Vice President JD Vance made headlines in February by sternly rebuking Europe over attempts to censor free speech online. But is it any surprise for Americans to learn that US-based internet behemoths like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft are all financial supporters of a DC-based organization that vigorously endorses the squelching of civil liberty in Europe?
“I look to Brussels, where [European Union] commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, ‘hateful content,’” Vance stated in his February 14 address to the arch-globalist Munich Security Conference.
“Or to this very country [Germany], where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, ‘combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.’”
Come now, that’s really not such a bad thing, an “expert” at The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) asserts.
The Government Says It’s ‘Demonstrably Harmful’
“Are Europe’s Speech Rules Censorship? No” is the blunt headline to the March 12 “Insights & Analysis” article authored by CEPA Senior Researcher Anda Bologa. Her rather remarkable argument: Forcing private companies to restrict speech is not the same as government censorship.
“Europe’s [Digital Services Act] imposes strict oversight. Social media platforms must systematically identify, assess, and mitigate content risks, from hate speech to disinformation and election interference,” Bologa writes. “Firms face potentially massive fines, up to 6% of their worldwide turnover.”
Gee, that sounds awfully repressive.
“But does the DSA censor? No,” Bologa continues. “‘Nothing in the DSA requires platforms to remove lawful content,’ European officials insist. They are right. The DSA tackles illegal or demonstrably harmful activity – terrorist propaganda, child sexual abuse material, and foreign-backed election meddling. It obliges platforms to sniff out and counter systemic manipulative tactics, particularly during elections. These obligations [bear] no relation to China’s Great Firewall or Russia’s platform bans.”
This credentialed expert’s word parsing only magnifies the dire warning Vance delivered to his audience of European elites in Munich.
“Companies are not required to block all user speech before it is uploaded, only to take measures to minimize illegal content and take it down once identified as illegal,” Bologa stresses. “The US allows Holocaust denial. In Europe, most countries make it illegal.”
Do you see what she did there?
Bologa first pointed out that in Europe “demonstrably harmful activity” – as defined by government officials – can be censored online. She then referenced bans on Holocaust denial as an example only after having first planted the elastic phrase “election meddling” inside the censorship door.
Make no mistake. CEPA openly acknowledges that the Digital Services Act is designed to clamp down on unacceptable speech.
“While the sprawling DSA symbolizes a vital turning point away from unbridled Internet freedom to intense regulatory scrutiny of social media, its early months of implementation demonstrate the difficulty of balancing free expression and government oversight,” CEPA “Senior Fellow” Bill Echikson wrote in August.
It’s not a conspiracy theory when they are coming out and saying it. “A vital turning point away from Internet freedom” – and settling the parameters of the government referee is the only sticking point still needing to be hashed out.
Google and Its Censorious Comrades
We could add several other examples of CEPA’s ardent support for online censorship. OK, here’s one more, co-authored by Echikson and CEPA “Senior Fellow” Lucinda Creighton in 2022. “Tech Must Fight Terrorist Hate Speech,” is the subject header. Opposition to the European Union narrative on Ukraine is a cited problem. The Digital Services Act is hailed as a “positive step.” “Europe is certainly ahead of the US for a number of reasons,” the two fellows declare. “In the US you have specific constitutional protections on free speech. That imposes a barrier, making lawmakers cautious.”
It begs a simple question: Why are Google and Meta directly funding an organization that is so openly demanding it censor its users?
A list of CEPA’s “supporters for the 2025 fiscal year” prominently identifies Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft as donors. The organization’s “2024 CEPA Forum” annual meeting was sponsored by Apple and Google, along with defense industry giant Lockheed Martin.
Ukraine first lady Olena Zelenska served as the featured speaker. Virulently anti-Trump ex-National Security Advisor HR McMaster spoke at a “Policy Pitching Competition” event held in conjunction with the Forum. McMaster was on hand to “discuss the future of the transatlantic alliance” following the NATO Summit in Washington.
CEPA also hosted “its inaugural Tech Conference to examine the intersections of technology and security” as part of the gathering. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was among the speakers.
It all goes together: European Internet censorship, US Big Tech companies, Big Government, NATO and the military industrial complex. This is what you are trusting yourself to every time you do a Google search.
The apparatus is about to shift into a higher gear.
“The Code of Practice on Disinformation is a pioneering framework agreed upon by a broad range of stakeholders – online platforms, search engines, the advertising industry, fact-checking, and civil society organizations, etc.,” a Feb. 13 release by the European Commission states.
Signatories to this code include Google and Meta along with nakedly partisan “Civil Society/Research Organizations” and fact-checker groups such as the George Soros-funded Reporters Without Borders, World Economic Forum-partnering faux journalism watchdog group NewsGuard and the Soros-backed Global Disinformation Index.
The Code stresses that it is “a first-of-its-kind tool through which relevant players in the [online] industry agreed – for the first time in 2018 – on self-regulatory standards to fight disinformation.”
That “voluntary” censorship starting point is now being fully codified into European law.
“On 13 February 2025, the Commission and the European Board for Digital Services endorsed the official integration of the voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation into the framework of the Digital Services Act (DSA),” the European Commission reveals.
“At the request of the signatories, the Code conversion will take effect from 1 July 2025, making its commitments auditable from that date onwards,” the Commission states.
And this is why Google and Meta are financially supporting an uber-connected DC organization that enthusiastically backs restricting free speech online. They are eager to play their part in building the corporate-government censorship machine.
