I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL)
and some of it has been under the State Department, partly pursuant to the global Internet freedom program introduced by Hillary Clinton in 2010 when she was Secretary of State.
I'm sure the political and diplomatic valence is very different here, but the concept of "the U.S. government paying to stop foreign governments from censoring the Internet" is a longstanding one.
It might do that too, but access to information is just so utterly critical, and exponentially moreso in circumstances where government brutally cracks down on it, as we saw in Egypt during the Arab Spring and we're seeing in Iran presently.
Evidence to the contrary abounds regarding Egypt. Secretary of State Clinton famously rejected the popularly-elected Muslim Brotherhood government and pledged support to Mubarak. This tacit approval led him to have a successful coup against the popularly elected government.
If by "western" you meant some other power then you should be specific. Western as a term is imprecise and can be interpreted differently depending on the audience.
Yep! Maximally closed as much as possible under the law. They also shut down other programs which aim to sidestep propaganda (including US propaganda), though some of those are starting to come back. Radio Free Asia, for example, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/radio-free-asia-s...
Shortly after the American version of TikTok was established in January of 2026, users began reporting that certain content was creating error messages, including using words like "Epstein" in direct messages, which news outlet CNBC was able to replicate and confirm, with the error message reading: "This message may be in violation of our Community Guidelines, and has not been sent to protect our community." Other users reported similar messages for content critical of U.S. President Donald Trump or other topics.
It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it.
Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.
> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA
Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true.
Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount.
Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to carry data all that distance. All built and maintained in secret.
He was likely referring to the claim that 70% of the internet flows through Loudon County, Virginia, where AWS us-east-1 is located, although the more accurate number is probably somewhere around 22%.
Every cloud provider worth talking about is there too. Both public and sovereign/gov data centers.
And of course all the privately owned ones too. It is bananas. Not just because of government either - low ping times to the biggest population center of North America.
Do you have a single actual source for anything you’re saying about this happening today?
I’m well aware of the historical surveillance programs. I’m asking for a source for all of your claims about what’s happening today regarding 80% of internet traffic.
That claim makes no sense in today's world. For over a decade, the likes of Youtube, Netflix and short form video make the majority of throughput. Why in the world would anyone want to monitor known catalogs of content? Most of which are delivered by POPs in data centers distributed all over the world.
As for traffic, I can’t cite numbers, you’ll just have to trust me when I say it. I can’t give you packet breakdown or IP4 vs IP6. To have that discussion requires a secret clearance at least.
Edited to not be so flippant: I work in HFT/finance where recording all traffic is required I think by law and definitely for one's own sanity. We're able to maintain nanosecond trades while capturing ALL the traffic. It has zero impact on the traffic. This is normal, widely used tech. Think stuff like Ixia passive taps and/or Arista Metamako FPGA-based tap/mux devices.
I have. I have a background in high speed networking.
Have you ever paused for a moment to consider how much infrastructure would be required to send 80% of data on the internet across the country and into a single datacenter in Virginia?
If you've worked in HFT, you can probably at least start to imagine the scale we're talking about.
“Loudoun County currently has 199 data centers, with another 117 in development, according to Michael Turner, vice chair of the board of supervisors transportation and land use committee and Ashburn’s district supervisor.”
I have no data or information on the topic, but the use of English was fine for the apparent intended meaning:
"Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in X"
Does not mean that all traffic goes through a single data center in X. Just that it goes through one of potentially many data centers that happen to be in X.
the time it takes for light to travel from los angeles to virginia is 12 - 16 ms, round trip is 30ms lets say - that is a noticeable delay, and it could be easily disproven that 80% of traffic is literally routed through VA
now.. could they just copy the traffic and send it to VA on a side channel? probably?
i used to work, 15 years ago, on a (permissive, not covert) monitoring service for a UK national public service, the NHS spine core. We used switches to mirror ports and capture traffic in promisciouse mode on a few dozen servers
split across a few datacentres that all the traffic went througg. We had certs installed to decode https. We could get enough hardware to do this step easily, but fast enough storage was an issue, we had 1 petabyte of usable storage across all sitesn that could hold a few days of content. We aimed to get this data filtered and forwarded into our central Splunk (seperate storage) and also into our bespoke dashboards within 60s. We often lagged...
"Going through" doesn't necessarily imply store and forward. It could be tapped elsewhere and shipped to WVA. fwiw the idea of running a network in order to tap it is hardly new. The British operated largest telegraph network in the world in the 1800's for that reason.
No. That isn't required at all. Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume.
> Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume
No, I understand networking hardware quite well actually. I'm also familiar with Room 641A. Room 641A did not capture 80% of internet traffic. If you think 80% of internet traffic could be routed through Room 641A you're not thinking about the infrastructure required to get it all there. It was a targeted operation on backbone lines that were right there.
While the most well known, there are other points of presence doing the same thing. Easy and trivial to duplicate traffic at line speed. It doesn't affect the traffic flow itself.
A decent number of people reading this probably do have secret clearance. But that's not really the relevant point.
Simply having secret clearance doesn't mean you can just go digging around arbitrary secret classified info that you have no business reading. And it certainly doesn't mean that discussion can be had on hackernews.
When I worked for a CLEC (during that moment in history when they were briefly a Thing), we had a USG closet at our main datacenter, and we are nowhere even close to NoVA. I expect they still handle it this way rather than try to funnel any significant amount of traffic to a particular geographical region.
Say I'm a UK citizen with advanced glioblastoma (implying loss of faculties, seizures, and pain; no cure, and things to worsen before eventually passing away, possibly some time from now). Suppose I wish to view websites on euthanasia options, but am blocked from doing so by the UK's Online Safety Act.
How does/will Freedom.gov help? (is it essentially a free VPN?)
Also, as others have pointed out, couldn't the censoring government simply block access to freedom.gov?
It probably won't work. At least, it won't do anything interesting. It exists mostly to make Trump look anti-woke, and maybe to subvert other countries' policy a little bit.
This is not an administration that does technological innovation. Trump's "social media site" started as just rebranded Mastodon.
Then won’t foreign governments just ban freedom.gov? This problem has already been solved with networks like Tor and I2P. It seems like it would be more strategic to fund those projects instead.
US can probably use their soft power to influence them not to do that. Also would imagine the US gov could also set up some more censorship resistant access methods.
I think we're all aware that EU is trying to become more independent, but as of right now basically everything they do online, or really anything with technology at all, is American in some way. That's a lot of "soft power" and it will take decades, maybe a century, for EU or UK to replace it.
Sure, it's decreasing under Trump, but to pretend the richest, most militarily powerful, most culturally influential nation on the planet somehow doesn't have any soft power is... certainly a choice.
It's a propaganda maneuver. And it's obviously just as critical of China as it is of Europe. The State Department's public voices may be immersed in the culture war but there are probably a few cooler heads left who have learned to keep out of the spotlight.
Maybe that's the purpose? Pushing European and global "allies" to show their cards. Some citizens will support more censorship, while some will start questioning. It's good to know where your rivals stand.
Also it is cheap, easy, non-controversial domestically in the US, and ethically coherent with American values.
I'm a lifelong US citizen and burst out laughing at this. What values? What coherence?
