AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTJosephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg lead a German legal aid organization that assists individuals facing online abuse and violent threats.Clare Melford runs a British group that helps identify disinformation.Imran Ahmed is a British activist who runs an organization that has chronicled anti-vaccination content on social media.On Tuesday, the Trump administration accused all of them of a campaign of censorship against Americans.The four individuals, along with a former senior European Commission official, Thierry Breton of France, were barred from entering the United States after Secretary of State Marco Rubio labeled them radical activists who undercut free speech.On Wednesday, European officials including President Emmanuel Macron of France criticized the Trump administrations decision.These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty, Mr. Macron said on social media.
The rules governing the European Unions digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe.Thomas Régnier, a spokesman for the European Commission, said, Our digital rules ensure a safe, fair and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination.The travel ban is a major escalation in a dispute between the Trump administration and Europe over the regulation of online content and social media.In the United States, free speech protections allow social media companies to set their own content policies. And Mr.
Trump and others on the right have successfully pushed social media firms to roll back moderation rules that they viewed as silencing conservative voices.In Britain and the European Union, there are certain restrictions on hate speech and open bigotry. In 2022, the European Union passed a law called the Digital Services Act that requires social media companies to meet transparency standards and to remove certain racist, antisemitic and violent content if it violates national laws.The Trump administration sees the Digital Services Act as an attempt to force American platforms to censor speech globally an allegation European officials deny.The issue came to a head this month when the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, fined Elon Musks social media platform X 140 million.
The commission said that the site had violated the Digital Services Act by selling verification check marks that allow users to mislead others about their identities, by maintaining opaque advertising practices and by refusing to provide researchers with data access. In response, Mr.
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