The EU laws consist of content moderation regulation, antitrust enforcement and artificial intelligence (AI) model rules, all carrying massive financial penalties for violation. The laws apply to platforms that have large user bases in the EU, which are mainly American companies, with the EU recently launching a formal investigation into billionaire Elon Musk’s X and bipartisan lawmakers pushing President Joe Biden to ensure the regulation does not harm U.S. firms unfairly, according to Reuters.

“The EU views industry regulations as aspirational, which means there’s an element of selective enforcement and only require industry to put good-faith efforts when complying,” Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, told the DCNF. “It’s why they are far more strident. … Therein lies the problem, the EU can turn the dial up or down on how fervently they will regulate. Given how broad all of these laws are—particularly the AI Act, this means that every company that either creates software, distributes software, or has it in their devices are implicated. The EU’s laws now encompass everything from social media to children’s toys.”

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) went into effect in August, and it punishes “very large online platforms” for hosting content like “illegal hate speech” and “disinformation” with fines of up to 6% of their annual global revenue.

The EU defines “hate speech” as “public incitement to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined on the basis of race, colour, descent, religion or belief, or national or ethnic origin,” according to its law. Hate speech is not illegal in the United States under the First Amendment.

The DSA could lead to censorship of Americans because companies are incentivized to enforce the same rules worldwide.

“The European Union isn’t hiding the ball here,” James Czerniawski, senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, told the DCNF. “Given the global nature of the internet, coupled with their blatant targeting of American tech firms under the DSA and DMA [Digital Markets Act], these proposals are going to impact the online experience of millions of Americans.”

Czerniawski noted the investigation the EU launched into X  for not censoring content adequately as an example of how this law impacts Americans. The EU is examining X’s lack of suppression of “illegal content” and “disinformation,” as well as its advertising practices, according to a European Commission (EC) announcement.

Germany enacted the Network Enforcement Act in 2017 to censor hate speech and false news, imposing large financial penalties, according to the Library of Congress. This law was the precursor to these newer laws leading to American censorship, Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, told the DCNF.

“This is not a new or hypothetical event,” Benz asserted. “Mass censorship in the US began with European censorship laws in 2017, notably Germany’s NetzDG censorship law that functionally required AI censorship technology to comply with. This forced YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to begin adopting AI censorship techniques across the board for continuity with global markets, boomeranging back on Americans.”

Stanford Cyber Policy Center Platform Regulation Director Daphne Keller praised the DSA because of the effects it will have globally, not just in the EU, in a November 2022 article. Stanford Internet Observatory is part of the Cyber Policy Center and participated in the Election Integrity Partnership that worked to censor Americans during the 2020 elections.

“These EU censorship laws are … also designed to force platforms to hire more censors, who in turn will focus on US affairs,” Benz added. “This is why the Stanford Internet Observatory is salivating over the EU censorship laws: they know it will rig the game here in the US.”

However, the EC has denied that the DSA is about censorship in previous comments to the DCNF, stating that it maintains freedom of expression.

The DMA is antitrust regulation specifically targeting platforms with dominant market positions in the EU that are “gatekeepers,” meaning they “provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services,” according to the EC. These “gatekeepers” include American companies like Alphabet, Meta, Apple and Amazon; the DMA could limit their influence in the EU by prohibiting them from operating in a way that gives their products and services special advantages, such as app stores, search engines and web browsers.

For instance, it makes it illegal to force companies to use a platform’s payment system to be on their app store, accordingto the EC.

Democratic lawmakers recently advocated for Biden to allow the EU to enforce the DMA on American companies because it aligns with his administration’s agenda, according to a December letter.

“The criteria for the designation of gatekeepers are clearly set out in the DMA: they target companies that have a significant impact on the EU internal market, that operate as an important gateway for business users to reach end users and that have – or will have in the near future – an entrenched and durable position for their core platform services,” EC spokesman Johannes Bahrke told the DCNF. “All companies active in the EU are subject to EU rules, including the DSA and the DMA, irrespective of their place of establishment.”

