If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. US Vice President JD Vance criticized the European Union this week after rumors reportedly surfaced that Brussels may seek to punish X for refusing to remove certain online speech. In a post on X, Vance wrote, “Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.” His remarks reflect growing tension between the United States and the EU over the future of online speech and the expanding role of governments in dictating what can be said on global digital platforms. Vance was likely referring to rumors that Brussels intends to impose massive penalties under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a censorship framework that requires major platforms to delete what regulators define as “illegal” or “harmful” speech, with violations punishable by fines up to six percent of global annual revenue. For Vance, this development fits a pattern he’s been warning about since the spring. In a May 2025 interview, he cautioned that “The kind of social media censorship that we’ve seen in Western Europe, it will and in some ways, it already has, made its way to the United States. That was the story of the Biden administration silencing people on social media.” He added, “We’re going to be very protective of American interests when it comes to things like social media regulation. We want to promote free speech. We don’t want our European friends telling social media companies that they have to silence Christians or silence conservatives.” Yet while the Vice President points to Europe as the source of the problem, a similar agenda is also advancing in Washington under the banner of “protecting children online.” This week’s congressional hearing on that subject opened in the usual way: familiar talking points, bipartisan outrage, and the recurring claim that online censorship is necessary for safety. The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade convened to promote a bundle of bills collectively branded as the “Kids Online Safety Package.” The session, titled “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online,” quickly turned into a competition over who could endorse broader surveillance and moderation powers with the most moral conviction. Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) opened the hearing by pledging that the bills were “mindful of the Constitution’s protections for free speech,” before conceding that “laws with good intentions have been struck down for violating the First Amendment.” Despite that admission, lawmakers from both parties pressed ahead with proposals requiring digital ID age verification systems, platform-level content filters, and expanded government authority to police online spaces; all similar to the EU’s DSA censorship law. Vance has cautioned that these measures, however well-intentioned, mark a deeper ideological divide. “It’s not that we are not friends,” he said earlier this year, “but there’re gonna have some disagreements you didn’t see 10 years ago.” That divide is now visible on both sides of the Atlantic: a shared willingness among policymakers to restrict speech for perceived social benefit, and a shrinking space for those who argue that freedom itself is the safeguard worth protecting. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post JD Vance Condemns EU Censorship Pressure, Defends X appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Emmanuel Macron thinks the Republic needs a quality seal for reality. The French president recently proposed creating an official “reliability label” for news outlets, modeled on Reporters Without Borders’ Journalism Trust Initiative. He insists it is not censorship. It is a “democratic duty.” “It is about making our young people understand, encouraging them, motivating them to turn toward press outlets, whether in physical, printed form or digital,” Macron said, as though the French youth were a flock that had wandered into the dangerous fields of the internet and needed shepherding back to Le Monde. The proposal, presented during a discussion with readers of the Ebra press group, called for a label for outlets that follow ethical standards, validated by “peers and third-party experts.” The government, he said, would not decide who qualifies. It would only “encourage” such standards. But in France, the words “encourage” and “government” often mean something closer to “mandatory, eventually.” The model is RSF’s Journalism Trust Initiative, which already certifies media that meet certain requirements. Certified outlets supposedly even get algorithmic advantages on platforms like Bing. Macron wants a French version, claiming it would bring “international recognition of the professionalism of our journalists and the rigour of our editorial teams.” Translated from technocrat to plain French: good media will rise to the top, bad media will sink to the digital basement. This, Macron says, will help fight “disinformation.” The country has heard that promise before. Each new attempt to fight misinformation seems to end up tightening control over information itself. The idea landed with the subtlety of a brick through a newsroom window. On BFMTV, Parliamentary Party Leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen called it “unworthy,” said the proposal was “extremely dangerous,” accusing Macron of wanting “to master information.” Bruno Retailleau, leader of Les Républicains, said “no government has the right to filter the media or dictate the truth.” The Mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, said the president had “crossed a fundamental line.” Even some journalists balked at being graded by a system endorsed by the state. Macron denied everything. “There is not going to be a state label, and even less a ‘ministry of truth,’” said government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon after the cabinet meeting. Macron repeated that “it is not the state that should verify” the truth, since “otherwise it becomes a dictatorship.” So far, the reassurance has not worked. The term “Ministry of Truth” is now glued to the project in every headline, thanks in part to a viral editorial by Pascal Praud on CNews, who accused the president of “wanting to impose a single narrative.” In a remarkable act of irony, the Élysée responded to critics on X by posting a video labeled “warning, false information.” The president’s communications team, while denying the existence of a Ministry of Truth, had just produced something that looked exactly like one. The post set off another round of outrage. Jordan Bardella, President of the National Rally, said Macron’s proposal was “the reflex of a man who has lost power and seeks to maintain it by controlling information.” The label plan is part of Macron’s wider campaign against disinformation. He has floated legal changes to allow “false information” to be blocked online more quickly and has repeatedly called for tighter regulation of social media, describing the current state of the internet as “the Wild West.” It is not hard to see why the issue obsesses him. Macron and his wife have been the targets of online rumors for years. For a president who sees himself as a technocratic reformer, the swamp of digital conspiracy has become both a personal irritant and a political threat. Macron insists that only a system of certified journalism can protect the public from manipulation. The trouble is, the public does not want the government or anyone tied to it certifying which journalists to trust. Reporters Without Borders may be an NGO, but any system announced by the president and promoted as a matter of “democratic duty” will carry the scent of state authority. Once the government endorses a “trust” label, those without it become, by definition, untrustworthy. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Macron’s Proposed Seal of Truth Meets a Wall of Criticism appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. This week, Sarah Rogers, the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, touched down in the UK not to sip tea or admire the Crown Jewels, but to deliver a message as subtle as a boot in the face: stop trying to censor Americans in America. Yes, really. According to Rogers, the UK’s speech regulator, Ofcom, the bureaucratic enforcer behind Britain’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), has been getting ideas. Dangerous ones. Like attempting to extend its censorship regime outside the United Kingdom and onto American soil. You know, that country across the ocean where the First Amendment exists and people can still say controversial things without a court summons landing on their doormat. Rogers called this attempt at international thought-policing “a deal-breaker,” “a non-starter,” and “a red line.” In State Department speak, that is basically the equivalent of someone slamming the brakes, looking Britain in the eye, and saying, “You try that again, and there will be consequences.” To understand how Britain got itself into this mess, you have to understand the Online Safety Act. It is a law that reads like it was drafted by a committee of alarmed Victorian schoolteachers who just discovered the internet. The OSA is supposedly designed to “protect children online,” which sounds noble until you realize it means criminalizing large swaths of adult speech, forcing platforms to delete legal content, and requiring identity and age checks that would make a KGB officer blush. It even threatens prosecution over “psychological harm.” And now, apparently, it wants to enforce all of that in other countries too. Rogers was not impressed, saying Ofcom has tried to impose the OSA extraterritorially and attempted to censor Americans in America. That, she made clear, is outrageous. It’s more than a diplomatic spat. Rogers made it painfully clear the US isn’t going to just write a sternly worded letter and move on. There is legislative retaliation on the table. The GRANITE Act, Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny & Extortion, is more than a clever acronym. It is the legislative middle finger Washington can consider if the UK keeps pretending it can veto American free speech from 3,500 miles away. The bill, already circulating in the Wyoming state legislature, would strip foreign governments of their usual protections from lawsuits in the US if they try to censor American citizens or companies. In other words, if Ofcom wants to slap US platforms with foreign censorship rules, they had better be ready to defend themselves in an American courtroom where “freedom of expression” isn’t a slogan, it is a constitutional right. Rogers confirmed that the US legislature will likely consider that and will certainly consider other options if the British government doesn’t back down. Of course, the GRANITE Act didn’t come out of nowhere. Rogers’s warning didn’t either. It is a response to the increasingly unhinged state of free speech in the UK, where adults can be arrested for memes, priests investigated for praying silently, and grandmothers interrogated for criticizing gender ideology. “When you don’t rigorously defend that right, even when it’s inconvenient, even when the speech is offensive,” Rogers said, “you end up in these absurd scenarios where you have comedians arrested for tweets.” This is the modern UK, where “hate speech” has been stretched to include everything from telling jokes to sharing news stories about immigration. And now, under the OSA, that censorious spirit has gone global. Rogers warned, the OSA “imposes on the whole world, not just Britain, and imposes on adults, not just kids.” If the UK’s censorship crusade weren’t already mad enough, Rogers also sounded the alarm over another disturbing development. The possible elimination of jury trials in certain speech cases. That is right. They want to replace twelve citizens with a judge trained to enforce every absurdity in the rulebook. Rogers wasn’t having it. Without juries, “you won’t have access to jury nullification of your absurd censorship laws,” she said. Rogers ended with an appeal to history, to principle, and, in the most ironic twist of all, to British tradition. The US, she said, is preparing to mark its 250th anniversary and plans to do so with celebrations honoring the Magna Carta and the principle of free speech. In a not-so-subtle jab, she urged the UK to “adhere to disciplines like the ones encoded in the First Amendment.” Imagine that. The United States of America, born from rebellion against British tyranny, now reminds Britain that they were the ones who proposed liberty in the first place. So here we are. Britain is trying to boss the world around with a censorship law so absurd it could only have been written in a panic about teenagers on TikTok. The US has responded with a verbal haymaker and a legislative bat named GRANITE. What happens next is up to Downing Street. But one thing is clear. If they think they can export their speech codes across the Atlantic, they’re in for a rude awakening. Because America has a little thing called the First Amendment, and if Britain keeps trying to override it, they’ll find out very quickly that the colonists didn’t throw tea in a harbor just so some unelected regulator in London could tell them what jokes they’re allowed to post online. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post US Under Secretary Warns Britain That the First Amendment Isn’t Negotiable appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Unless you’ve been following our reports, you may not have noticed that Missouri’s new age verification system quietly went live on November 30, reshaping how residents can access much of the internet. The rule orders websites and mobile apps to confirm users are adults if at least a third of their material might be deemed “harmful” to minors, a legal label covering some adult content that offers no “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” for young people. That simple-sounding formula has already proven confusing. Some sites that have nothing to do with explicit entertainment are suddenly demanding proof of age. One Reddit user pointed out that even a lingerie retailer now hides product images behind an ID prompt, writing, “Looks like it’s chilling speech to me.” This is exactly the kind of “mission creep” experts had warned about when the law was first announced. The rule landed the same weekend as Missouri’s legalization of online sports betting, which comes with its own separate age limit of 21. Because the gambling regulation and the new content rule do not overlap, businesses now face a tangle of verification systems that interpret “age-gating” differently. Aylo, the parent company behind Pornhub and numerous other adult sites, has cut off all access from Missouri. The firm said it could not comply without compromising user privacy and data security, an argument that has also led it to pull out of other states with similar rules. Anyone who still wants to view material that could be considered “harmful” now faces an identity check that can involve scanning a government-issued ID, uploading a selfie, or using a digital ID credential. Privacy advocates have warned that these steps create a high-value database of personal information, a gold mine for hackers and data brokers. Searches for VPN services in Missouri have at least doubled since the law’s launch. By encrypting internet connections and masking IP addresses, VPNs allow users to sidestep both regional blocks and data collection systems. Google trends data showing a sharp uptick on searches for “VPN” in Missouri since the new digital ID law came into effect. Unfortunately, shady providers have rushed to exploit the moment, flooding search results with unknown brands. Reliable VPNs exist, but few are truly private or free from logging practices, something Missourians are quickly discovering. Pornhub’s blackout in Missouri brings the number of affected states to 23, creating a near-continuous belt of blocked access stretching diagonally across the United States. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Adult Platforms Block Missouri, VPN Downloads Surge, Following Online Digital ID Law appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Swiss tech firm Proton is expanding its range of privacy-focused tools with a new addition called Proton Sheets, a spreadsheet service designed to compete with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. The product joins Proton’s existing lineup of encrypted email, calendar, VPN, password manager, and drive tools, giving users a more complete set of alternatives to Big Tech’s cloud-based office platforms. Businesses use spreadsheets to manage budgets, analyze data, and track confidential information. Proton argues that the most popular options leave users exposed, since platforms like Google Sheets and Excel often connect to online systems that monitor user activity or feed data into machine-learning models. These concerns have grown since Google integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Workspace. The company maintains that Workspace data is not used to train its AI, but the close link between productivity software and artificial intelligence continues to raise questions about what happens behind the scenes. Proton Sheets approaches the problem by encrypting every aspect of a file, including its metadata. That means even Proton cannot read the contents of a document stored on its servers. The company says it has designed the interface to feel familiar to existing spreadsheet users so that switching platforms requires little adjustment. “With the launch of Proton Sheets, we are not just closing the productivity gap – we are reclaiming data sovereignty for businesses and individuals alike,” said Anant Vijay Singh, Head of Product at Proton Drive. “The reality today is that most spreadsheet tools come from Big Tech giants whose entire business models are built on exploiting user data. Now, with AI woven deeply into these platforms, the risks have escalated exponentially.” “Every keystroke, every formula you enter can feed into their AI training pipelines. This is an unacceptable trade-off,” Singh stated. “Users deserve a future free from hidden surveillance and invasive data mining. That’s why we built Proton Sheets: a robust, privacy-first alternative that puts control, security, and trust back where they belong – firmly in users’ hands.” The new tool extends Proton Drive into a broader workspace that allows teams to collaborate in real time while maintaining end-to-end encryption. Users can create charts, use standard spreadsheet formulas, and control who has access to view or edit documents. Access can be revoked at any time, and files in CSV or XLS format can be imported directly into the encrypted environment. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Proton Launches Encrypted Spreadsheet Service “Proton Sheets” to Rival Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel appeared first on Reclaim The Net.