Federal Communications Fee Chairman Brendan Carr on Monday known as out the European Union’s content material moderation legislation as incompatible with America’s free speech custom and warned of a danger that it’s going to excessively prohibit freedom of expression.
“There is some concern that I have with respect to the approach that Europe is taking with the DSA (EU Digital Services Act) in particular,” Carr, a Republican appointed to the FCC helm by President Trump in January, stated on the Cell World Congress in Barcelona.
For U.S. tech corporations in Europe, Carr stated, DSA’s strategy was “something that is incompatible with both our free speech tradition in America and the commitments that these technology companies have made to a diversity of opinions.”
Carr is the second high-ranking U.S. official in latest months to problem European laws. In February, Vice President Vance denounced content material moderation at an AI summit in Paris, calling it “authoritarian censorship.”
Trump has made free speech a central theme of his presidency, signing an government order on his first day in workplace to “restore freedom of speech and end censorship.”
Carr echoed this stance, saying, “From President Trump to me, across the government, we are encouraging our technology companies to stop the censorship we saw the last couple of years.”
The DSA, which grew to become efficient a yr in the past, is supposed to make the web atmosphere safer and fairer by compelling tech giants to do extra to sort out unlawful content material together with hate speech and baby sexual abuse materials.
A European Fee spokesperson pushed again in opposition to Carr’s feedback, saying the censorship allegations in opposition to the DSA are utterly unfounded.
“The aim of our digital legislation, for example the DSA, is the protection of fundamental rights,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier stated. “We all agree on the need to ensure that the internet is a safe place, as VP Vance put it at the AI Action Summit in Paris.”
Whereas Trump has signed a memorandum warning that his administration would scrutinize the DSA, Carr final week despatched a letter to U.S. tech corporations requesting briefings on how they deliberate to reconcile the DSA with America’s free speech custom.
One attainable resolution is geofencing — proscribing content material by area — to create separate geographical platforms for EU compliance and the U.S. administration’s free speech necessities.
However Carr stated it was unclear whether or not this strategy was technically or economically possible.
“If there is an urge in Europe to engage in protectionist regulations, 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 interests of U.S. businesses,” he stated.
