US official slams EU’s social media ‘censorship’

BARCELONA — Brendan Carr, the new chair of the United States Federal Communications Commission, came out swinging at the European Union's content moderation rules for his first major speech outside the U.S.

"There's a risk that [EU] regulatory regime imposes excessive rules with respect to free speech," he told the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. "The censorship that is potentially coming down the pipe from the [Digital Services Act] is something that is incompatible with ... our free speech tradition."

Tensions between the EU and the U.S. have soared since President Donald Trump’s return to power, with his administration slamming EU tech laws as “overseas extortion.”

Washington is now threatening tariffs in response to European taxes and fines on U.S. firms — just as the European Commission ramps up probes into Big Tech over breaches of antitrust and content moderation rules, including Meta's Facebook and Instagram and Elon Musk's X.

"If there is an urge in Europe to engage in protectionist regulation to give disparate treatment to U.S. technology companies, the Trump administration has been clear that we are going to speak up and defend the interest of U.S. businesses," Carr said on stage at the telecom industry event.

"In many ways, free speech has been in retreat," Carr said, arguing that the Covid-19 pandemic gave governments an excuse to tighten controls and praising Trump’s efforts to reverse course.

Trump's pick — who he called "warrior for Free Speech" — to lead the U.S. regulator in charge of telecoms and broadcasting previously vowed to fight the “censorship cartel” of Big Tech.

He wrote to Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and its LinkedIn unit, Pinterest, Wikimedia, Snap and X last week asking them for details on how they are "reconciling the DSA with American's free speech tradition," and what role they see that "EU government officials will play in encouraging you to silence speech and demand that you censor information."

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in a comment on Monday: "The DSA is not about censorship and contains important protections against censorship. The censorship allegations relative to the DSA are completely unfounded."

"The aim of our digital legislation, for example the DSA, is the protection of fundamental rights. It requires platforms to assess and mitigate risks to the freedom of expression," Regnier said, adding that "nothing in the DSA requires platforms to remove lawful content."

This article has been updated to include a comment from the European Commission.