Posted on January 19, 2023

European Official Predicts US Could Soon Have ‘Illegal Hate Speech’ Laws

David Rutz, Fox News, January 18, 2023

European Union official’s prediction that the United States would soon institute “illegal hate speech” laws at a Davos “disinformation” panel Tuesday raised some eyebrows online.

Věra Jourová, the vice president for “values and transparency” at the EU’s executive European Commission, indicated to a fellow panelist at the World Economic Forum that such policies were about to cross the ocean.

“What qualifies as hate speech, as illegal hate speech, which you will have soon also in the U.S.,” she said, directing her comments to fellow panelist Seth Moulton, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. “I think that we have a strong reason why we have this in the criminal law, we need the platforms to simply work with the language and to identify such cases.”

Jourová’s Davos panel was moderated by ex-CNN host Brian Stelter and called “The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation,” with Moulton and New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger among the other participants.

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At another point, the Czech-born Jourová said she would never argue for the removal of hateful content online to counter disinformation. She said it was important to set up rules that couldn’t be abused, noting many of the requests for removing online content comes from elected officials.

Sulzberger referred to so-called disinformation as an “existential” threat to society during the panel, while Moulton said at another point that the Europeans were “way ahead of us” on data regulation, although he stipulated he believed “very strongly in free speech.”

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