The DMA includes penalties of up to 10% of a company’s annual global revenue, according to the EC.

“The EC can use the law to be retaliatory. Keep in mind that Article 4 allows the EC to reconsider each company’s ‘gatekeeper’ designation,” Thayer told the DCNF. “The EU can negotiate with Google to keep it off the EC’s gatekeeper list provided that it combats ‘misinformation.’ Or arbitrarily designate X as a ‘gatekeeper’ (not currently listed) simply because they don’t like Elon Musk’s decision to allow more offensive content on its platform. Frankly, there’s a strong case that the DMA can lead to more government jawboning in the EU.”

The AI Act is the newest tech regulatory development, as EU lawmakers reached a landmark agreement on it in December, according to The New York Times. It is sweeping regulation on AI, which is yet another U.S.-dominated industry.

The law contains ethical and safety standards that AI models must adhere to, including being “non-discriminatory.” It also states that “AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation)” is considered a “banned application,” according to the agreement; the law contains penalties of up to 7% of annual global revenue.

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That includes content that is posted by users outside of the European Union, because someone that lives in the European Union might see it.  I wrote about this a few days ago, but I don’t think that people are really understanding the implications of this new law.  In the past, there have been times when governments have requested that big tech companies take down certain material, but now this new law will give government officials the power to force big tech companies to take down any content that they do not like.  Any big tech companies that choose not to comply will be hit with extremely harsh penalties.

Of course mainstream news outlets such as the Washington Post are attempting to put a positive spin on this new law.  We are being told that it will “safeguard” us from “illegal content” and “disinformation”…

New rules meant to safeguard people from illegal content, targeted ads, unwanted algorithmic feeds and disinformation online are finally in force, thanks to new regulation in the European Union that took effect this month.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful? When this new law was first approved, NPR admitted that it will enable European governments to “take down a wide range of content”…

Under the EU law, governments would be able to ask companies take down a wide range of content that would be deemed illegal, including material that promotes terrorism, child sexual abuse, hate speech and commercial scams.

In addition to “illegal content” and “hate speech”, the Digital Services Act also applies to “hoaxes” and any material that is considered to be “disinformation”.  The following comes from the official website of the European Commission…

At the same time, the DSA regulates very large online platforms’ and very large online search engines responsibilities when it comes to systemic issues such as disinformation, hoaxes and manipulation during pandemics, harms to vulnerable groups and other emerging societal harms.

These new content rules are so vague that they could apply to just about anything.

And that is precisely what they want.

From this point forward, if you post something that they do not like, they will have the power to have it taken down.

Even if you don’t live in the European Union, they can have your content taken down, because someone in the European Union might see it.

So who will be doing the censoring?

Well, it is being reported that “hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it”…

Under this Orwellian regime, a team of hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it. The firms themselves, faced with reputational risk and financial penalties, will have little choice other than to comply. This can be done in all manner of ways: simply by human moderators removing content, by shadow-banning problematic creators to reduce their reach, by demonetising certain content, and by tweaking algorithms to favour or disfavour certain topics. And though, legally speaking, the DSA only applies in the EU, once installed inside Big Tech firms, this vast content-regulation apparatus will surely affect users in the rest of the world, too.

In addition, the official website of the European Commission is telling us that big tech companies must “react with priority” to any content that has been reported by “trusted flaggers”…

A priority channel will be created for trusted flaggers – entities which have demonstrated particular expertise and competence – to report illegal content to which platforms will have to react with priority.

This means that far left organizations that have been set up to police content online will now be given extraordinary power to restrict speech on the Internet.

Needless to say, the Internet is never going to be the same after this.

Initially, this new law will apply to 19 very large online platforms…

The online platforms affected are Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X (listed as Twitter), Wikipedia, YouTube, the European clothing retailer Zalando, Bing and Google Search.

