US FCC chair says EU Digital Services Act is threat to free speech

By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday called out European Union's content moderation law as incompatible with America's free speech tradition and warned of a risk that it will excessively restrict freedom of expression.

"There is some concern that I have with respect to the approach that Europe is taking with the DSA (EU Digital Services Act) in particular," Brendan Carr, a Republican appointed to the FCC helm by President Donald Trump in January, said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

For U.S. tech companies in Europe, Carr said, DSA's approach was "something that is incompatible with both our free speech tradition in America and the commitments that these technology companies have made to a diversity of opinions."

Carr is the second high-ranking U.S. official in recent months to challenge European regulations. In February, Vice President JD Vance denounced content moderation at an AI summit in Paris, calling it "authoritarian censorship."

Trump has made free speech a central theme of his presidency, signing an executive order on his first day in office to "restore freedom of speech and end censorship".

Carr echoed this stance, saying, "From President Trump to me, across the government, we are encouraging our technology companies to stop the censorship we saw the last couple of years."

The DSA, which became effective a year ago, is meant to make the online environment safer and fairer by compelling tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content including hate speech and child sexual abuse material.

A European Commission spokesperson pushed back against Carr's comments, saying the censorship allegations against the DSA are completely unfounded.

"The aim of our digital legislation, for example the DSA, is the protection of fundamental rights," spokesperson Thomas Regnier said. "We all agree on the need to ensure that the internet is a safe place, as VP Vance put it at the AI Action Summit in Paris."

While Trump has signed a memorandum warning that his administration would scrutinise the DSA, Carr last week sent a mail to U.S. tech companies requesting briefings on how they planned to reconcile the DSA with America's free speech tradition.

The companies, including Apple, Meta, Alphabet and others, have until Monday to respond.

One possible solution is geofencing — restricting content by region — to create separate geographical platforms for EU compliance and the U.S. administration's free speech requirements.

But Carr said it was unclear whether this approach was technically or economically feasible.

"If there is an urge in Europe to engage in protectionist regulations, to give disparate treatment to U.S. technology companies, the Trump administration has been clear that we are going to speak up and defend the interests of U.S. businesses," he said.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Aidan Lewis)