SUMMARY

• X became the first American platform to be fined under the EU’s Digital Services Act, receiving a €120 million penalty after allegedly refusing to open up its data to “disinformation researchers.”
• Disinformation researchers are critical to online censorship – they are the ones who compile databases of disfavored speech and the advertisers that fund it.
• Without access to online platforms’ data, the international censorship machine is blind.
• The EU’s Digital Services Act and its provisions mandating data access for researchers emerged with the full support and cooperation of the US government under the previous administration.
• 23 US-funded “counter-disinformation” organizations are involved in the EU’s censorship regime, representing $15,444,695 in US taxpayer funding. Many of these organizations will receive access to X’s data if EU bureaucrats successfully pressure the platform.
• Documents reviewed by FFO also expose the central role of the US Trade Representative and the US International Trade Administration at the Department of Commerce.
• Both collaborated with the EU under the previous administration, through the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, which developed a shared list of policy priorities that were later enshrined in the Digital Services Act.
• These include the DSA’s provisions on data access for researchers that are now being used to target X.

The European Commission announced on December 4 that it will fine Elon Musk’s X €120 million (approx. $140 million) for non-compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s draconian online censorship regime. The Commission has given X 60 days to provide it with a compliance plan, at the risk of “periodic penalty payments.”

X was the first platform to be investigated under the DSA. Immediately upon the censorship law going into force last year, the EU’s ruling commission of unelected bureaucrats used its new powers to investigate the platform Musk, after months of saber-rattling from European officials that began shortly after Musk’s takeover of the company and concurrent promise to roll back its censorship regime.

The €120 million fine is not the end of the matter. If X ignores the Commission’s demands, the EU can impose periodic penalties up to 5% of a company’s average daily worldwide turnover for each day of continued non-compliance.

While this censorship attack appears to be coming solely from Europe, the real picture is more complicated. The Digital Services Act did not emerge in a vacuum – it was the product of a transatlantic US-EU censorship partnership that reached its apex under the Biden administration.

This partnership, run out of the International Trade Administration at the Department of Commerce, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative at the White House, developed a shared US-EU strategy on containing “harmful” online content.

This strategy included forcing tech platforms to open themselves up to “disinformation researchers” who can identify both disfavored online speech and online advertisers for potential boycott operations. Failure to allow these (often state-funded) “researchers” free access to their data is precisely why the EU has fined X.

In more ways than one, the European Commission is acting as a government-in-exile for the US federal censorship state that enjoyed the support of the previous administration, only to be defunded and expunged by the current one.

Transatlantic Censorship: The US-EU Trade and Technology Council

The roots of the EU’s censorship campaign against X can be found in the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, a four-year liaison between the architects of censorship on two continents that began in the first year of the Biden administration.

In its inaugural joint statement, the US and EU announced 10 “working groups” devoted to a wide range of digital policy. One of these, Working Group 5, specifically sought to develop “shared approaches” to censoring disfavored online content.

From the inaugural statement:

Working Group 5 – Data Governance and Technology Platforms: The Data Governance and Technology Platforms working group is tasked to exchange information on our respective approaches to data governance and technology platform governance, seeking consistency and interoperability where feasible. We intend to exchange information and views regarding current and future regulations in both the United States and European Union with a goal of effectively addressing shared concerns, while respecting the full regulatory autonomy of the United States and European Union. We have identified common issues of concern around: illegal and harmful content and their algorithmic amplification, transparency, and access to platforms’ data for researchers as well as the democratic responsibility of online intermediaries. We have also identified a shared interest in using voluntary and multi-stakeholder initiatives to complement regulatory approaches in some areas. We are committed to transatlantic cooperation regarding platform policies that focus on disinformation, product safety, counterfeit products, and other harmful content. We plan to engage with platform companies to improve researchers’ access to data generated by platforms, in order to better understand and be able to address systemic risks linked to how content spreads online.  We also plan to engage in a discussion on effective measures to appropriately address the power of online platforms and ensure effective competition and contestable markets. The working group is also tasked to discuss, alongside other working groups, common approaches on the role of cloud infrastructure and services.

In addition to stating outright that the previous administration “shared concerns” with the European Union about the spread of disfavored online speech, the inaugural statement specifically highlights the importance of making sure “researchers” can access platforms’ data.

This is a critical point. “Disinformation researchers” are the eyes and ears of the global censorship regime. They are the ones who compile lists of disfavored users, posts, and online narratives that are then passed on to content moderation departments for censorship.

Without access to data from social media platforms at scale, disinformation researchers – and the global censorship machine that relies on them – are blind.

Guaranteeing this access was so important to the US-EU Trade and Technology Council that in each of the years it published reports, it was mentioned as a priority.

In 2022, the US-EU body reiterated that “researchers” are essential to understanding online risks, “particularly those related to illegal content and harmful content,” and expressed concern that data access was dependent on “voluntary” mechanisms established by tech platforms:

In 2023, the US-EU council gave the issue of data access for researchers equal billing to the protection of children as a policy priority:

In the same publication, the US and EU expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that tech platforms were not bound by law to open up their data to the “disinformation researchers” of the censorship industry.

The joint statement specifically connects this to priorities like “information integrity” and “election integrity” – the pretexts used to censor virtually every prominent Trump supporter ahead of the 2020 election, as well as President Trump himself, in 2021.

The statement also said that data access for researchers was critical to analyzing “disproportionate impacts on vulnerable, marginalized, or underrepresented communities.” This is the hate speech pretext — another common bureaucratic justification to shut down political speech online. And the United States under the previous administration, despite the First Amendment, gave its full support to the EU’s approach.

