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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6906 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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I think a strong case that a lot of the online censorship (e.g. not allowing people to have frank discussions about Trans rights—and, yes it’s Reddit’s trans rights discussion censorship which drove The Motte to have their own website instead of remaining on Reddit) we saw in the late 2010s and early 2020s was partly a result of EU overreach.

That the worst online censorship was around trans rights is strong evidence that it was not driven by pressure from the EU authorities - the offline push for censorship of sane views on trans issues was much stronger in the US than the EU. Given the weakness of free speech laws in Europe, the EU (and member states) could have openly censored unapproved views on trans issues the way they openly censored complaints about Muslim immigration, but they chose not to. The pattern of what got censored how hard on Reddit is most consistent with a bottom-up push for censorship by the powermods, and more consistent with top-down censorship directed by American lefties than European lefties.

Given the weakness of free speech laws in Europe, the EU (and member states) could have openly censored unapproved views on trans issues the way they openly censored complaints about Muslim immigration, but they chose not to.

A quote from the executive summary that I saved in my draft, but didn't get around to commenting on before posting:

Since the DSA came into force in 2023, the European Commission has pressured platforms to censor content ahead of national elections in Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Moldova, Romania, and Ireland, in addition to the EU elections in June 2024.50 Nonpublic documents produced to the Committee pursuant to subpoena demonstrate how the European Commission regularly pressured platforms ahead of EU Member State national elections in order to disadvantage conservative or populist political parties.

(...)

The 2023 Slovak election is one key example. TikTok’s internal content moderation guides show that TikTok censored the following "hate speech" while facing European censorship pressure:

  • "There are only two genders";
  • "Children cannot be trans";
  • "We need to stop the sexualization of young people/children";
  • "I think that LGBTI ideology, gender ideology, transgender ideology are a big threat to Slovakia, just like corruption"; and
  • "Targeted misgendering."

Other than that, you have national laws like the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz or Ley Trans.

If you want to paint the EU as more sane than the US on the trans issue, you'd have to point to the medical establishment. The legal establishment might as well have been directly transferred from the libbiest gender-studies departament in the US.

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