We need to start calling the Digital Services Act what it really is: The Digital Censorship Act. It gives governments the power to determine what you can read, say, share and question. It makes politicians the wardens of information. You speak when they allow it. You think only inside the lines they draw. You read only what they allow you to consume. That is not regulation. That is control.
The DSA gives the bureaucrats in Brussels the power to police opinion. It forces platforms to remove speech that the government deems harmful. It forces companies to turn over user data for “risk analysis.” It threatens fines so large that any platform that dares not to comply can be crippled. This is not a government/industry partnership. This is subservience.
We should not be fooled about the timing. The moment Elon Musk bought Twitter, the Left lost their main pressure valve. They lost a megaphone they once controlled via behind the scenes censorship deals with Twitter’s former executives. They lost a tool that shaped public narratives for years. For the first time their influence over the digital public square imploded in real time. Internal files revealed what many suspected. Governments requested. Big Tech complied. Dissidents were silenced. Elections were targeted. Debate was filtered.
Musk shut it down. He exposed it with proof. He stopped the pipeline of government requests that once flowed through unchecked. Then he opened the flood gates of free speech originated by platforms like Parler, Truth and Rumble. That disruption created panic among those who built their political careers on controlling information flow. The DSA became their new weapon.
The DSA is not about safety. It is about power, total government power. It is designed to kneecap any platform and free thinking individual that dares not to play ball by imposing state approved narratives. It gives bureaucrats the power to define what misinformation is and the power to punish platforms that refuse to erase it. It lets governments crush dissidents while wearing the badge of democracy protectors. That is the exact tactic every repressive regime in history used before they stripped citizens of their basic rights.
Look at what is happening across the UK, the EU and Australia. People are arrested for posts. Phones are seized for memes. Accounts are erased with no right of appeal. Speech is treated as a threat to society that must be extinguished. The goal is not protection. The goal is obedience.
History is not coy about where this path leads. When regimes control speech, they control thought. When they control thought, they control populations. That is the Soviet Union. Mao’s China. Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy. North Korea. Cuba and so on. The 20th century saw more than 100 million killed under governments that began their journey with restrictions on free expression. Every single one of them justified it as a shield from dangerous ideas. Every one of them treated free expression as a threat to their power.
The United States Founding Fathers put freedom of speech as the first God-given right in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Without free speech, every other right collapses. Without free speech, you are at the mercy of those who claim to know what is best for you. Without free speech, you lose the ability to question authority before authority becomes absolute.
We in the US and Europe have to be honest with ourselves. The DSA is not a safety framework. It is a political weapon to silence dissent. It is a system built to eradicate independent thought by labeling it as a danger. Free access to information is the last barrier preventing full government control. Once that barrier is breached, nothing stands between citizens and a government with the power to dictate every aspect of life.
Censorship creates submission. Submission creates oppression. Oppression ends lives. We have the proof, just crack open a history book. The consequences are real. The threat is not theoretical.
Freedom of speech is the line that must be held to protect every society from history repeating itself. Hold that line.
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