The Highwire with Del Bigtree - FROM PUBS TO PLATFORMS: EUROPE’S CENSORSHIP REGIME SPREADS

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Free speech is facing an unprecedented crackdown across the UK and Europe. The UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s sweeping Digital Services Act are driving small forums offline, pressuring U.S. platforms to silence users, and even tasking British pubs with policing conversations under new “hate speech” rules. Is this the end of open dialogue in the West?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Let's talk about literally the words that you and I are talking to each other with or posting online with. This is something that is under distress. In America, we don't really, we're not really seeing this anymore. During COVID, we saw a lot of censorship top down from the government through social media companies. But we have kind of a reprieve right now. Hopefully this will last for generations. But over in the UK, over in Europe, they're still fighting that battle. And it's actually getting a lot tougher there.

So in the UK, we had the Online Safety Act. That went into force in 2003. but their regulations, their actual, the burdens of that, it's called illegal content for people posting what they call legal content. This is a very nebulous term. That's something that really went to enforcement in March just a couple weeks ago. The Online Safety's Act and Offcom, that's the regulator, is really starting to look at this now. And here's some of the headlines coming out of the UK. Hamster Forum and Local Residents' website shut down by new internet laws. And it says dozens of small internet forums have blocked.

British users are shut down as new online safety laws come into effect with one comparing the new regime to a British version of China's great firewall. It's not what you want to be compared to. And what's happening here is these forums, they're run by everyday people in the UK, and they're shutting down because they don't want to be fine because they have to basically monitor and censor speech for the government on their forums, hamster forums, cycling forums. I mean, these aren't the hotbed of like political hate speech. but people are just walking away, which actually is funneling more of these people into the big tech platforms, which is ironic.

But what does Keir Starmor have to say? He's the prime minister of the UK. He was meeting with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance in the White House recently. Listen to what he had to say. All right. We do have, of course, a special relationship with our friends in the UK and also with some of our European allies. But we also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British. of course what the British do in their own country is up to them, but also affect American technology companies and by extension American citizens.

So that is something that we'll talk about today at lunch. We've had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time. Well, no, I mean, certainly we wouldn't want to reach across US citizens, and we don't, and that's absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the UK, I'm very proud of our history there. Amazing moment. I mean, so just recap, he's saying, we've had free speech for a very long time.

We certainly wouldn't want to do something as crazy as reaching across the U.S. and telling you how to use your own speech. Well, it's interesting because I remember speaking to you less than six months ago about this headline and this video, UK Police Commissioner threatens to extradite jail U.S. citizens over online posts. We'll come after you. So that's what's happening there. But here's what people in the UK are dealing with.

These are real-time headlines. Here's the first one. police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages. They're building out this base in England. So when people are like, well, that's in England. We're in America, free speech. They're building out this base in the European Union, in the UK, and they're trying to project it, clearly,

trying to project it out into the United States and to affect us. It's one election away, you know, it's really where we're at. We could have had, you know, we could have been right in lockstep right now with the UK. This is not a political show. I don't care what party you're in, but I grew up a Democrat, and the Democratic Party was saying we are going to censor misinformation, which is what this is all about. So we would have been in lockstep with it. Right now, we have an administration where J.D. Vance on television is calling this out and saying that's unacceptable by American standards. So, you know, folks, look how terrifying this is.

These are just people talking, and they're for the most ridiculous reasons they're being arrested, they're being shut down. This is a global phenomenon. It's a global authoritarian regime that I think is really just only blocked at the borders of the United States of America right now. And like I said, do not go to sleep, everyone. We have work to do. We've got to push back and make sure that we're protected in the future. Because like I said, one election and this could be our future too. We absolutely have work to do. In the UK, you have the Online Safety Act. That's a world's first. I mean, if you count outside of China. But then the European Union passed the Digital Services Act. And that was more focused in targeting large providers like X, like Facebook and Meta. And this is the headline coming out of the New York Times. This is the Digital Service Act out of the UK. EU prepares major penalties against Elon Musk's X. So it says the fine could surpass $1 billion, one person said, as regulators seek to make an example of that.

to deter other companies from violating the law, the Digital Services Act. So it's interesting because these laws are written. They're very, it's very, again, I use the word nebulous. These nebulous terms, so they can do this. They can make an example of people if they want to because it's a sliding scale of speech. Is it hateful? Is it not hateful?

