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The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union’s Digital Services Act Compels Global Censorship and Infringes on American Free Speech | Report

July 25, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Judiciary Committee Republicans released an interim staff report titled, "The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union’s Digital Services Act Compels Global Censorship and Infringes on American Free Speech." The report details how the European Union (EU) uses the Digital Services Act (DSA) as a censorship tool that requires the world's largest social media platforms to engage in censorship of core political discourse in Europe, the United States, and around the world. The Committee obtained under subpoena nonpublic documents, including email communications between Commission staff and tech companies regarding "voluntary" codes of conduct and internal documents showing a recent May 2025 DSA Workshop that the Commission hosted with platforms behind closed doors.

The DSA incentivizes social media companies to comply with the EU's censorship demands because the penalties for failing to do so are massive, including fines up to six percent of their global revenue. If "extraordinary circumstances lead to a serious threat to public security or public health in the Union," regulators are even empowered to temporarily shut down platforms within the EU. The EU has explicitly stated that the DSA penalties are intended to be dissuasive to companies that would otherwise permit free speech and open political debate on their platforms.

Key findings from the Committee's investigation include
  • The DSA is forcing companies to change their global content moderation policies. Nonpublic materials obtained by the Committee from the May 2025 workshop make clear that Commission regulators expect platforms to change their worldwide terms and conditions to comply with DSA obligations;

     
  • The DSA is being used to censor political speech, including humor and satire. Documents produced to the Committee under subpoena show that European censors target core political speech that is neither harmful nor illegal, attempting to stifle debate on topics such as immigration and the environment; 

     
  • Exercises from the Commission's May 2025 workshop show the true definitions of key terms in the DSA and Commission regulators' censorship expectations of social media platforms. For example, the Commission's workshop labeled a hypothetical social media post stating "we need to take back our country"—a common, anodyne political statement—as "illegal hate speech" that platforms are required to censor under the DSA;

     
  • The censorship is largely one-sided, almost uniformly targeting political conservatives.

Major social media platforms generally have one set of terms and conditions that apply worldwide. This means that the DSA requires platforms to change content moderation policies that apply in the United States, and apply EU-mandated standards to content posted by American citizens. 

The threat to American speech is clear: European regulators define political speech, humor, and other First Amendment-protected content as disinformation and hate speech, and then require platforms to change their global content moderation policies to censor it. The Commission classifies important conversations on key political topics as "hate speech" that must be censored under the DSA. Then, it warns platforms that they must change their global content moderation policies to comply with the DSA's mandates. 

This report marks another step in the Committee's comprehensive investigation of foreign threats to U.S. speech. The Committee continues to receive documents responsive to our subpoenas from around the world, and it will continue to conduct oversight to inform legislative reforms that protect the First Amendment rights of American citizens.

Read the full interim staff report here.

 
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