Do you mean the NSA man-in-the-middleing all that traffic and leaving a backdoor for Mossad? Imagine the most despicable possible invasion of privacy and the most reprehensible shadow oppression and manipulation of an uneducated populace you can conjure up.
Now imagine something way worse than that. This is America.
Yet another illusion. A lot of Americans are very good at finding ways to persecute people for having an opinion, often using economic consequences as a cudgel to enforce groupthink. And, at this very moment, the government is compiling lists of people it regards as enemies, purely on the basis of their "free" speech.
Sure — but the UK or EU has to accept the constant rhetoric of “you clearly don’t support free speech, you block freedom.gov” when discussing with the US.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a perfect solution; I think it’s meant to be a political tool.
Also, the US does fund Tor — originally US Navy + DARPA, now through Dept of State. Entirely possible that they’ll eventually operate a Tor onion site for freedom.gov too.
It is much more convenient to catch the fish that eats particular sort of worms putting such worm on a hook than finding the right fish among many others in a fishnet.
That seems crazy to me I read news there occasionally as I like to view opposite sides. Go to BBC, RT, France24 ,Al-Jazeera type sites and see what each has as their focus stories.
You're aware news sites are used to push agenda, some more than others, but that's half the interest of seeing what they push. And sometimes the more fringe have stories on what should be news but don't make it to mainstream media channels.
...anyway I'm more a believer in assuming people have a brain and can figure stuff out vs banning sites, both have danger to them but censorship seems the bigger danger to me.
True! Though I can't really say I mourn the loss, it is a Russian propaganda outlet dedicated to helping their expansion war. Is this the speech the USA is going to protect? It's still weird to me that the gringoes are helping the commies now, I guess I'm stuck in the old world order!
The first one I'm ok with, the second one I'm not sure what you're saying? Google suggests the largest library in the world is the US Congress library, but I couldn't find any sources saying it's banned in Germany? (Also, it's a physical place in the US... What?)
Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass the ban accidentally, and anyone who wants to can trivially use a different DNS.
I mean I'm probably more in favour of digital piracy than the next guy, but I had completely missed that were calling copyright protection censorship now?
Can we filter for current censorship? Hate to brake it to you but the top category in that page, "censorship in the soviet union" does not apply anymore.....
Spanish courts ordered ISPs to block dozens of pro-independence domains and mirror sites during the referendum. Civil Guard units physically entered data centers to seize servers tied to the Catalan government’s digital voting infrastructure.
2) GitHub Repository Takedown (2017)
Spain obtained a court order forcing GitHub to remove a repository that mirrored referendum voting code and site information, extending censorship beyond Spanish-hosted domains.
3) Rapper Convictions for Online Lyrics
Spanish rapper Valtònyc was convicted for tweets and lyrics deemed to glorify terrorism and insult the monarchy; he fled the country and fought extradition in Belgium for years.
⸻
France
4) Blocking of Protest Pages During Yellow Vests (2018–2019)
Authorities requested removals of Facebook pages and livestreams tied to the Yellow Vest protests, citing incitement and public order concerns.
5) Court-Ordered Removal of Election Content (2019 EU Elections)
French judges used expedited procedures under election-period misinformation law to order removal of allegedly false political claims within 48 hours.
6) Prosecution of Political Satire as Hate Speech
Several activists were fined or prosecuted for online posts targeting religious or ethnic groups in explicitly political contexts, even where framed as satire.
⸻
Germany
7) Mass Police Raids Over Social Media Posts
German police have conducted coordinated nationwide dawn raids targeting individuals accused of posting illegal political speech under hate-speech laws.
8) Removal of Opposition Content Under NetzDG
Platforms removed thousands of posts from nationalist or anti-immigration political actors within 24 hours to avoid heavy fines under NetzDG enforcement pressure.
9) Criminal Convictions for Holocaust Commentary Online
Individuals have received criminal penalties for online statements denying or relativizing Nazi crimes, even when framed in broader political debate contexts.
⸻
United Kingdom
10) Police Visits Over Controversial Tweets
British police have conducted “non-crime hate incident” visits to individuals’ homes over political tweets, creating official records despite no prosecution.
11) Arrests for Offensive Political Posts
Individuals have been arrested under public communications laws for posts criticizing immigration or religion in strongly worded terms.
12) Removal of Campaign Content Under Electoral Rules
Election regulators required digital platforms to remove or restrict political ads that failed to meet transparency requirements during active campaigns.
⸻
Italy
13) Enforcement of “Par Condicio” Silence Online
During mandated pre-election silence periods, online political content—including posts by candidates—has been ordered removed or fined.
14) Criminal Defamation Charges Against Bloggers
Italian bloggers critical of politicians have faced criminal defamation prosecutions for investigative posts during election cycles.
⸻
Finland
15) Conviction of Sitting MP for Facebook Posts
Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was prosecuted for Bible-based comments posted online regarding sexuality and religion; although ultimately acquitted, the criminal process itself was lengthy and high-profile.
⸻
Sweden
16) Convictions for Anti-Immigration Facebook Posts
Swedish courts have convicted individuals for Facebook comments criticizing immigration policy when deemed “agitation against a population group.”
⸻
Netherlands
17) Criminal Case Against Opposition Politician
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was convicted (without penalty) for campaign-rally remarks later amplified online, deemed discriminatory.
⸻
Austria
18) Rapid Court Orders Against Political Posts
Austria’s updated online hate-speech regime enabled expedited court orders compelling removal of allegedly unlawful political speech within days.
⸻
Belgium
19) Prosecution of Political Party Messaging
Members of the Vlaams Belang party have faced legal sanctions for campaign messaging shared online deemed racist or discriminatory.
⸻
Switzerland
20) Criminal Fines for Referendum Campaign Speech
Swiss activists have faced criminal fines for online referendum messaging judged to violate anti-discrimination law during highly contentious votes.
There's a hate speech / violence law in the UK that is getting some people arrested for saying things like "round up all people of race X, put them into a hotel, and burn the hotel down." People like Joe Rogan and his ilk are re-packaging those examples as "people being arrested for just sharing their opinion."
I don't know what Joe Rogan says or who his ilk are, but this is a pretty extreme characterization of the situation that I don't think is accurate.
For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years.
There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO.
Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
I'm guessing China will simply block it at the firewall. It would be hilarious to witness the US Gov validating The Pirate Bay's hydra domain approach. Maybe some squatting isn't a bad idea:
Nit: If you're filing a flight plan, you do it with the country you're departing from. Even if you're piloting an aircraft departing into the US, it wouldn't have any effect on operations if you couldn't reach US websites. There's also several alternative ways for pilots to file flight plans outside of the web.
(The flight plans get passed between countries via AFTN/AMHS, which are dedicated telecommunications networks independent of the Internet.)
There's also several different ways to transmit the passenger manifest to CBP - including over a CBP-provided VPN and IATA "Type B" messages sent through ARINC/SITA.
The network for Type B messages is also independent of the Internet (it was developed 60 years ago).
Amusingly, there typically are various exceptions made for those. All technical and whatnot, but for example, Iran is heavily sanctioned, but has all sorts of exceptions for stuff like that precisely because of the impact it can have.
Politicians want power over people in the country, but also internet technology is one of the only things the US is best at, and so we don't want the entire world dividing into separate internet silos.
(The other things we're best at is having a huge military and having legally protected free speech, which is ironically being weakened, as you say.)
