The US State Department is developing an online portal that will allow people in Europe and other parts of the world to freely view content banned by their governments, including material labeled as «hate speech» and «terrorist propaganda.»
The US State Department is developing an online portal that will allow people in Europe and other parts of the world to freely view content banned by their governments, including material labeled as «hate speech» and «terrorist propaganda.»
As Reuters reports, citing its sources, Washington sees this step as «a way to counter censorship,» and such a site will be hosted at «freedom.gov.»
According to one source, US officials have discussed the possibility of enabling a virtual private network feature on this site to make user traffic appear to originate from the US.
The project, led by Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, was supposed to be presented at last week’s Munich Security Conference, but its presentation was postponed.
According to the publication, this project could further aggravate relations between Donald Trump’s administration and EU countries, which are already tense due to trade disputes, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the US president’s desire to establish control over Greenland.
Thus, the portal developed by the State Department will actually encourage citizens to violate local laws.
In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesman said the US government does not have a specific digital censorship circumvention program for Europe, but added: «Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, and this includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship circumvention technologies such as VPNs.»
Previously, US officials have condemned EU policies that they say suppress the voices of far-right politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, and have said that documents such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Internet Safety Act restrict free speech.
The European rules, as the publication writes, most affect social networks and large platforms from Meta, as well as X, where the EU restricts the availability — and in some cases requires the rapid removal — of content classified as «hate speech,» «terrorist propaganda,» or «harmful disinformation.»
For example, Germany issued 482 removal orders in 2024 for material it believed incited terrorism and forced providers to remove 16,771 pieces of content.
The publication also writes that it is not yet clear what advantages the US government portal will offer users compared to regular commercial VPNs. The freedom.gov web address was registered on January 12.
As dev.ua wrote, the European Commission has opened a new investigation against the X platform due to possible violations of the Digital Services Act after the launch of Grok and the appearance of AI-generated sexual images on the platform.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron called the defense of free speech on social media pure nonsense and opposed one of President Donald Trump’s key foreign policy goals.
