced over the last 50 years.

Seriously, you sound like those limp -wrists in the Dispatch crowd that are constantly lisping about “the two ends of the horseshoe,” but it’s mainly to whine about any political resistance to the left that doesn’t involve anything more than snarky comments and impotent appeals to “ideas ”

[Heedless]

I know what you meant.

The fact that you go to conferences where the speakers are braindead leftists is not a point in your favor, nor does it make “globohomo” anything other than an embarrassment.

I’m saying this straight: Chumby is a festering intellectual embarrassment. A moron. A spewer of empty jargon.

You are worse. If we are to believe your humblebrag, you are an academic of some sort, with firsthand experience of how impenetrable newspeak can act as a cover for bad ideas and poor reasoning, and yet you came charging in here to defend exactly that sort of crap nevertheless. You are gobbledegook’s white knight.

You deserve to spend the rest of your career listening to “folx” blather on about transgressing heteronormativity. Those are your people. Not because there is any sort of political equivalence, just because morons are morons, whatever their politics.

I will leave the discussion of your continued descent into teenage internet mannerisms for another time.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Lol, Christ, the projection in your post can be seen from Pluto. No one is “humble-bragging” about anything (gee, I thought you were opposed to “jargon,” lol), and the fact that my very cogent observation of decades of left-wing theology, in comparison to your spazzing out about one post from Chumby that isn’t even his typical posting style, betrays a hilariously insecure mindset on your part. And of course you rush to prove my point with that sad appeal to “ideas,” which I suspect are largely just a bunch of glittering generalities like the rest of the center-right loves to peacock about.

But please, feel free to marinate in your own sense of political self-righteousness and unwarranted self-regard, it’s certainly no sadder than Buttplug’s deflections from being banned for posting kiddie porn.

[Chumby]

Yeah ok there Seedless eunuch.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Europe is committing suicide on every front. Liberal democracy no longer exists there. The US is about five years away from the same fate.

[JohnZ]

Within five or six years all of western Europe will be under an Islamic caliphate.
Then the Euros will wonder how that happened.

[mad.casual]

Then the Euros will wonder how that happened.

[Tilts hand] It will be interesting to see whether the arc of history stays bent in a/the decidedly “The Dark Ages are a myth and The Crusades are among the blackest of marks on the human soul.” direction.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Rubber room quality comment.

[CopaGent]

When government is afraid of your words it is time for a new government.

[VinniUSMC (Banana Republic Day 5/30/24)]

E.U. Censorship Laws Mostly Suppress Legal Speech

What? No way. I am surprised. Totally. /s

[Rick James]

“Legal online speech made up most of the removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France, Germany, and Sweden,” according to the report. “Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible. The highest proportion of legally permissible deleted comments was observed in Germany, where 99.7% and 98.9% of deleted comments were found to be legal on Facebook and YouTube, respectively.”

I’m having trouble understanding this analysis.

Are we talking statutorily legal or legal from a corporate Terms Of Service from Facebook’s and Youtube’s perspective? If the latter is the case, then ‘legal’ is the wrong word to use here, if not, then why are we calling out ‘facebook and youtube respectively’?

Also, if it’s ‘legal by statute’ I presume this would be ‘legal vs illegal’ speech from the European perspective which has no section 230 1st Amendment. So as is correctly noted in this article, hate speech is in the eye of the beholder, but I can’t tell from the article if say, it’s illegal to say “You’re a big poopyhead” but NOT illegal to say, “You’re a big doo-doohead”, is the article asserting that people saying “doo-doohead” were getting banned in addition to people saying “poopyhead”?

[mad.casual]

All I know is that Reason would never make such a populist, contemporaneously-biased, nativist, deplorable, imperialist, colonialist, Americo-centric conflation or mistake because they’ve clearly signaled that they are distinctly not those things by informing me that Europe’s immigration and cabotage laws are invariably superior to our own.

[JohnZ]

Well,well,well, Hitler or Stalin didn’t need to conquer Europe after all. They did it to themselves. Congratulations. You all managed to bring fascism and tyranny into your lives especially when America spent so much of its youth saving your worthless arses from another dictator.
Maybe we should have only spent our resources against the Japanese aggression.
You get the kind of government you deserve. Don’t expect America to come to your aid this time, you’re on your own.

[renad]

There’s no such thing as legal or illegal speech, perfectly acceptable content or deplorable content. It’s all free speech, fuck all the pearl clutchers.