Governments around the world could setup, in solidarity with the US, freedom.ca, freedom.eu etc. Hosting provided by Pornhub. Maybe Pornhub could even start registering the TLDs now where available.
Weird title, but worthy of discussion. From the little info available so far this appears to be little more than political posturing. If you want to fight censorship, an "online portal" to access all the censored content is the wrongest possible way to go about it. But we'll see.
This project is hardly some emergent property of the Internet or even Internet culture. The existence of VPNs and proxies in general is. They are easy to set up and hard to block. But this project, if it launches, will be a single well-known target which, at a technical level, countries could easily block access to. Whether blocking actually occurs will depend on the whims of geopolitics, but it’s not exactly a robust situation.
I wonder if American citizens from states which requires age verification to access porn (25 US states today) will be fine with it or these states will start demanding ID to access freedom.gov. It would be delicious irony.
There is a lot more blocked than porn and neo-nazis. This will also allow access to sites that block access because of laws: Imgur is not accessible from the uk, nor are a lot of smaller US news sites. Ofcom are after 4 chan too.
Government mandated uncensored free porn access. I wonder if this will this also apply in US states requiring age verification to legally access such content?
Better than the alternative where they don't, I suppose. Kind of like how for some political things you have to use yandex to search because US search companies suppress the results.
And before that, looks like the domain was used to give updates from the House Majority Leader (e.g. things like voting info, social security updates, legislative changes, tax info etc).
It is like ultimate throwing stones in a glass house. Americans are dependent on other countries following IP and copyright protections and yet they will go great lengths to undermine it because it is short term beneficial for their companies.
What limits? You can do pretty much what you want but make sure you can defend yourself in the court. I feel there is a bit of a disconnect in terms where people get the news where in US you kind of expect biggest news providers to be biassed, eg Fox, hence reliance on social media. In Europe gov media is quite strong and objective, and the idea that it restricts something is odd. A great example is the banning of RT, they lost licenses IMO in multiple countries, but the agency was spreading a lot of lies. IMO what we all want is objective news reporting.
Concrete examples - in Germany you are not allowed to insult politicians or the government in social media. In Italy, people have faced criminal charges for simply criticizing the prime minister.
When the government does not allow its population to freely speak against it, it's just waiting to be abused by one bad leader.
> Concrete examples - in Germany you are not allowed to insult politicians or the government in social media.
You're not allowed to insult anyone, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__185.html , though the term "insult" is not nearly as broadly defined as in everyday speech. The law dates back to the 18th century, and has largely been unchanged for 150 years. I really don't understand the recent outrage over these and other laws. We have been fine.
> has largely been unchanged for 150 years. I really don't understand the recent outrage over these and other laws. We have been fine
The last 150 years of Germany have...ahem...not been what I would call "fine."
It would be interesting to have a replay of history without this law and similar ones related to it. Could be nothing different happens.
On the other hand, any law regulating speech is going to have a reverberating effect on the marketplace of ideas with 2nd and 3rd order outcomes that are impossible to disentangle after the fact.
almost all communication was oral 20 years ago, now-- especially since covid -- it's almost all, even casual comments, through text messages which can easily be used in evidence
> Concrete examples - in Germany you are not allowed to insult politicians or the government in social media.
Germany restricts insulting individuals / your neighbour, police officer, a pastor or a minister. There’s no special law for politicians. Political criticism is protected under the Basic Law (constitution). Go ahead and be crucial about a politician’s actions but don’t insult their person’s honour or use a slur. That’s not your freedom of speech, that’s the dignity. In fact, you can even insult the government! You can say German government as the government is not a person.
Thousands of people in the UK have been arrested for social media posts, some for speech recognized as protected by international organizations.
Germany is currently actively campaigning to force everyone to use their real names on all social media and force ID checks to do so, a clear chilling effect for free speech.
Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit".
Europe is against free speech, any argument to the contrary must contend with the above examples of them trampling on rights.
> Germany is currently actively campaigning to force everyone to use their real names on all social media and force ID checks to do so, a clear chilling effect for free speech.
Source? (Other than one derailed politician, which unfortunately we get to call our chancellor, having a moment? He's still not "Germany", though, not even "the German government".)
> Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit".
Huh? You're saying the German Chancellor does not represent the German government? [1] Large swathes of the CDU support it as well.
Macron was responding to criticism of the Digital Services Act, which contains censorship provisions for 'hate speech', which is repeatedly and routinely used by European nations to crack down on protected political speech. For example, it has been used as an excuse to censor political views leaning anti-immigration.
The UK in particular has used Ofcom as a weapon to target American companies that enable free speech communications, notably 4chan.
> the Digital Services Act […] The UK in particular
You do realize that the UK is not part of the EU? So I'm not sure how UK's supposed "weaponization" of Ofcom has anything to do with Macron's statement.
> which is repeatedly and routinely used by European nations to crack down on protected political speech.
I'm really looking forward to your sources here. The DSA does not contain any provisions that change anything about the legality of speech. It's mostly meant to harmonize procedural aspects across the member states.
> Huh? You're saying the German Chancellor does not represent the German government?
I'm saying, there is a huge difference between a random utterance of the chancellor, which by next week he'll likely already have forgotten about, and "Germany actively campaigning" e.g. at the EU or federal level, both of which would require both ruling parties to get behind the chancellor's demands, which – based on how similar discourses have turned out in the past – is completely unlikely.
I'm not defending Merz's position, not by a long shot. I'm just saying that, based on previous experience, we're still quite far away from the "actively campaigning" stage and very, very, very far away from Merz's ideas being turned into law. I'm concerned about many things but this is not one of them. Civil rights organizations are already rallying and telling him how stupid he is¹ for suggesting that real name enforcement would be a good idea. :-) It's the usual political discourse.
¹) See how I am exercising my right to free speech and am not at all concerned about being charged for "insulting a politician"?
> some for speech recognized as protected by international organizations.
Can you share some concrete examples from reputable sources that show these? Every examples I've seen have been clear-cut calls for violence, or unambiguous harassment.
The only semi-concrete example that article gives:
> After the Southport stabbings, several people were questioned by police over false communications for spreading claims the attacker was a Muslim immigrant. In one instance, a man pleaded guilty to the offence for a livestreamed video on TikTok where he falsely claimed he was “running for his life” from rioters in Derby.
That very much seems like an attempt to harass or invite harassment against a group of people...
The propaganda take I keep seeing is that you can get arrested for misgendering people or something, but these are at least close to incitement to violence. Some clearly cross that line.
To be clear I’m closer to the American view. I think the bar should be very, very high for speech to be criminally actionable. Just pointing out that it doesn’t seem as nuts as some make it sound.
"Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
"A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
"Legal experts have also questioned the new rules. David Hardstaff, a serious crime expert at the law firm BCL Solicitors, said the fake news offence was “problematic both for its potential to stifle free speech if misused, but equally for its lack of clarity and consistency”."
I have heard of RT lying but I have never actually seen examples of specific lies. Is there any list out there where they list any specific ones? If they do it a lot, it should be quite easy, no?
