As the European Union moves aggressively to shape online discourse through the Digital Services Act (DSA), EU Commissioner for Technology Henna Virkkunen has been deflecting scrutiny abroad, pointing fingers at the United States for what she describes as a more extensive censorship regime.
Relying on transparency data, she argues that platforms like Meta and X primarily remove content based on their own terms and conditions rather than due to DSA directives. But this framing misrepresents how enforcement works in practice, and downplays the EU’s systemic role in pushing platforms toward silence through legal design, not open decrees.
Virkkunen highlighted that between September 2023 and April 2024, 99 percent of content takedowns occurred under platform terms of service, with only 1 percent resulting from “trusted flaggers” authorized under the DSA. A mere 0.001 percent were direct orders from state authorities.
On paper, this paints a picture of platform autonomy. But in reality, the architecture of the DSA ensures that removals appear “voluntary” precisely because they are incentivized by looming regulatory consequences.
Under the DSA, platforms are held legally accountable for failing to remove certain types of content.
This liability drives a strong incentive to err on the side of over-removal, creating a culture where companies preemptively censor to minimize risk. Virkkunen frames these decisions as internal, but in truth, many of them reflect anticipatory compliance with European legal expectations.
The fact that content is flagged and removed “under T&Cs” does not indicate independence, it reflects a strategy of risk avoidance in response to EU enforcement pressure.
This dynamic is by design. The DSA doesn’t rely on high numbers of direct takedown orders from governments. Instead, it outsources content control to the platforms themselves, embedding speech restrictions in the guise of corporate policy.
The regulatory burden falls on private actors, but the agenda is shaped by Brussels. Delegating enforcement doesn’t dilute state influence; it conceals it. The veneer of decentralization does not remove the fact that the state has created the framework and exerts ongoing leverage over what platforms consider acceptable.
Hellbound and Down 