DEMOCRACY WATCHRegulating X Isn’t Censorship. It’s Self-Defense
The European Union’s landmark new content law, the Digital Services Act (DSA) reflects hard-earned European wisdom. It comes from historical memory of democracies undone by propaganda, foreign interference, and the normalization of lies. Vice President J. D. Vance and X owner Elon Musk harshly criticize DSA, framing their agenda as “free speech,” but in Europe, it increasingly looks like a coordinated push to weaken democratic institutions and empower their far-right allies.
In 2024, during the fiercely fought US presidential election campaign, current US Vice President JD Vance made an extraordinary ultimatum: if Europe wanted the United States to remain committed to NATO, it should stop regulating Elon Musk’s X.
Vance wasn’t just objecting to regulation; he was recasting it as a threat to democracy itself. But in reality, regulation is what defends democracy.
‘American power comes with certain strings attached,’ Vance warned in September. ‘One of those is respect free speech—especially in our European allies.’
Vance made the comments during a podcast interview in reaction to a letter sent to Elon Musk and publicly shared in August by the then EU commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton.
Vance, who has previously acknowledged crafting statements for media impact rather than accuracy, mischaracterised the letter. Breton hadn’t called for Musk’s arrest, as Vance claimed on the podcast, nor had he objected to Trump appearing on the platform.
But Breton’s missive was, nonetheless, both provocative and profoundly unhelpful. It invoked X’s obligations under the European Union’s landmark new content law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), in the context of a planned livestream between Musk and Donald Trump—an episode that risked being read as an effort to tilt the scales of the US election.
Brussels moved quickly to contain the fallout. Within days of Breton’s letter becoming public, European Commission officials scrambled to clarify that the warning had not been coordinated, endorsed or even seen in advance by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen or her colleagues.
The incident was part of an ongoing feud between Breton and von der Leyen that ultimately ended with Breton’s resignation from his role and the withdrawal of his nomination for a second term in the commission.
Breton’s departure effectively took the heat off Musk. The commission was about to wrap up its probe into X and issue a substantial fine, but momentum stalled after Breton left.
After Trump’s victory and Musk’s ascendance into a role in the administration, the smart money in Brussels bet that the commission would slow-walk DSA enforcement against X and focus on an easier target, Chinese-owned TikTok.
But, in an infamously blunt speech in Munich in February, Vance hinted that even that could be a step too far. Romania had just annulled a national election over a TikTok-led influence operation which was linked to Russia and which Vance dismissed as overblown.