What's hateful? I don't know. Your comment was hateful. Trust us. But it's not just going from there. So we have new UK internet policing laws target U.S. online forums. So they're now targeting. So all the people in the UK that said, we're shutting down our forums.

They're also targeting these U.S. forums. And one of them is GAB. This is something that we've used quite a bit. This is kind of like an alternative to Twitter at the time in X. It says on here, the UK government has demanded that GAB submit to their new censorship regime under the UK on SAFETES Act, threatening massive fines, $18 million or 10% of their annual revenue for not policing speech. This is what Andrew Torba said.

He's the head of GAB on X. He said, we will not comply. We will not pay one. we will defend our UK users right to speak freely and reject any law that compels censorship. Their letter and the response from our legal team is attached. So again, just like Rumble, just like X, now Gab, we're fighting this here. It's a united front of the United States for now. And, you know, it's our will that is going to, and we need to support these organizations

and these people in these platforms that are doing this because this is the firewall between kind of authoritarian censorship and going back to the COVID years. And then so people seeing all. all this right now, maybe if you're sitting in the UK or saying, this is too much. I'm going to turn my computer off. I'm going to go down to the local pub and I'm going to grab myself a beer and have a conversation. Well, you may not be protected there either. Here is the headline. It's closing time for free speech in British pubs. That they're talking about is something called the Employment Rights Act. It's working its way through the UK Parliament. Third parties,

meaning the employers have to protect everyone, including third parties. So not only the people that you employ, but third parties, meaning your patrons at your pub, the people, you know, if you're cutting hair, the people sitting near your hair, you have to protect them from this hate speech. And the hate speech can't cross lines of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, reassignment. This is all in the bill. No one can really say anything about that that is considered negative or hate speech or hateful. And so that's what's happening. I hate to laugh, but I mean, you can't even, the pubs are like the test. I mean, I would imagine telling a joke now of any that pressures any sort of social norm, you know, could get you find and have your pub shut down.

I mean, no joking allowed. Don't get too drunk. Don't get too funny. Don't make fun in the incredible authoritarian pressure we're living under here. Amazing. Wow. And we got a lot of pubs that are actually shutting down in the UK because they see this coming. They don't want any part of it. And then you have Keir Stommer just recently came out. And this was in response to Trump's tariffs, but it's kind of a veiled conversation, a veiled, headline, Starmer to declare end of globalization while Trump's tariff war wages. So this censorship, this kind of, again, push towards full push towards net zero, this is all globalization. This is all under that heading. And so for him this come out and say that globalization looks like it might be

over, that is a symbolic win as well as everyone is kind of now focusing on the EU and the UK as the new hotbed for censorship. So here in the U.S., we have their eyes on them. We're not going to let them off. And for the people in the UK, we're working on your behalf. We're going to keep yelling at the top of the mountain, and we're not going to let them get away with this with the censoring of speech. So we're on your side, and we're going to hopefully put us to stop this. We have a government now that is actually behind us and that's willing to work for us and to keep our speech free.

So this is what's happening here in the United States. Absolutely. Well, it's what we have been fighting for you and I, Jeffrey, you know, all through COVID, all, you know, all these years. The writing's been on the wall. we have been, you know, standing for what this show represents, our ability right now to be able to tell the truth on this show, a truth that, and to have the high wire protocol, which I want to bring up right now, because we don't just make the statements we make. We provide all the evidence, all of the articles that we talk about, all the science that we talk about is provided to our viewers so that you can check our work. We're demanding that everybody in media do the same thing, but if you want to receive all of the information that we are reading from or the videos that we're playing. You need to sign up. We just need your email. You just scroll down if you're on the page, down in the middle of the page. Type in your email. It's that simple.

It's no charge. It's one of the greatest tools we have so that you don't have to say, oh, the Highwire said, or Jeffrey Jackson said, or Del Bigtree said. You can say the CDC said or the FDA said, or there's a peer-reviewed study, or here's a video you can play. We put all of that in your hands so that you can be a part of spreading the word on these very important issues like censorship. If we lose our First Amendment right, Jeffrey, we've lost all rights. We cannot fight for any other rights that we may have.