By Jo Nova
Nothing like mucking up the holiday plans of the overbearing bureaucrat…
To combat the rise of the Blob’s new insidious censorship laws Donald Trump will deny visas to any foreign officials who are now or ever were involved in censorship of American citizens.
Suddenly EU lawmakers, and Brazilian Judges will find they can’t get a visa to the USA, and the ban may apply to their family members too.
This should slow down the spread of new cancerous “content moderation” laws around the world, and the attacks on the US Tech Giants. It would also apply to the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese if he brings back the Misinformation and Disinformation laws he tried to rush through last November.
Thus, it may be that Donald Trump may yet prevent some of the worst laws ever dreamed up in Australia (hallalujah). Not that anyone in the government will ever admit that.
Announcement of a Visa Restriction Policy Targeting Foreign Nationals Who Censor Americans
Press Statement, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States. It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil. It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States. We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech.
One of the worst offenders, the EU, brought in the “Digital Services Act,” (DSA) which threatens monster fines of 6% of global turnover if companies did not “moderate content” to the EU’s vague, ambiguous satisfaction. This would have meant all the large platforms would have had to second guess what was acceptable speech, and censor it automatically. These censorship-by-proxy laws meant the EU could technically claim they weren’t censoring anyone directly, but in reality, they were farming out the censorship to platforms like X, Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon. And because of the risk of obscene fines, the lawyers for all these companies would have been sweating on their automated word hunts, and the censorship would have been worse than if the EU did it openly.
The EU wanted to be the Global Regulator of the Internet. Most of the large platforms would not want to run two different mirror platforms in order to comply with the EU rules, so they would adopt the new moderation rules around the world.
US to ban foreign officials over ‘flagrant censorship’ on social media
By Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis, Reuters
WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) – The U.S. will impose visa bans on foreign nationals it deems to be censoring Americans, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday, and he suggested the new policy could target officials regulating U.S. tech companies.
U.S. tech companies and the Trump administration have challenged U.S. allies in Europe, alleging censorship of social media platforms. Restricting officials from visiting the U.S. appeared to be an escalation by Washington.
The dispute comes as the EU seeks a trade deal with Washington to avoid President Donald Trump’s threatened 50% tariffs on European imports. Rubio’s announcement came just before he met with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in Washington.
The Australian government dreams of bringing in its own worse-version of the EU laws
The Combatting Misinformation Laws here, would have been more draconian, more sweeping and apply to even smaller platforms, including fines for solo bloggers. The Australian rules were aimed at stopping people professing things that “undermined trust in institutions” or caused “harm to public health” so (don’t criticize vaccines, don’t be nasty to the ABC, BoM or CSIRO and don’t say bad things about the Government!)
At the time, even the US based CATO Institute warned the Australian rules would hit free speech around the world, including Americans. So obviously Mr Albanese could find himself on the visa ban list if he did. (Lucky for him, he failed, eh?)
The Transnational Streisand Effect
Imagine if the Australian government rewrites the Misinformation laws so that US companies only have to censor Australians. The Labor Party might accidentally set up a transnational feedback loop of defiance, where censorship at home creates more speech abroad. It would surely spring forth a radioactive Streisand Effect as those same censored Australians sent messages to friends and ex-pats in the US who could thus wreck havoc and mischief and speak up for them. It could spawn a whole new industry in the US of proxy content providers, paid to say things about Australia that Australians were not allowed to say. It could be all-American sport pointing out the stupid things that were banned in Australia. Wouldn’t that be fun?
An E.U. bureaucrat on free speech was woken,
Thinking U.S. tech giants too outspoken,
At J.F.K. airport was shocked,
When free entry was blocked,
With no visa, back to Brussels, was broken.
–Ruairi
Mt Rushmore image Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay.
Airplanes image by dakotaviking from Pixabay