> The January 14, 2016, edition of Weekly Disinformation Review reported the reemergence of several previously debunked Russian propaganda stories, including that Polish President Andrzej Duda was insisting that Ukraine return former Polish territory, that Islamic State fighters were joining pro-Ukrainian forces, and that there was a Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.11
> Sometimes, Russian propaganda is picked up and rebroadcast by legitimate news outlets; more frequently, social media repeats the themes, messages, or falsehoods introduced by one of Russia’s many dissemination channels. For example, German news sources rebroadcast Russian disinformation about atrocities in Ukraine in early 2014, and Russian disinformation about EU plans to deny visas to young Ukrainian men was repeated with such frequency in Ukrainian media that the Ukrainian general staff felt compelled to post a rebuttal.12
> Sometimes, however, events reported in Russian propaganda are wholly manufactured, like the 2014 social media campaign to create panic about an explosion and chemical plume in St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, that never happened.15 Russian propaganda has relied on manufactured evidence—often photographic. Some of these images are easily exposed as fake due to poor photo editing, such as discrepancies of scale, or the availability of the original (pre-altered) image.16 Russian propagandists have been caught hiring actors to portray victims of manufactured atrocities or crimes for news reports (as was the case when Viktoria Schmidt pretended to have been attacked by Syrian refugees in Germany for Russian's Zvezda TV network), or faking on-scene news reporting (as shown in a leaked video in which “reporter” Maria Katasonova is revealed to be in a darkened room with explosion sounds playing in the background rather than on a battlefield in Donetsk when a light is switched on during the recording).17
> RT stated that blogger Brown Moses (a staunch critic of Syria's Assad regime whose real name is Eliot Higgins) had provided analysis of footage suggesting that chemical weapon attacks on August 21, 2013, had been perpetrated by Syrian rebels. In fact, Higgins's analysis concluded that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks and that the footage had been faked to shift the blame.18 Similarly, several scholars and journalists, including Edward Lucas, Luke Harding, and Don Jensen, have reported that books that they did not write—and containing views clearly contrary to their own—had been published in Russian under their names.
I found that source on the Wikipedia page for RT after a couple of minutes. You can find more pretty easily.
Sad that the United States are pushing so hard to encourage the propagation of propaganda & lies. I'm not surprised given their history, but it's sad nonetheless.
Sad that people can’t see past their ideological bubbles. Tech spaces used to be dominated by people who saw free speech as an imperative. Now their own political biases have them supporting censorship.
And the pencil companies let people draw lewd drawings depicting minors. The typewriter manufacturers let a bunch of people write lewd stories depicting minors.
I decided to investigate these claims since it is frequently expressed by those attacking Elon or X. It seems to be yet another misrepresentation or falsehood spread around to achieve political gain.
"CCDH did not prove that X is widely distributing child sexual abuse material. Their report extrapolates from a small, non-random sample of AI-generated images, many of which appear to be stylized or fictional anime content. While regulators are rightly investigating whether Grok’s safeguards were insufficient, CCDH’s public framing collapses “sexualized imagery” and “youthful-looking fictional characters” into CSAM-adjacent rhetoric that is not supported by verified prevalence data or legal findings."
Scale of sexual content:
“~3 million sexualized images generated by Grok”
They sampled ~20,000 images, labeled some as sexualized, then extrapolated using estimated total image volume. The total image count (~4.6M) is not independently verified; extrapolation assumes uniform distribution across all prompts and users.
Images of children:
“~23,000 sexualized images of children”
They label images as “likely depicting minors” based on visual inference, not age metadata. No verification that these are real minors, real people, or legally CSAM.
CSAM framing:
Implies Grok/X is flooding the platform with child sexual abuse material.
The report explicitly avoids claiming confirmed CSAM, using phrases like “may amount to CSAM.”
Public-facing messaging collapses “sexualized anime / youthful-looking characters” into CSAM-adjacent rhetoric.
CCDH's bias:
Ties to the UK Labour Party: Several of CCDH’s founders and leaders have deep ties to Britain's center-left Labour Party. Founder Imran Ahmed was an advisor to Labour MPs.
Target Selection: The organization’s "Stop Funding Fake News" campaign and other deplatforming efforts have frequently targeted right-leaning outlets like The Daily Wire, Breitbart, and Zero Hedge. Critics argue they rarely apply the same scrutiny to misinformation from left-leaning sources.
"Kill Musk's Twitter" Controversy: Leaked documents and reporting in late 2024 and 2025 alleged that CCDH had internal goals to "kill" Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) by targeting its advertising revenue.
I don't know where you live but I've been able to express myself without any form of approval. Granted, I tend to not encourage genocide or glorify fascist regimes, but that's just me.
Where do you live where you're allowed to express yourself without any form of approval?
For instance, in the US, I cannot hysterically scream FIRE while running toward the exit of a theater, nor could I express a desire to cause bodily harm to an individual.
Not that I would, per se, but if I did I'd be liable to prosecution for the damages caused in either instance.
I'd have to get the approval of those involved (by their not seeking legal recourse), in order to do either without consequence.
The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" line is one of the most misunderstood pieces of legal dicta in US history. It comes from a case that was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).
Under current First Amendment law, the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is directed to inciting "imminent lawless action" and is "likely" to produce such action.
To illustrate how high this bar is: you can legally sell and wear a T-shirt that says "I heart killing [X group]". While many find that expression offensive or harmful, it is protected speech. This is because:
- It is not a true threat (it doesn’t target a specific individual with a credible intent to harm).
- It isn't incitement (it doesn't command a crowd to commit a crime immediately).
In the US, you don't need approval to express yourself. The default is that your speech is protected unless the government can prove it falls into a tiny handful of narrow, well-defined exceptions.
FYI freedom of speech in the US sense is not so much about self-expression as much as it is to prevent e.g. the King decreeing a law that “nobody can say the word ‘Parliament’”. Or for a modern example, “discussing what to do about xyz group is ‘hate speech’.”
Anybody can run their mouths. Discussing ideas with others is what’s protected.
Sure — you just deny those same rights to anyone you deem a “fascist” in a secret report. Much like say, the Stasi would allow you to speak your mind unless you were a capitalist subversive, as clearly documented in your secret trial.
Obviously we should censor fascists and subversives!
It's not sad. It's smart to ban hate speech, blatant lies and things like that. We know, we had the Nazis. Seems the US still has to learn a lesson or two, considering the current political situation. Hope it will not be as bad
Right, I guess the people there just magically all woke up one day hating the jews and voting in Hitler. Crazy how that happens. Why do political factions even spend money on campaigning? Those silly geese.
Wait, your operating theory on why the NSDAP became popular is because they... tricked everyone into hating jews?
You are not only entirely misunderstanding why the NSDAP appealed to people, you're also completely misunderstanding what post WWI Germany was - a republic hastily brought about with little care so that Woodrow Wilson would offer Germany peace based on his 14 points (he didn't). It was doomed to fail from the very beginning. If not the NSDAP it would have been some other extremists.
The idea that freedom of speech was what led to its downfall does not stand up to even the smallest scrutiny. Or the idea that an aged, pacified 2026 Germany would immediately return to 1930s Nazism if they had free speech is even more ludicrous.
people are sheep mate... in 2026 with the social media at politicians disposal you can convince most people of just about anything you want. current politics in the US is basically cultism. if trump says that Russians are now great guys, 99% of people who grew up during the cold war that are "maga" now are going "oh, what a turnaround, love them Russians now."
same goes the other way, Germany can return to 1930s in the time one political campaign starts and ends given the state of society at the moment.