And finally, in 2024 – an entire standalone report devoted to the topic, titled “Mechanisms for Researcher Access to Online Platform Data.” The report compared the various methods of data access from the platforms, and noted (with US approval) that the Digital Services Act mandated access to both data and ad repositories.

This is a critical point, because DSA Articles 40.12 and 39 are exactly the provisions that the European Commission has accused X of violating. The previous administration directly supported the same provisions that led to a €120 million fine against an American company. 

From the European Commission’s announcement of the €120M fine against X:

The current administration may have ended domestic government support for censorship with Executive Order 14149, but European bureaucrats are still dutifully carrying out the priorities of the transatlantic censorship regime the order sought to abolish.

The “Civil Society” Swarm 

The direct censorship collaboration between the US and EU via the previous administration’s Trade and Technology Council exposes a deep level of transatlantic coordination in the establishment of the DSA. 

But there are also a great deal of indirect links. As FFO previously revealed, 23 US-funded organizations – a mixture of NGOs, university research departments, and private companies – are involved in the EU’s censorship regime.

Some were signatories to the EU’s code of practice on disinformation, while others are directly enforcing the DSA through participation in the EU’s network of “digital observatories,” which monitor online speech at scale. These are the same digital observatories that the EU hopes to force X to open itself up to.

The list of US-funded participants in the “digital observatories” is as follows: 

Newsguard 

The infamous private blacklisting service received $750,000 from the Department of Defense in 2021. Its close connections to the old foreign policy blob don’t end there — until December of last year, its public list of advisors (now scrubbed from the website) included former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden, former NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former DHS secretary Tom Ridge, and former State Department undersecretary Richard Stengel.

Bellingcat

Widely praised by the US intelligence community, Bellingcat is a journalism and “open source intelligence” outfit that aims to provide actionable intelligence in a public way. The organization has received over $115,000 in funding from NED.

The University of Taru, Estonia

Received a $400,000 award from the US Department of State for an “advanced study program in combating disinformation to improve democratic resilience.”

Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania

Received $10,250 from the U.S. Department of State to host a “global media and information literacy week.”

Funky Citizens, Romania

A Romanian “anti-disinformation” and “civic fitness” nonprofit that received $161,822 across five separate grants from the State Department, including to “strengthen the communication strategies of Romanian NGOs ahead of the 2024 election.” The results of that election were nullified by Romanian courts – apparently with EU support, as boasted by former EU commissioner Thierry Breton. The pretext for the nullification, which prevented the accession of a right-wing populist government, was an alleged Russian social media campaign.

Fundatia Centrul / Centrul Pentru Jurnalism Independent, Moldova

This journalism NGO in Moldova received $918,709 from the State Department across seven grants, more than $500,000 of which was concentrated in two grants in 2022 and 2023. These include grants to fund local journalists and  “social media monitoring.”

Seesame PR, Slovakia

This Slovakia-based PR firm was paid $149,924 by the State Department across two grants, including $125,000 for a PR campaign to “strengthen trust in freedom and democracy” in 2019.

Vrije University, Belgium

Vrije has received over $1.5 million in grants and awards from the U.S. government, including the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, and the Environmental Protection Agency. While most of this funding is for projects unrelated to censorship, one $50,000 grant from the State Department was for “empowering youth” in Belgium, Finland, and Turkey to “counter disinformation.”

Cyprus University of Technology

The Cyprus University of Technology has received $316,765 from the State Department, including a number of grants for “misinformation” and “media literacy” research.

EU DisinfoLab, Belgium

Purpose-built for combating “disinformation,” this NGO received $15,000 from the State Department to implement its project in Latvia.

Verificat, Spain

A “fact checker” aimed at combating disinformation in Spain’s Catalonia region, Verificat received $11,000 from the State Department to host a workshop on disinformation.

NewsWhip

A social media analytics company, NewsWhip received part of a $317,268 award (that could pay up to $866,919 by its end date in 2028) from the State Department for a variety of electronic services.

Austria Presse Agentur (APA)

The national news agency of Austria, APA has received $305,874 in subscription revenues from the State Department since 2016.

Agence France Presse (AFP)

Based in France, AFP is the world’s oldest news agency, with over $300 million in annual revenues and the 27th-most visited news site in the world. AFP received $9,914,902 from the U.S. government, mainly in the form of subscriptions. The bulk of this ($9.14m) came from the U.S. Agency for Global Media. It also received $351,592 from the Department of Defense, $150,808 from the Department of State, and $279,255 from USAID. Of all the organizations involved in the EDMO disinformation-monitoring hubs, AFP has the most involvement, acting as an observer in eight of the fourteen “digital media observatories.”

The Open Society European Policy Institute

As citizen journalists on X have uncovered, George Soros’ influence operation in Europe, the Open Society European Policy Institute, has held multiple meetings with EU officials to discuss “disinformation,” including meetings that directly address the Digital Services Act.

From the European Commission’s public register of meetings:

The deep, decades-long collaboration between George Soros and the US foreign policy state is well-documented, including direct coordination with USAID in the 1990s to train emerging political leaders in central and eastern Europe.

The picture is clear: the European Union is not acting alone, and the Digital Services Act is not a purely EU creation. Until the current administration, it had the full support of the permanent bureaucracy in Washington DC, as well as the global network of US taxpayer funded “civil society” organizations that now hope to use the DSA as a battering ram to gain access to X’s data.

The previous administration may be gone, but its censorship machine lives on in the EU.