Marco Rubio delivered a pointed warning to the world: the First Amendment is going global. The US secretary of state announced visa restrictions targeting “foreign officials and persons” complicit in censoring Americans. “Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere,” he said, “the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.”
Diplomatically, it falls just shy of sanctions. No names were named: everyone implicated in speech policing, from ministers to overzealous constables, must now wonder whether their family holiday to Disney World has just been indefinitely postponed. Nowhere is the unease more acute than in Dublin.
Ireland has long enjoyed its status as the EU’s Anglophone entrepôt, a low-tax haven with excellent manners. But with most major social media platforms headquartered there, Dublin’s regulators have inherited the unenviable task of enforcing Brussels’ online speech codes.
Caught between Brussels and Washington, and economically tethered to both, Ireland finds itself in a tight spot. It can no longer please everyone. And the timing could hardly be worse.
Brussels enacted the Digital Services Act (DSA), the most ambitious speech regulations in its history. It requires platforms to remove “illegal content,” including those now-ubiquitous modern offences: “disinformation” and “hate speech”. Both are defined, helpfully, by national authorities with varying sensibilities. Brussels has made clear it prefers those definitions to be broad, and enforcement to be swift.
The European Commission has now given Dublin two months to resuscitate a shelved hate speech bill or face the European Court of Justice. The law, paused after public backlash, rests on the elastic premise that hate is whatever the state says it is. That may comfort the authorities, but it leaves tech platforms navigating a legal hall of mirrors.
The result? American companies face a binary choice: enforce vague foreign speech codes, or risk fines of up to 6 per cent of global turnover per breach. Most will opt for the safer route: when in doubt, delete.
The knock-on effects have not gone unnoticed across the Atlantic, and Washington is not amused. As it steps back from its old role as global policeman, it finds its companies quietly conscripted as global censors. The regime, for good measure, threatens to tax not just American profits, but the principles underpinning them. And thanks to a quirk of geography and corporate clustering, Ireland has become the bailiff.
That role has already earned Dublin what diplomats might politely call a “frank exchange of views”. This week, Trump dispatched a team to the Irish capital, where they met with free speech advocates and, I’m told, delivered a few sharp words to the Irish government and media commissioner.
Diplomatically, it falls just shy of sanctions. No names were named: everyone implicated in speech policing, from ministers to overzealous constables, must now wonder whether their family holiday to Disney World has just been indefinitely postponed. Nowhere is the unease more acute than in Dublin.
Ireland has long enjoyed its status as the EU’s Anglophone entrepôt, a low-tax haven with excellent manners. But with most major social media platforms headquartered there, Dublin’s regulators have inherited the unenviable task of enforcing Brussels’ online speech codes.
Caught between Brussels and Washington, and economically tethered to both, Ireland finds itself in a tight spot. It can no longer please everyone. And the timing could hardly be worse.
Brussels enacted the Digital Services Act (DSA), the most ambitious speech regulations in its history. It requires platforms to remove “illegal content,” including those now-ubiquitous modern offences: “disinformation” and “hate speech”. Both are defined, helpfully, by national authorities with varying sensibilities. Brussels has made clear it prefers those definitions to be broad, and enforcement to be swift.
The European Commission has now given Dublin two months to resuscitate a shelved hate speech bill or face the European Court of Justice. The law, paused after public backlash, rests on the elastic premise that hate is whatever the state says it is. That may comfort the authorities, but it leaves tech platforms navigating a legal hall of mirrors.
The result? American companies face a binary choice: enforce vague foreign speech codes, or risk fines of up to 6 per cent of global turnover per breach. Most will opt for the safer route: when in doubt, delete.
The knock-on effects have not gone unnoticed across the Atlantic, and Washington is not amused. As it steps back from its old role as global policeman, it finds its companies quietly conscripted as global censors. The regime, for good measure, threatens to tax not just American profits, but the principles underpinning them. And thanks to a quirk of geography and corporate clustering, Ireland has become the bailiff.
That role has already earned Dublin what diplomats might politely call a “frank exchange of views”. This week, Trump dispatched a team to the Irish capital, where they met with free speech advocates and, I’m told, delivered a few sharp words to the Irish government and media commissioner.
6 months ago