I am not advocating for limits on free speech, I am a free speech absolutist. and with that come the consequences we see not just in the united states but around the world. but to think that allowing anyone to say anything cannot lead to absolute catastrophies/hatred/... in the year of our lord 2026 is very misguided...
Yes, I keep thinking about the bastion of free speech that gave birth to the Nazi movement. If only the Weimar Republic had anti-hate speech laws, perhaps the Shoah could have been avoided? Oops, turns out it did have those laws, and those very laws were subverted to suppress dissent.
Case that it's not censorship: it is not about what content TikTok shows, it's about who owns the algorithm and data. Forcing a sale to a US owner keeps the platform available while removing a (perceived) national security risk. The government isn't suppressing any particular speech.
Case it is censorship: forcing the sale of a platform used by 10s of millions of Americans does affect speech of both creators and viewers. The government is making a structural intervention in a speech platform based partly on the potential for future manipulation.
The argument that some would use is that it is more accurately framed as economic nationalism or geopolitical competition dressed in free speech clothing. Others see it as a legitimate national security risk with acceptable free speech tradeoffs.
>"and added that user activity on the site will not be tracked"
Until it will. Please do not make me laugh. This will probably be used to help organize converting regimes or look for potential spies. Not denying possible positive value. If they're so generous they should expose Youtube this way and some generic communication platform if they believe they can pull it off (reliable ban bypassing)
I think the states themselves don't block porn, but require sites to verify users' ages, and sites would rather block access in those states than comply. (although not sure how they do that from a technical standpoint, based on IP geolocation, perhaps?)
I would have loved to be in the meeting where they were wondering how to replace the highly costly and complex influence tool that was USAID, and then someone said:
hold up, you're telling me the US gov't who censored the hunter biden laptop and Ashley Biden diary are going to make sure citizens of other countries get unfiltered news?
What's the point of the EU hosting an empty page? While tons freedoms and content is legal in the USA that isn't in the EU I don't know of any opposites.
Link to the US government banning free speech on the internet. You have no credibility when the UK, Spain, Germany and France have been railing against free speech and calling it "bullshit" in the last month.
The same gov't who censored and lied about the 1)Hunter Biden laptop story and 2) Ashley Biden diary (with inappropriate showers between Joe Biden and Ashley) is going to give people the world "unfiltered news"?
Another dumb idea by our braindead administration.
The site will just be blocklisted by countries who don’t want you to use it. Duh.
You’d have to have some horrendous security instincts to use a government-hosted VPN.
Remember January 2025 when we were pitched the idea that the Trump administration was going to make the federal government efficient and cut frivolous programs?
Let me know when the budget deficit starts to decrease!
I guess it will allow to access information unless it is about abortion or it is negative about DJT.
It is really a joke to pretend that current US cares about freedom of internet access, given all the attacks on free press it things like voice of America radio in the states.
I assume US will also provide a portal to Russian citizen if it is so eager to allow people to bypassing content bans (/s).
French courts /love/ to do blocking orders. Of all the Western European nations, they have the most expansive use of DNS blocking, and other technical orders from courts. Sometimes related to the mundane things you might imagine like counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, and obscenity, but sometimes for absolutely bonkers reasons nobody agrees with.
Knowing what I know about French blocking orders, I wouldn't be surprised if all of Reddit got blocked because of an order related to a single comment, instead of some larger reason that might make sense in the meta.
The world will be exposed to hardcore pornography, child endangerment, AI CSAM, and militant algorithms by force, if needed!
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine (2018) directly claims the internet is “the most effective weapon the government has ever built,” tracing its roots to Pentagon counterinsurgency projects like ARPA’s efforts in Vietnam-era surveillance.
The book argues surveillance was “woven into the fabric” from the start, linking early ARPANET development to intelligence goals, and extends to modern tech giants like Google as part of a military-digital complex.
Sorry, but whatever you think about the laws that lead to these blockages, how else are european governments supposed to take that than a direct attack on their executive powers by a foreign government?
This being besides the fact that the folks crying wolf over "censorship" regularly conflate flat-out lies with valuable and protected speech.
Edit: I mean, I love tor as much as the next person, but imagine the reaction you'd get if an EU state (say, Germany) was to launch an official page with the express goal of allowing access to information censored by the Chinese government, targeting it directly to chinese citizens.
Could you make a moral case for this? Probably.
But would you be surprised or offended if the Chinese government took any measures they saw fit to strong-arm Germany into shutting that site right back down? Probably not. And the crowd here would probably go "bruh what did you expect?"
... Now waiting for examples of exactly that having happened already. :D
rofl, go ahead try spreading lies about someone in the US. IIUC, the slander laws are just as draconian over there. the difference is in whether you can spread the same lies about someone with or without deep pockets without retribution.
Why? Seriously, why do we care so much about this?
Do we not have better uses of our money. Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
> Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
Well you've got plenty of countries doing it, including France, Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Brasil, Australia, you name it. Not that it's good, but a criticism for the goose is a criticism for the gander, as a manner of speaking.
As to which, why or why do we care so much about this? Idk, same reason our government funds tens of thousands of initiatives and cares about lots of different things that people find equally important or unimportant.
Historically the US did care a lot, in a way it reminds me of the Crusade for Freedom [1] and Radio Free Europe [2].
So I find this in line with the behavior of many American administration, the weird thing being that this time the target is not the just usual suspects (China, Iran, etc.) but also European allies.
(not saying this is a good thing btw, just trying to put it in perspective)
These things have been going on forever. Since WWII and until right now, there has been radio stations broadcasting into enemy territory, to bypass censorship.
No, the Trump administration is an enormous supporter of propaganda outlets, just not the ones that already existed. They don't care about maintaining the rules based world order. Their propaganda is much more inward-focused.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Globa...
and some of it has been under the State Department, partly pursuant to the global Internet freedom program introduced by Hillary Clinton in 2010 when she was Secretary of State.
I'm sure the political and diplomatic valence is very different here, but the concept of "the U.S. government paying to stop foreign governments from censoring the Internet" is a longstanding one.
If by "western" you meant some other power then you should be specific. Western as a term is imprecise and can be interpreted differently depending on the audience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.
Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true.
Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount.
Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to carry data all that distance. All built and maintained in secret.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudoun_County,_Virginia#Econo...
And of course all the privately owned ones too. It is bananas. Not just because of government either - low ping times to the biggest population center of North America.
https://youtu.be/JR6YyYdF8ho
That was 14 years ago…
We have MUCH more capabilities today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
I’m well aware of the historical surveillance programs. I’m asking for a source for all of your claims about what’s happening today regarding 80% of internet traffic.
As for traffic, I can’t cite numbers, you’ll just have to trust me when I say it. I can’t give you packet breakdown or IP4 vs IP6. To have that discussion requires a secret clearance at least.
Edited to not be so flippant: I work in HFT/finance where recording all traffic is required I think by law and definitely for one's own sanity. We're able to maintain nanosecond trades while capturing ALL the traffic. It has zero impact on the traffic. This is normal, widely used tech. Think stuff like Ixia passive taps and/or Arista Metamako FPGA-based tap/mux devices.
