Billboard: ‘Delete, Silence, Abolish’: America’s Estranged Allies Ramp Up Perceived Censorship, Speech Rules
As the global battle over freedom of speech intensifies, America’s traditional allies in Europe are accelerating efforts to tighten their grip on online discourse, stirring fresh concerns among conservatives and free speech advocates. The message plastered across European Union initiatives is blunt: “Delete, Silence, Abolish.” Once stalwart defenders of democratic liberties, these nations now appear more aligned with authoritarian suppression than open dialogue.
Under the guise of combating “disinformation,” European leaders are enacting and enforcing sweeping codes of conduct and digital services regulations that critics say dangerously blur the line between managing misinformation and silencing dissent. The European Commission’s latest update to its Code of Practice on Disinformation, revised in 2022 and enforced more aggressively in 2024, urges Big Tech platforms to not only remove flagged content but to reduce visibility of voices considered “non-mainstream”—even when such speech falls within lawful boundaries.
The European Union last week made its officially voluntary three-year-old “Code of Practice on Disinformation” legally binding under the Digital Services Act. It’s now a “Code of Conduct” to be used as a “relevant benchmark for determining DSA compliance” for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bing, TikTok, YouTube and Google Search.
This trend, though largely dismissed by legacy media outlets, has set off alarm bells for many in the United States. Conservatives see these efforts as a warning shot, revealing how quickly democratic nations can drift toward soft authoritarianism when speech becomes subordinate to ideology.
The European Union’s playbook, now openly encouraging platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Meta, and Google to “mitigate the risks of systemic misinformation,” reflects a coordinated transnational campaign that extends beyond national borders. As Just the News reports, the messaging—“delete, silence, abolish”—summarizes a chilling mission: scrub the internet of narratives that challenge the political orthodoxy.
Even billionaire Elon Musk has found himself in the crosshairs of this movement. His platform, X, withdrew from the EU’s disinformation code earlier this year, prompting EU officials to threaten severe legal consequences under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA). European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned Musk that the DSA “is not voluntary” and that non-compliance could result in multi-billion-euro fines or even a full blackout of the platform within the EU.
Such threats are not idle. The DSA, which took full effect in February 2024, empowers Brussels to demand transparency, algorithmic control, and even data access from tech companies—essentially forcing them into a role as global speech police. And now, even American platforms and users are being swept up in these rules, as cross-border compliance requirements force U.S.-based tech firms to act as European enforcers.
The implications are profound. American citizens—protected by the First Amendment at home—are finding their content throttled or deleted overseas due to foreign speech codes. What’s more troubling is that some U.S. officials and policy influencers are encouraging this model. The Biden administration has quietly signaled support for international regulatory alignment on disinformation, a stance that many conservatives argue undermines national sovereignty and constitutional protections.
According to legal scholars this transatlantic censorship alliance threatens to make tech companies the arbiters of truth. Without clear accountability or judicial oversight, platforms are increasingly interpreting vague rules in ways that punish dissenters—especially those critical of progressive agendas, climate hysteria, or global health mandates.
Even more alarming is the growing evidence that what is deemed “disinformation” often includes legitimate debate. Critics note that once-verboten claims about COVID origins, vaccine side effects, and election irregularities have since been vindicated, yet platforms have faced no repercussions for deplatforming those who got it right before the narrative shifted.
From a Christian conservative standpoint, the erosion of free speech represents more than just a political problem—it’s a moral crisis. The biblical mandate to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) becomes nearly impossible in societies where truth is defined by bureaucrats, and “love” is reinterpreted as never offending secular sensibilities. The Gospel itself, which offends the modern worldview with its claims of absolute truth and sin, is increasingly labeled as hate speech in progressive Europe.
The censorship contagion is now spreading to issues of gender ideology and family structure. Several European nations, including Germany and the Netherlands, have started investigating religious or conservative content that questions LGBTQ doctrines or traditional family values. In France, a pastor who merely quoted Bible verses on sexuality was fined under anti-hate legislation. This chilling effect signals that even private religious convictions are no longer safe from state interference.
America must learn from this troubling global trajectory. The Constitution, especially the First Amendment, was designed to protect citizens from exactly this type of government overreach. But with the increasing entanglement of U.S. tech giants in global regulatory networks, Americans are at risk of seeing their rights diluted by foreign agendas.
It’s time for Congress to reassert U.S. sovereignty and protect digital speech from international encroachment. Tech companies must be forced to choose: either uphold the U.S. Constitution or lose their privileges and protections at home. More importantly, American Christians must be vigilant and vocal, defending the God-given right to proclaim truth even as hostile forces attempt to muzzle it.
In the words of founding father Benjamin Franklin, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” As European allies move to delete, silence, and abolish dissent, Americans must resist any effort to follow suit.
Keywords:
free speech, censorship, EU disinformation code, Digital Services Act, Elon Musk X, Thierry Breton, Christian worldview, tech regulation, First Amendment, conservative values