Conservative content said to go dark in Europe, as Google unites with right against EU censorship

With the American left suddenly attentive to government jawboning, via the Trump administration's threat to enforce longstanding public interest broadcast obligations against ABC for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's false claims about Charlie Kirk's suspected killer, the right is building global alliances to neutralize Europe's outward-facing censorship.

Google parent Alphabet warned in a letter Tuesday that the European Union's Digital Services Act threatens freedom of expression worldwide, thanking the House Judiciary Committee for its "important investigative steps" to shine light on the law's "onerous obligations" while emphasizing Alphabet's track record of "pushing back" on government demands.

Dozens of nongovernmental organizations across the pond with "viewpoints that diverge from prevailing policy or social consensus," such as pro-life and pro-free speech, raised "significant concerns" about DSA enforcement and interpretation with top European Commission officials in a letter last week, especially a lowest-common-denominator speech standard.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Just the News, No Noise he's hoping for a European "groundswell" for free speech like that in the U.S. that followed the assassination of Kirk, a personal friend. Biggs is speaking at a Utah Valley University event for Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded and campus where he died.

"You're seeing center-right movements in virtually every nation in Western Europe … demanding freer speech, and for that, some people are going to jail," Biggs said.

He praised President Trump's United Nations General Assembly remarks for calling on member states, "in his inimitable style," to defend free speech and protect religious liberty alongside the U.S. As a former representative of "NGOs at the UN, I can tell you it is a closed society. They don't like to hear criticism at all," Biggs said.

Some European users suspect the DSA and U.K.'s similar Online Safety Act are behind the reported unavailability of Kirk's podcast, featuring remembrances since his death by friends including President Trump, and a Bible-reading website in the past two weeks, though Just the News could not verify what's currently blocked or why.

Prayer app Hallow, whose Super Bowl commercials and celebrity endorsements drove its massive growth, served as the canary in the coal mine earlier this year when its CEO accused the EU of "shutting us down by over-regulation, apparently targeting any religious app." 

Alex Jones told The Telegraph in April that "you can still download" Hallow in the EU, but "we just can’t market it," a prohibition allegedly "applied across the board to faith-based apps or any religious apps in the EU." The Christian Post theorized at the time that DSA transparency obligations and regulations on user consent for sensitive data played a role.

Alliance Defending Freedom International, which defends speakers with unpopular viewpoints against criminalization in the U.K. and Europe, didn't hear back from Hallow after asking Jones to share more information, spokesperson Paul Sapper told Just the News. 

"Europe is making it harder and harder to access basic religious and conservative content," ADFI said Tuesday, citing screenshots from Kirk's "temporarily unavailable" podcast on Apple Podcasts and Bible Gateway's "content unavailable" landing page in the U.K. and EU that cites "technical issues," in addition to Hallow's allegations.

Hallow and Bible Gateway didn't answer queries for their current status in Europe and what specific regulations they believe are to blame. Kirk's podcast partner Salem Media Group referred Just the News to Kirk-founded Turning Point USA to confirm the podcast's status on Apple Podcasts in Europe, but neither TPUSA nor Apple answered by deadline.

Bible Gateway users in Europe confirmed on forums including Reddit they could access it using virtual private networks, which circumvent geographic restrictions. 

U.K.-based ancient-texts enthusiast Roger Pearse suspects a U.K. age-verification law or EU's General Data Protection Regulation are to blame, since "there seems to be a pattern here of petty bureaucrats trying to do a power grab over the internet."

Sorry for 'well-intentioned' censorship of COVID wrongthink

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, crowed over Alphabet's letter, claiming it's acknowledging "for the first time" the Biden administration pressured Google to censor and that was "unacceptable and wrong."

Jordan took credit for the behemoth's policy changes in recent years, such as "trying out Community Notes" molded after Elon Musk's X and later adopted by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, though Alphabet's letter insists that it made changes in line with its own evolving views.

Its mobile pilot for more than a year has allowed users to "add notes to provide relevant, timely, and understandable context on videos," and "YouTube continues to collect feedback on the feature," the letter says.

Now that it's letting YouTube creators "rejoin" who were booted for violating its phased-out COVID-19 misinformation policy, Alphabet implied it had gone too far. "While the reliance on health authorities in this context was well-intentioned, the Company recognizes it should never come at the expense of public debate on these important issues."

It praised "conservative voices" on YouTube who "have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse," citing their "must-watch" interviews with "politicians, celebrities, business leaders, and more."

Alphabet's response shows the scope of "the weaponization of government and how YouTube responded to that," Biggs told Just the News, No Noise. While he's "grateful" for YouTube letting censored voices return when the "entire mood of the country" favors open dialogue, "they're really kind of late, are they not?"

Alphabet emphasized it has long resisted "overly broad or otherwise inappropriate government demands for user data and content removals, including objecting to some demands entirely," despite the "significant penalties for non-compliance" it faces.

The DSA and Digital Markets Act "place a disproportionate regulatory burden on American companies, and the Company has long expressed its concern" about the DSA's extraterritorial reach "depending on how certain provisions may be enforced."

It could be interpreted to require "providers of intermediary services to remove lawful content, jeopardizing" their global free expression and open access policies, and "open avenues for substantive regulation of lawful speech" through risk mitigation, conduct codes and "the out-of-court dispute settlement mechanism."

The Wall Street Journal warned the DSA's international reach, vague terms, steep fines and criminal penalties encourage platforms "to remove content that might be forbidden somewhere in Europe" – the law provides a "regulatory floor" member countries can build upon – and threaten Americans and visitors on American soil who cross the Atlantic.

The editorial noted British police arrested Irish comedian Graham Lineham for "tweets mocking transgenderism" from the U.S. "Will outspoken Americans have to avoid flights to Frankfurt or Paris for fear that their domestic speech will fall foul of European criminal law?"

Free Speech Ireland led the NGOs' letter to EC President Ursula von der Leyen, executive vice president for "tech sovereignty" Henna Virkkunen and Commissioner Michael McGrath.

The DSA could violate the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights by not narrowly defining the terms "illegal content," "systemic risk” and “disinformation," meaning "legitimate expression may be unduly restricted," the letter says. 

The NGOs object to the "trusted flaggers" designated by the DSA to report allegedly objectionable content, since these "frequently large organizations" may be biased and enforce the law in a discriminatory manner against unpopular viewpoints.

The "limited scope of judicial oversight over content moderation" also undermines the rule of law and limits "adequate remedies when [the NGOs'] expression is restricted."

The letter asks the EC to clarify how it will incorporate free speech concerns into the mid-November DSA review, whether "country of destination" provisions functionally extend "the most restrictive national standards across borders," and how it will stop the suppression of "factually accurate but dissenting content" in the name of squelching disinformation.