I have. I have a background in high speed networking.
Have you ever paused for a moment to consider how much infrastructure would be required to send 80% of data on the internet across the country and into a single datacenter in Virginia?
If you've worked in HFT, you can probably at least start to imagine the scale we're talking about.
> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA
Where are you getting this new 200 numbers? Share a source please.
“Loudoun County currently has 199 data centers, with another 117 in development, according to Michael Turner, vice chair of the board of supervisors transportation and land use committee and Ashburn’s district supervisor.”
https://virginiabusiness.com/loudoun-county-advances-changes...
"Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in X"
Does not mean that all traffic goes through a single data center in X. Just that it goes through one of potentially many data centers that happen to be in X.
Ashburn, VA is the data center capital of the world.
When you type and hit submit, even on this site, your data will hit one of those data centers.
The few exceptions are government networks and China.
now.. could they just copy the traffic and send it to VA on a side channel? probably?
Instagram, YouTube, misc Web traffic, and torrents, with a side of minutae.
I'm certain the three letter agencies yearn for the days before letsencrypt was de facto.
It would have to be several times larger than the internet infrastructure itself due to the distances involved.
All built and maintained in secret?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
No, I understand networking hardware quite well actually. I'm also familiar with Room 641A. Room 641A did not capture 80% of internet traffic. If you think 80% of internet traffic could be routed through Room 641A you're not thinking about the infrastructure required to get it all there. It was a targeted operation on backbone lines that were right there.
Simply having secret clearance doesn't mean you can just go digging around arbitrary secret classified info that you have no business reading. And it certainly doesn't mean that discussion can be had on hackernews.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-ha...
https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-s...
https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-aus...
Mmmmkay…
Say I'm a UK citizen with advanced glioblastoma (implying loss of faculties, seizures, and pain; no cure, and things to worsen before eventually passing away, possibly some time from now). Suppose I wish to view websites on euthanasia options, but am blocked from doing so by the UK's Online Safety Act.
How does/will Freedom.gov help? (is it essentially a free VPN?)
Also, as others have pointed out, couldn't the censoring government simply block access to freedom.gov?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-...
This is not an administration that does technological innovation. Trump's "social media site" started as just rebranded Mastodon.
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1WCCeV...
Simple HTML:
Also it is cheap, easy, non-controversial domestically in the US, and ethically coherent with American values.
I'm a lifelong US citizen and burst out laughing at this. What values? What coherence?
Do you mean the NSA man-in-the-middleing all that traffic and leaving a backdoor for Mossad? Imagine the most despicable possible invasion of privacy and the most reprehensible shadow oppression and manipulation of an uneducated populace you can conjure up.
Now imagine something way worse than that. This is America.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a perfect solution; I think it’s meant to be a political tool.
Also, the US does fund Tor — originally US Navy + DARPA, now through Dept of State. Entirely possible that they’ll eventually operate a Tor onion site for freedom.gov too.
I am merely explaining what MITM is and what the OP meant.
You can also call it "U.S. government spying on Europeans".
You're aware news sites are used to push agenda, some more than others, but that's half the interest of seeing what they push. And sometimes the more fringe have stories on what should be news but don't make it to mainstream media channels.
...anyway I'm more a believer in assuming people have a brain and can figure stuff out vs banning sites, both have danger to them but censorship seems the bigger danger to me.
Also the world's largest library is banned in Germany.
Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass the ban accidentally, and anyone who wants to can trivially use a different DNS.
I mean I'm probably more in favour of digital piracy than the next guy, but I had completely missed that were calling copyright protection censorship now?
1) Catalan Referendum Website Seizures (2017)
Spanish courts ordered ISPs to block dozens of pro-independence domains and mirror sites during the referendum. Civil Guard units physically entered data centers to seize servers tied to the Catalan government’s digital voting infrastructure.
2) GitHub Repository Takedown (2017)
Spain obtained a court order forcing GitHub to remove a repository that mirrored referendum voting code and site information, extending censorship beyond Spanish-hosted domains.
3) Rapper Convictions for Online Lyrics
Spanish rapper Valtònyc was convicted for tweets and lyrics deemed to glorify terrorism and insult the monarchy; he fled the country and fought extradition in Belgium for years.
⸻
France
4) Blocking of Protest Pages During Yellow Vests (2018–2019)
Authorities requested removals of Facebook pages and livestreams tied to the Yellow Vest protests, citing incitement and public order concerns.
5) Court-Ordered Removal of Election Content (2019 EU Elections)
French judges used expedited procedures under election-period misinformation law to order removal of allegedly false political claims within 48 hours.
6) Prosecution of Political Satire as Hate Speech
Several activists were fined or prosecuted for online posts targeting religious or ethnic groups in explicitly political contexts, even where framed as satire.
⸻
Germany
7) Mass Police Raids Over Social Media Posts
German police have conducted coordinated nationwide dawn raids targeting individuals accused of posting illegal political speech under hate-speech laws.
8) Removal of Opposition Content Under NetzDG
Platforms removed thousands of posts from nationalist or anti-immigration political actors within 24 hours to avoid heavy fines under NetzDG enforcement pressure.
9) Criminal Convictions for Holocaust Commentary Online
Individuals have received criminal penalties for online statements denying or relativizing Nazi crimes, even when framed in broader political debate contexts.
⸻
United Kingdom
10) Police Visits Over Controversial Tweets
British police have conducted “non-crime hate incident” visits to individuals’ homes over political tweets, creating official records despite no prosecution.
11) Arrests for Offensive Political Posts
Individuals have been arrested under public communications laws for posts criticizing immigration or religion in strongly worded terms.
12) Removal of Campaign Content Under Electoral Rules
Election regulators required digital platforms to remove or restrict political ads that failed to meet transparency requirements during active campaigns.
⸻
Italy
13) Enforcement of “Par Condicio” Silence Online
During mandated pre-election silence periods, online political content—including posts by candidates—has been ordered removed or fined.
14) Criminal Defamation Charges Against Bloggers
Italian bloggers critical of politicians have faced criminal defamation prosecutions for investigative posts during election cycles.
⸻
Finland
15) Conviction of Sitting MP for Facebook Posts
Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was prosecuted for Bible-based comments posted online regarding sexuality and religion; although ultimately acquitted, the criminal process itself was lengthy and high-profile.
⸻
Sweden
16) Convictions for Anti-Immigration Facebook Posts
Swedish courts have convicted individuals for Facebook comments criticizing immigration policy when deemed “agitation against a population group.”
⸻
Netherlands
17) Criminal Case Against Opposition Politician
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was convicted (without penalty) for campaign-rally remarks later amplified online, deemed discriminatory.
⸻
Austria
18) Rapid Court Orders Against Political Posts
Austria’s updated online hate-speech regime enabled expedited court orders compelling removal of allegedly unlawful political speech within days.
⸻
Belgium
19) Prosecution of Political Party Messaging
Members of the Vlaams Belang party have faced legal sanctions for campaign messaging shared online deemed racist or discriminatory.
⸻
Switzerland
20) Criminal Fines for Referendum Campaign Speech
Swiss activists have faced criminal fines for online referendum messaging judged to violate anti-discrimination law during highly contentious votes.
For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years.
There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO.
Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
Actually they feel like they might secretly be the fifty first state!
freedom.live freedom.xyz freedom.space etc.
