The EU’s Stealth Censorship Playbook

By John Gustavsson

Sunday, July 26, 2026

 

Western Europe’s struggle with free speech and with the tech sector is set to dramatically ramp up. Until recently, speech regulation has been a national matter, leading to vastly different tolerance levels in different countries (with laws stricter in Germany than in, say, Poland). New EU laws are changing that, and they could prove to have an intensely chilling effect on open political debate by rewarding self-censorship with algorithmic prominence.

 

In October of last year, the EU rolled out the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation, introducing an onerous regulatory burden on political advertising that included requiring explicit user consent to process personal data for targeting such ads, along with bans on profiling based on inferred political views (or other special categories). Platforms found in violation could be fined up to 6 percent of their worldwide revenue. For Meta, to take one example, this would mean a $12 billion fine.

 

Tech companies are used to being fined by the EU; just this week, Google was fined over $1 billion over what the Brussels deemed to be anti-competitive practices. Yet after they were first held responsible for disinformation under the Digital Services Act, this new regulation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Rather than silently comply, tech companies pushed the nuclear button and responded by banning all EU-based political and social advertisements: Now, no political party in the EU can advertise on any social media platform. The same goes for grassroots advocacy groups and lobbying organizations, as well as individuals seeking to increase their follower counts by boosting posts of their own that feature political content.

 

The platforms understandably concluded that the risk of such an enormous fine was too high, and the definition of “political advertising” and “disinformation” too vague, for it to be worth the risk of allowing any political ads whatsoever. While political parties, organizations, and activists can still post on the platforms, they must now rely on organic reach. The new regulation also affects media organizations, which are now banned from promoting any posts — for example, an opinion column — that expresses political beliefs.

 

While tech companies have already begun to respond, this regulation is set to have swift and predictable consequences for political and media institutions in Europe. The rule benefits large and mainstream parties, movements, and organizations that do not rely as much on social media to get their messages out. Many already have large social media followings; being restricted to organic clicks and views will have much less of an impact on them.

 

Second, the regulation benefits traditional media. Without social media as an outlet to reach voters, advertising in and being covered by traditional media becomes all the more important. Political groups that had pivoted away from traditional media in favor of new outlets now find themselves trying to get their ads back into the morning newspapers.

 

Third, the rule benefits political influencers who already have large followings, for the same reason. Established political commentators don’t need to pay for visibility because they’ll get it anyway.

 

Finally, the regulation will benefit social media users who are willing to engage in rage-baiting. Posting incendiary, outrageous remarks is a common way for small accounts to “go viral” and grow overnight. This trend holds true for parties and organizations: If you post something outlandish, more people will click, reply, and share — the algorithm will reward you. Moderate and nuanced voices have always struggled to be heard on social media, and thanks to the EU, those voices now cannot even pay for visibility.

 

EU leaders likely expected the first two outcomes: At the risk of giving them too much credit, they must have known that tech companies would respond by banning political ads. The platforms told them as much a year in advance. But that the regulation’s consequences ended up benefiting the political establishment was a feature of its enactment, not a bug. Only belatedly, though, do EU leaders appear to have realized that their rules created an incentive for rage-bait — and, ironically, for disinformation, since posts peddling outrageous, made-up claims often receive more engagement than those that present nuanced truth. The EU has discovered one of social media’s sad realities: The best way to get organic reach is to make stuff up.

 

To fix this, the EU is now in the early stages of reviewing and revising the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). Among the regulations being debated are rules that would force social media platforms to artificially increase the prominence of “media services of general interest.”

 

These include, first and foremost, publicly funded and operated media organizations. Imagine if posts by NPR were the first thing you saw when you opened Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube — that could soon be reality in the EU. Much like in the United States, public media in the EU leans left on most controversial issues — from identity politics to immigration. Their posts would effectively be automatically promoted without charge, while everyone else would remain unable to pay for promotion.

 

The absurdities don’t end there. The term “media services of general interest” is vague and deliberately crafted to allow member states to define the media outlets that qualify. As an example, a center-left, culturally progressive outlet like Der Spiegel could be classified as being of general interest by an ideologically friendly German government, dramatically increasing the paper’s social media reach. Such a situation would fulfill the European Commission’s expressed intention of giving a leg up to traditional media outlets; the Commission has said that the rule’s goal is “improving the level playing field between traditional and new digital players,” with the implication that it is traditional media who have been disadvantaged and require support.

 

This, combined with the political advertising ban, would quite possibly be the worst thing to happen to freedom of the press in Europe since World War II. All media outlets would be incentivized to play nice and refrain from criticizing their country’s government, because doing so would mean potentially losing the privilege of being classified as “of general interest.” Honest reporting on controversial topics like immigration could be discouraged and even censored by concerned media executives.

 

This isn’t speculation; in fact, Europe has already seen, albeit on smaller scale, the insidious effects of state intervention on behalf of favored media outlets. Some EU member states — for example, Sweden and Austria — maintain press subsidy systems in which the government dishes out grants to support the operations of private newspapers (including online outlets), enabling the media organizations to charge less for subscriptions than outlets who are not approved for subsidies. While officially politically neutral, these subsidies are frequently charged with being biased.

 

Of course, the EU’s new provision could also give right-wing, immigration-skeptical governments in Eastern Europe the ability to designate outlets friendly to their views as “media services of general interest.” Yet, true to form, Brussels is already plotting to “fix” this problem by introducing EU-wide guardrails and guidelines for designation. It goes without saying that this would have a chilling effect on outlets promoting Euroskeptic views: Even if guidelines were written with neutral-sounding language, the mere fact that the EU was involved — and could change the rules at any time in determining who gets boosted — could make journalists think twice about crossing Brussels.

 

As far as censorship goes, the EU’s decisions have been well-crafted: Outright banning a social media platform would immediately be noticed, and users would protest. Leaving the platforms legal but controlling what content reaches the top of the feed is a much smarter move for the progressive, pro-censorship bureaucrats in Brussels.

 

These troubling recent developments in the European Union should serve to highlight how money and political spending are fundamental to defending freedom of speech. Without being free to spend money to advertise their views, non-mainstream voices can have their voices neutered without being explicitly banned.

 

The revision of the AVMSD is still in its early stages. With the EU not having fully committed — at least in public — to any specific changes, now is the perfect opportunity for the U.S. government to intervene and put pressure on the EU not to proceed. Once an updated directive is in place, it will be much more difficult for the EU to back down without losing face.

 

The U.S. government should also put pressure on social media platforms to refuse to comply with any requests for preferential treatment of government-approved outlets — even if that would mean exiting the EU market altogether. In the end, it is likely that only the sudden lack of access to their favorite apps and websites would give European voters the wake-up call they need to protest the censorious conduct of their leaders. Washington should help make that happen.