EU to Musk: ‘The Bird Will Fly by Our Rules’

Billionaire Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter last week. He celebrated by tweeting, “The bird is free!”

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton quickly responded: “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.”

Musk wants to bring free speech back to the platform. The EU does not. In May, we wrote:

At the same time that Musk was putting in his bid for Twitter, the European Union agreed on outlines for its Digital Services Act, which would create a new European bureaucracy able to police what is said online, with a global reach. … The act will establish broad responsibilities for big companies to curb “disinformation.” … Firms could face fines of up to 6 percent of global revenue. For Twitter, this would be hundreds of millions of dollars. For Facebook, it would be billions. … The EU will be able to grab even more power in a “crisis.” If the EU’s national authorities vote to declare a crisis, for example due to a pandemic, the EU wants the power to tell social media companies exactly what a user can and cannot post.

This law will affect you. Columbia law professor Anu Bradford writes in her book The Brussels Effect—How the European Union Rules the World: “Instead of being guided by America’s First Amendment free-speech protections, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube follow the EU’s definition of hate speech worldwide when deciding which content to remove from their platforms.”

This is why Democrats in the United States have been cheering the EU on.

It also exposes Germany’s ambition. In his 2019 article “Germany Is Taking Control of the Internet,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

The European Union is working to gain control of the Internet. It has already made significant progress in this effort. … Germany’s ambitions for the Internet should concern everyone, even those who don’t have a computer. The EU’s behavior on this issue exposes the dictatorial nature of this German-dominated entity. Really, we are witnessing the manifestation of the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire in the tech world. The biblically prophesied seventh and final resurrection of this empire wants to control the Internet! … We must put this issue in the context of Bible prophecy and history. The German-led EU is behaving the way the Holy Roman Empire has always behaved. Germany is once again seeking to impose its will on the world. This is a difficult message to accept, and many people will disagree with it, but it is the truth!

Learn more: Read Mr. Flurry’s article.