If any of those large online platforms choose not to comply with the new law, the penalties could be extremely severe…

A firm that does not comply with the law could face a complete ban in Europe or fines running up to 6% of its global revenue.

Last month, X/Twitter said it was on track to generate $3bn (£2.4bn) in revenue. A fine of 6% would be the equivalent of £144m.

Once we get to February 24th, 2024, the Digital Services Act will also apply to a vast multitude of smaller platforms.

At that point, it will be very difficult to escape the reach of this new law.

And just to make sure that they can keep a very close eye on things, the EU just established a brand new office in San Francisco on June 22nd…

European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton cut the ribbon to commemorate the official launch of the European Union’s San Francisco office on Thursday, June 22, alongside Lieutenant Governor of California Eleni Kounalakis, California State Senator Scott Wiener, and Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs Adrian Vazquez.

“I am very glad to be here today in Silicon Valley, a global centre for digital technology and innovation, to officially inaugurate the new European Union office in San Francisco,” Commissioner Breton said in his keynote address to an audience of business and technology sector leaders. “As like-minded partners who strive for reciprocity and common principles, all while respecting our respective democratic processes, our transatlantic ties are more relevant than ever in the area of technology.”

For many years, the Internet was one of the last bastions for free speech.

But now everything has changed.

From this point forward, far left European bureaucrats will get to determine what is acceptable and what is not acceptable on our large online platforms.

Direct government censorship of the Internet is here, and that is going to make it much more difficult to share the truth with a world that desperately needs it.

These are such dark times, and they are getting darker with each passing day.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

If they discover something that you have said on a large online platform that they do not like, they can force that platform to take it down, because someone in Europe might see it.  So even though this is a European law, the truth is that it is going to have a tremendous impact on all of us.

From this point forward, nothing will be the same.  It is being reported that the DSA literally makes large tech companies “legally accountable for the content posted to them”…

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has officially gone into effect. Starting on August 25th, 2023, tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more must comply with sweeping legislation that holds online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them.

Even though this new law was passed in the EU, we’ll likely see far-reaching global effects as companies adjust their policies to comply.

Initially, there will be 19 giant online platforms that will be forced to comply with this new law…

Ranging from social media platforms to online marketplaces and search engines, the list so far includes: Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Amazon, Booking, AliExpress, Zalando, Google Shopping, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Google and Apple’s mobile app stores, Google’s Search, and Microsoft’s Bing.

But starting on February 24th, 2024, the Digital Services Act will start applying to a much broader spectrum of online platforms that have fewer than 45 million monthly users.

We are being told that this new law will establish clear rules that online platforms must follow.

That will include censoring anything that is deemed “false or misleading” under the Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation…

So what kind of speech is the DSA expected to police? Last year’s Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation defines disinformation as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm.” The code has already been put to work during elections and to “respond to crises,” such as COVID and the war in Ukraine.

And it really doesn’t matter if material that European bureaucrats consider to be “false or misleading” is actually “false of misleading” at all.

What matters is that if online platforms do not comply with what they are being told to do, they will pay dearly…

Online platforms that don’t comply with the DSA’s rules could see fines of up to 6 percent of their global turnover. According to the EU Commission, the Digital Services Coordinator and the Commission will have the power to “require immediate actions where necessary to address very serious harms.” A platform continually refusing to comply could result in a temporary suspension in the EU.

Big tech companies will be desperate to avoid such penalties, and so they will obey.

And so that means that “hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats” will be in control of speech on the Internet now…

Under this Orwellian regime, a team of hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it. The firms themselves, faced with reputational risk and financial penalties, will have little choice other than to comply. This can be done in all manner of ways: simply by human moderators removing content, by shadow-banning problematic creators to reduce their reach, by demonetising certain content, and by tweaking algorithms to favour or disfavour certain topics. And though, legally speaking, the DSA only applies in the EU, once installed inside Big Tech firms, this vast content-regulation apparatus will surely affect users in the rest of the world, too.