It's one thing to block some random .gov site unused for anything else, it's another thing to block a domain used for, say, filing flight plans.
(The flight plans get passed between countries via AFTN/AMHS, which are dedicated telecommunications networks independent of the Internet.)
There's also several different ways to transmit the passenger manifest to CBP - including over a CBP-provided VPN and IATA "Type B" messages sent through ARINC/SITA.
The network for Type B messages is also independent of the Internet (it was developed 60 years ago).
Seriously though... we have one segment undermining foreign lockdowns while the same and other segments are literally doing the same here.
(The other things we're best at is having a huge military and having legally protected free speech, which is ironically being weakened, as you say.)
Weird title, but worthy of discussion. From the little info available so far this appears to be little more than political posturing. If you want to fight censorship, an "online portal" to access all the censored content is the wrongest possible way to go about it. But we'll see.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/
Why are my taxes paying for benefits for Europeans?
They already killed USAID.
Real rich material coming from the government demanding it's biggest Internet companies unmask government critics.
How ever will we Europeans keep up with the latest theories about which celebrities are actually AI influencers.
Gone are the days of the misfits and pirates and the innovators.
"Tie me up and tell me what I'm allowed to do daddy government, I will agree no matter what, you know what's best."
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20050209024923/http://freedom.go...
2. https://web.archive.org/web/19981201060504/http://freedom.go...
https://web.archive.org/web/19990423190847/http://www.freedo...
When the government does not allow its population to freely speak against it, it's just waiting to be abused by one bad leader.
You're not allowed to insult anyone, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__185.html , though the term "insult" is not nearly as broadly defined as in everyday speech. The law dates back to the 18th century, and has largely been unchanged for 150 years. I really don't understand the recent outrage over these and other laws. We have been fine.
More background: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beleidigung_(Deutschland)
The last 150 years of Germany have...ahem...not been what I would call "fine."
It would be interesting to have a replay of history without this law and similar ones related to it. Could be nothing different happens.
On the other hand, any law regulating speech is going to have a reverberating effect on the marketplace of ideas with 2nd and 3rd order outcomes that are impossible to disentangle after the fact.
But it's certainly not been because of that law…
At the very least I'm sure you'll agree we've been fine the last 80 or so years. Again, I'm just saying I don't understand the outrage right now.
Germany restricts insulting individuals / your neighbour, police officer, a pastor or a minister. There’s no special law for politicians. Political criticism is protected under the Basic Law (constitution). Go ahead and be crucial about a politician’s actions but don’t insult their person’s honour or use a slur. That’s not your freedom of speech, that’s the dignity. In fact, you can even insult the government! You can say German government as the government is not a person.
Germany is currently actively campaigning to force everyone to use their real names on all social media and force ID checks to do so, a clear chilling effect for free speech.
Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit".
Europe is against free speech, any argument to the contrary must contend with the above examples of them trampling on rights.
Source? (Other than one derailed politician, which unfortunately we get to call our chancellor, having a moment? He's still not "Germany", though, not even "the German government".)
> Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit".
I think you're misrepresenting what he said:
https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuelmacron-calls-social-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-18/macron-bl...
Macron was responding to criticism of the Digital Services Act, which contains censorship provisions for 'hate speech', which is repeatedly and routinely used by European nations to crack down on protected political speech. For example, it has been used as an excuse to censor political views leaning anti-immigration.
The UK in particular has used Ofcom as a weapon to target American companies that enable free speech communications, notably 4chan.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/germanys-merz-calls-real...
You do realize that the UK is not part of the EU? So I'm not sure how UK's supposed "weaponization" of Ofcom has anything to do with Macron's statement.
> which is repeatedly and routinely used by European nations to crack down on protected political speech.
I'm really looking forward to your sources here. The DSA does not contain any provisions that change anything about the legality of speech. It's mostly meant to harmonize procedural aspects across the member states.
https://www.csis.org/blogs/europe-corner/does-eus-digital-se...
https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/quick-take/a-clear-eyed-look-at-th...
I'm saying, there is a huge difference between a random utterance of the chancellor, which by next week he'll likely already have forgotten about, and "Germany actively campaigning" e.g. at the EU or federal level, both of which would require both ruling parties to get behind the chancellor's demands, which – based on how similar discourses have turned out in the past – is completely unlikely.
I'm not defending Merz's position, not by a long shot. I'm just saying that, based on previous experience, we're still quite far away from the "actively campaigning" stage and very, very, very far away from Merz's ideas being turned into law. I'm concerned about many things but this is not one of them. Civil rights organizations are already rallying and telling him how stupid he is¹ for suggesting that real name enforcement would be a good idea. :-) It's the usual political discourse.
¹) See how I am exercising my right to free speech and am not at all concerned about being charged for "insulting a politician"?
Can you share some concrete examples from reputable sources that show these? Every examples I've seen have been clear-cut calls for violence, or unambiguous harassment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/hundreds-charged...
> After the Southport stabbings, several people were questioned by police over false communications for spreading claims the attacker was a Muslim immigrant. In one instance, a man pleaded guilty to the offence for a livestreamed video on TikTok where he falsely claimed he was “running for his life” from rioters in Derby.
That very much seems like an attempt to harass or invite harassment against a group of people...
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1qv0vpi/...
The propaganda take I keep seeing is that you can get arrested for misgendering people or something, but these are at least close to incitement to violence. Some clearly cross that line.
To be clear I’m closer to the American view. I think the bar should be very, very high for speech to be criminally actionable. Just pointing out that it doesn’t seem as nuts as some make it sound.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-net/...
"Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
"A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/hundreds-charged...
"Legal experts have also questioned the new rules. David Hardstaff, a serious crime expert at the law firm BCL Solicitors, said the fake news offence was “problematic both for its potential to stifle free speech if misused, but equally for its lack of clarity and consistency”."
> The January 14, 2016, edition of Weekly Disinformation Review reported the reemergence of several previously debunked Russian propaganda stories, including that Polish President Andrzej Duda was insisting that Ukraine return former Polish territory, that Islamic State fighters were joining pro-Ukrainian forces, and that there was a Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.11
> Sometimes, Russian propaganda is picked up and rebroadcast by legitimate news outlets; more frequently, social media repeats the themes, messages, or falsehoods introduced by one of Russia’s many dissemination channels. For example, German news sources rebroadcast Russian disinformation about atrocities in Ukraine in early 2014, and Russian disinformation about EU plans to deny visas to young Ukrainian men was repeated with such frequency in Ukrainian media that the Ukrainian general staff felt compelled to post a rebuttal.12
> Sometimes, however, events reported in Russian propaganda are wholly manufactured, like the 2014 social media campaign to create panic about an explosion and chemical plume in St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, that never happened.15 Russian propaganda has relied on manufactured evidence—often photographic. Some of these images are easily exposed as fake due to poor photo editing, such as discrepancies of scale, or the availability of the original (pre-altered) image.16 Russian propagandists have been caught hiring actors to portray victims of manufactured atrocities or crimes for news reports (as was the case when Viktoria Schmidt pretended to have been attacked by Syrian refugees in Germany for Russian's Zvezda TV network), or faking on-scene news reporting (as shown in a leaked video in which “reporter” Maria Katasonova is revealed to be in a darkened room with explosion sounds playing in the background rather than on a battlefield in Donetsk when a light is switched on during the recording).17
> RT stated that blogger Brown Moses (a staunch critic of Syria's Assad regime whose real name is Eliot Higgins) had provided analysis of footage suggesting that chemical weapon attacks on August 21, 2013, had been perpetrated by Syrian rebels. In fact, Higgins's analysis concluded that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks and that the footage had been faked to shift the blame.18 Similarly, several scholars and journalists, including Edward Lucas, Luke Harding, and Don Jensen, have reported that books that they did not write—and containing views clearly contrary to their own—had been published in Russian under their names.
