The EU Is Building A Ministry Of Truth
Europeans underestimate America's commitment to free speech and overestimate its commitment to NATO
Hi Friends, I’m happy to share a recent interview with me by an inspiring new Swedish magazine, Kvartal. Enjoy! — Michael
The EU’s billion-krona fine against Elon Musk’s X is censorship in disguised form, argues American journalist Michael Shellenberger. He also warns that Europeans grossly underestimate the United States’ commitment to freedom of expression and how much of a symbolic issue the fine is about to become.
by Pelle Zackrisson
Last Friday, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X 120 million euros – the equivalent of 1.4 billion kronor. According to the Commission, the case concerns technical violations: misleading blue check marks, insufficient ad transparency, and denial of data access for researchers.
But according to Michael Shellenberger, one of the journalists behind the so-called Twitter Files that exposed censorship cooperation between American authorities and social media, the fine is in fact an attempt to force X to censor.
“The strategy of censorship by proxy is the dominant censorship strategy used by Western governments,” Shellenberger tells Kvartal.
“Ministry of Truth”
Shellenberger describes a system in which the EU appoints so-called “trusted flaggers” – NGOs and academics who receive special access to the platforms’ data in order to identify content that is to be removed.
“At bottom, it is about creating a Ministry of Truth made up either of NGOs or university researchers, and often the government also finances these groups,” he maintains.
Even though it is a different system, third-party reviewers have also been used in Sweden. Since 2020 Meta has had a partnership with Källkritikbyrån, which is paid to review content that is then labeled on Facebook and Instagram. That cooperation, however, is part of Meta’s own fact-checking program and is not connected to the EU’s “trusted flagger” system under the DSA legislation.
According to journalist Emanuel Karlsten, Meta’s program continues in the EU even after it has been discontinued in the United States.