We are being told that these EU bureaucrats will also be working with “trusted flaggers” to help identify content that needs to be censored…

The DSA’s “trusted flaggers” are entities with proven expertise in flagging harmful or illegal content to platforms. The new regulation provides that their content flagging shall be prioritised by platforms when moderating content.

You might be tempted to think that you will be able to avoid all of this censorship because you do not live in Europe.

Unfortunately, that is simply not true.

If you post something that someone in Europe might see, your content comes under the jurisdiction of this horrifying new law.

So you need to brace yourself for a level of Internet censorship that none of us have ever seen before. In addition, most of the large tech companies that must comply with this new law are based in the United States.

And it turns out that the Federal Trade Commission actually sent officials to Europe in March to assist with the implementation of this new law on U.S. soil…

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today sent letters to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan and the head of the European Union’s San Francisco office, demanding answers regarding the degree of coordination between the FTC and the EU to enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (“DSA”) and Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) on U.S. soil. Both foreign laws were written to weaken American tech companies, particularly in Europe. There are no corollary federal laws to the DSA and DMA, making the FTC’s efforts to conspire with foreign regulators against U.S. businesses unprecedented.

The FTC announced in March that it was sending agency officials to Brussels to assist the EU in implementing these laws, while the EU opened a San Francisco office to pressure U.S tech companies to comply with them.

From this point forward, it is going to become much more difficult to share alternative views on the Internet.

Personally, there will be certain things that I will only be able to share in my books or with the paid subscribers of my Substack newsletter.

I am going to need to be more careful about what I share from now on, because if I say something publicly on the Internet that offends the bureaucrats in Europe, I could get into really big trouble.

And that is going to apply to every other independent journalist as well.

For a long time, the Internet allowed ordinary people like you and ordinary people like me to share truth with a world that was desperate for it.

But now the gatekeepers are exerting a draconian level of control, and the Internet will never, ever be the same again.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.

When people see current systems failing, they are more likely to be open to bigger changes.  As Daisy noted, when FedNow was announced in March, it came on the heels of multiple large bank failures.

Likewise, many people now recognize that the worldwide response to Covid was a total fiasco.  The WHO is trying to use this as an excuse to centralize control. The causes behind both the bank failures and the events surrounding Covid are still highly debatable.  People worldwide have been discussing these issues for years.

Europeans may lose their ability to even complain about current events.

Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is coming online this August.  The DSA aims to curtail illegal online activity and restrict targeted advertising. The largest companies, those with over 45 million European users, will face fines of up to 6% of their annual turnover if they fail to comply with the new rules.  They will have to be transparent about how they moderate content, advertise, and use algorithmic processes. Hosting services and domain registrars are now responsible for reporting criminal offenses to authorities and cooperating with national law enforcement.

Like many other laws, much of the Digital Services Act seems reasonable on the face.  I don’t like targeted ads.  I think it would be nice for people that have been de-platformed from social media to understand why.

However, the DSA also contains provisions for combating disinformation, which means that it can be used to police online speech.

Is this the first we’ve heard of something like this?

No, this isn’t much of a stretch. France has already threatened to kick out Twitter. A voluntary agreement had been put into place between Big Tech and the European Commission to help the largest tech companies comply with the Digital Services Act’s new obligations. Twitter had been on board at first, then backed out due to Elon Musk’s concerns regarding free speech.

Upon Twitter’s withdrawal, France’s Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot publicly stated, “Twitter, if it repeatedly doesn’t follow our rules, will be banned from the EU.”  He also posted on Twitter, “Fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA.”

In general, the DSA grants companies like Twitter a fair amount of leeway in what constitutes disinformation.  However, it does contain a crisis mechanism that will grant the European Commission much more power to restrict speech in times of crisis.  In the law, “crisis” has been given the broad definition of extraordinary circumstances that can lead to a “serious threat to public security or public health.” This is a pretty broad definition, and its lack of specificity has already drawn the ire of civil rights groups.