I found that source on the Wikipedia page for RT after a couple of minutes. You can find more pretty easily.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
I had ChatGPT investigate and summarize the report from CCDH it is based on. https://counterhate.com/research/grok-floods-x-with-sexualiz...
Scale of sexual content: Images of children: CSAM framing: CCDH's bias:For instance, in the US, I cannot hysterically scream FIRE while running toward the exit of a theater, nor could I express a desire to cause bodily harm to an individual.
Not that I would, per se, but if I did I'd be liable to prosecution for the damages caused in either instance.
I'd have to get the approval of those involved (by their not seeking legal recourse), in order to do either without consequence.
Under current First Amendment law, the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is directed to inciting "imminent lawless action" and is "likely" to produce such action.
To illustrate how high this bar is: you can legally sell and wear a T-shirt that says "I heart killing [X group]". While many find that expression offensive or harmful, it is protected speech. This is because:
- It is not a true threat (it doesn’t target a specific individual with a credible intent to harm).
- It isn't incitement (it doesn't command a crowd to commit a crime immediately).
In the US, you don't need approval to express yourself. The default is that your speech is protected unless the government can prove it falls into a tiny handful of narrow, well-defined exceptions.
Anybody can run their mouths. Discussing ideas with others is what’s protected.
Obviously we should censor fascists and subversives!
Uh what? :-)
Everyone has their own idea what hate is. For me: it is anyone saying any word with “a” in it. Better stay quiet, or it is hate speech.
You are not only entirely misunderstanding why the NSDAP appealed to people, you're also completely misunderstanding what post WWI Germany was - a republic hastily brought about with little care so that Woodrow Wilson would offer Germany peace based on his 14 points (he didn't). It was doomed to fail from the very beginning. If not the NSDAP it would have been some other extremists.
The idea that freedom of speech was what led to its downfall does not stand up to even the smallest scrutiny. Or the idea that an aged, pacified 2026 Germany would immediately return to 1930s Nazism if they had free speech is even more ludicrous.
same goes the other way, Germany can return to 1930s in the time one political campaign starts and ends given the state of society at the moment.
I am not advocating for limits on free speech, I am a free speech absolutist. and with that come the consequences we see not just in the united states but around the world. but to think that allowing anyone to say anything cannot lead to absolute catastrophies/hatred/... in the year of our lord 2026 is very misguided...
- RFK Jr.
I guess that's why arguments against it always fall back on straw men and hypothetical slippery slopes.
There are plenty of actual things that do negatively affect societies free speech but this isn't even close to one of them.
Yes, I keep thinking about the bastion of free speech that gave birth to the Nazi movement. If only the Weimar Republic had anti-hate speech laws, perhaps the Shoah could have been avoided? Oops, turns out it did have those laws, and those very laws were subverted to suppress dissent.
[0]: https://www.torproject.org/about/supporters/
What’s a good example?
Case that it's not censorship: it is not about what content TikTok shows, it's about who owns the algorithm and data. Forcing a sale to a US owner keeps the platform available while removing a (perceived) national security risk. The government isn't suppressing any particular speech.
Case it is censorship: forcing the sale of a platform used by 10s of millions of Americans does affect speech of both creators and viewers. The government is making a structural intervention in a speech platform based partly on the potential for future manipulation.
The argument that some would use is that it is more accurately framed as economic nationalism or geopolitical competition dressed in free speech clothing. Others see it as a legitimate national security risk with acceptable free speech tradeoffs.
there are volleys back and forth of "what censorship" followed by links to wikipedia enumerating it. RT and Joe Rogan are thrown in the mix.
when did this experiment fail?
Until it will. Please do not make me laugh. This will probably be used to help organize converting regimes or look for potential spies. Not denying possible positive value. If they're so generous they should expose Youtube this way and some generic communication platform if they believe they can pull it off (reliable ban bypassing)
And my taxes need to fund a VPN when there’s 50 cheap VPNs on the market? What happened to reducing spending?
If the goal is to balkanize the internet, this administration has hit upon an excellent step.
"...user activity on the site will not be tracked."
Ok, stopped reading right there.
- Why don't we just make a website?
- Yes let's just do that.
...Right?
Do you have any examples?
Am I reading that correctly?
I'd rather not...
The site will just be blocklisted by countries who don’t want you to use it. Duh.
You’d have to have some horrendous security instincts to use a government-hosted VPN.
Remember January 2025 when we were pitched the idea that the Trump administration was going to make the federal government efficient and cut frivolous programs?
Let me know when the budget deficit starts to decrease!
visuals with the only text on screen being...
---
"Freedom is Coming"
Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.
They also gutted the prior org that helped people do this in other countries on the ground
https://freedom.gov/
It is really a joke to pretend that current US cares about freedom of internet access, given all the attacks on free press it things like voice of America radio in the states.
I assume US will also provide a portal to Russian citizen if it is so eager to allow people to bypassing content bans (/s).
you're too kind
Reddit is not blocked anywhere in France.
Knowing what I know about French blocking orders, I wouldn't be surprised if all of Reddit got blocked because of an order related to a single comment, instead of some larger reason that might make sense in the meta.
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine (2018) directly claims the internet is “the most effective weapon the government has ever built,” tracing its roots to Pentagon counterinsurgency projects like ARPA’s efforts in Vietnam-era surveillance.
The book argues surveillance was “woven into the fabric” from the start, linking early ARPANET development to intelligence goals, and extends to modern tech giants like Google as part of a military-digital complex.
This being besides the fact that the folks crying wolf over "censorship" regularly conflate flat-out lies with valuable and protected speech.
Edit: I mean, I love tor as much as the next person, but imagine the reaction you'd get if an EU state (say, Germany) was to launch an official page with the express goal of allowing access to information censored by the Chinese government, targeting it directly to chinese citizens.
Could you make a moral case for this? Probably.
But would you be surprised or offended if the Chinese government took any measures they saw fit to strong-arm Germany into shutting that site right back down? Probably not. And the crowd here would probably go "bruh what did you expect?"
... Now waiting for examples of exactly that having happened already. :D
Do we not have better uses of our money. Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
Well you've got plenty of countries doing it, including France, Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Brasil, Australia, you name it. Not that it's good, but a criticism for the goose is a criticism for the gander, as a manner of speaking.
As to which, why or why do we care so much about this? Idk, same reason our government funds tens of thousands of initiatives and cares about lots of different things that people find equally important or unimportant.
So I find this in line with the behavior of many American administration, the weird thing being that this time the target is not the just usual suspects (China, Iran, etc.) but also European allies.
(not saying this is a good thing btw, just trying to put it in perspective)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_for_Freedom
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...