Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
In response to what the Trump administration says is a rising tide of censorship in Europe, the State Department is launching a new app that will give users worldwide access to content that has been censored in other countries.
This includes not only Europe but also China and Iran. The platform, called Freedom.gov, will go live over the next several weeks, according to the State Department, and will be operable on iOS and Android devices.
“Freedom.gov is the latest in a long line of efforts by the State Department to protect and promote fundamental freedoms, both online and offline,” the State Department stated in an email to The Epoch Times. “The project will be global in its scope, but distinctly American in its mission: commemorating our commitment to free expression as we approach our 250th birthday.”
Lauding the move, Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a civil rights legal group that has been critical of recent EU speech laws, stated on X that “for 250 years, this is what America does,” citing examples such as Radio Free Europe, which broadcast into communist countries during the Cold War.
“If Europe’s bureaucrats don’t want you to see it, that tells you everything,” Tedesco stated. “Because even if your government fears freedom—ours doesn’t.”
The First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. government from “abridging the freedom of speech,” has provided a legal restraint against government censorship that most other countries lack.
Recent European speech laws, most notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), were ostensibly written to combat what lawmakers deemed “hate speech,” “harmful speech,” and “misinformation,” as well as pornography and abusive AI deep fakes. But critics of European speech codes say they are becoming increasingly draconian.
In 2025, Virginie Joron, a French member of the European Parliament, called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.”
In Finland, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament, was charged for quoting Bible verses online in 2019, criticizing her church’s participation in a gay pride event.
“I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she told The Epoch Times.
In Germany, illegal online speech could include insulting government officials. German police conducted early morning raids in June 2025 as part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts,” and arrested 140 residents in the process.
In the UK, people praying silently in the vicinity of abortion clinics were arrested in 2023 and 2025. Left-wing ruling parties in Canada are likewise working to remove religious exemptions from their “hate speech” laws.
Increasingly, U.S. companies are facing extensive fines for allowing online posts that are illegal in Europe. In December, social media company X was fined $140 million for violating EU speech laws.
Such fines on U.S. tech companies, both for speech code violations and for what the EU deems to be anti-competitive behavior, could become a trade issue for the Trump administration.
In January, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the “EU makes more from fines on US tech, than tax from ALL of public European tech,” noting that in 2024, the EU fined American tech companies a total of 3.8 billion euros.
In addition, legal experts have warned that Europe’s online censorship laws could also silence Americans if U.S. tech companies are forced, on a global basis, to take down content that violates EU speech codes.
A House of Representatives report released on Feb. 3 and titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat” stated that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.”
According to the Digital Services Act, illegal online speech could include anything that is prohibited in any EU member country. And in one of the more explicit efforts to regulate speech globally, European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk during the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign that his company could face penalties for posting an interview with Trump.
In a 2025 interview with The Epoch Times, Andrew Puzder, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, stated: “When a company like Facebook or Twitter or X has to change its algorithm, and that algorithm might impact the free speech rights of Americans, that’s something that we really can’t tolerate. I know President Trump is not going to allow a foreign government to restrict the free speech rights of American citizens in ways that even our own government couldn’t restrict them.”