And it doesn’t help that the EU has already shut down large media outlets without so much as a court order.  After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Commission passed a series of measures aimed at curtailing the spread of Russia Times and Sputnik, both media outlets paid to propagandize for the Russian government.  Cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, and internet video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok all removed content within a short time period.

I don’t think Russia is totally innocent here, but that’s beside the point.  My point is simply that the EU has already shown itself willing to shut down huge media outlets.  In the same way that FedNow is putting in a framework for CBDCs, in the same way that the WHO is setting up a framework for worldwide health programs, the Digital Services Act is putting in a framework for widespread internet control within Europe.

And once it’s up and running there, who says this framework can’t spread?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the size and breadth of freedom-restricting frameworks being put into place.  Megalomaniacs have always dreamt of world domination; the only difference now is that our technology and global interconnectedness have made one-world government a real possibility.

The desire to centralize power has been around longer than the World Economic Forum.  Read Carroll Quigley’s The Anglo-American Establishment, which you can download for free here, and you’ll see, in letters written between British aristocrats a century ago, that this is not a new impulse.

And it is not just a desire for raw power but a belief in their own righteousness that makes globalists so dangerous.  Watch some of the videos of the WEF; read some of the letters re-printed in The Anglo-American Establishment.  There has been a group of very wealthy, very powerful people absolutely convinced that they have a moral duty to manage the rest of us for a long time now.

Personally, I think this kind of arrogance is insane.

But thinking that isn’t enough.  The only way to counter the frameworks of control currently being put in place is to come up with our own frameworks for resistance.

In a recent interview with Redacted, former British Parliamentary candidate Jim Ferguson had some interesting thoughts on how to think of ourselves in facing down this power-mad behemoth of wannabe world governors.  He said that resistance could take place at three levels: strategic, tactical, and operational.

The strategic level would be international, consisting of people getting together in agreement to work toward national sovereignty for individual countries around the globe.  This is what Ferguson does himself. This would be the role of politicians that truly had their countries’ best interests at heart.

The tactical level would be regional, addressing specific issues.  This would consist of groups like the various Freedom Convoys or the Dutch Farmers’ Defense Force.

And finally, at the operational level, we have the people that just keep things running.  This would be those of us engaged in the day-to-day work of growing food, keeping the lights on, and raising the next generation of children.  It’s easy to see many of these tasks as insignificant in the face of powerful global movements, but they aren’t.

Join the parallel economy.

If you are stuck in a job that you feel is meaningless, think about what kind of productive hobby you could pursue, something that would give you a spot in a parallel economy.  This could be something you and your family do together.  If you need direction, look at what the World Economic Forum wants us to do, and then run the opposite way.

Henry Kissinger said a long time ago, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

If you want to take back some control in your life, perhaps you should start with your food supply.

We talk about food production a lot on this website and for good reason.  Most people can produce at least something, and producing one thing often leads to the development of many other skills.  For many people, some productive tomato plants in their suburban backyards lead to learning how to can, which leads them to buy in bulk from farmers’ markets, which leads them to meet like-minded people, and it just keeps going on.

Once you start doing something truly productive, other pursuits will eventually follow.  Can you always plan this all out?  Of course not.  The important thing is to start and to be willing to see where your journey toward increasing independence takes you.

The best way to resist these frameworks for control currently being put into place is to develop our own set of frameworks for resistance.  I think Ferguson’s way of thinking about strategic, tactical, and operational levels is a good place to start.

It may be hard to think of yourself as part of something meaningful when you spend your day engaged in menial tasks.  However, if you can begin to see yourself as part of a parallel economy – part of an active resistance – you will gain enough strength and confidence to oppose these forces that want to see us all in their rigid little frameworks.

Owning nothing and happy about it.

What’s your take?

Do you think the Digital Services Act is going to be used to gain global control? Do you think this is going to be implemented in the United States? Do you have any suggestions on some things we can do to gain independence from a situation like this?

Let’s discuss it in the comments section.

About Marie Hawthorne

A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her. Article cross-posted from The Organic Prepper.