This reminds me of "Radio Free Europe" and "Radio Liberty", which were basically bankrolled (and likely largely influenced) by the CIA. They wanted to distribute all kinds of programming into USSR that was banned there, same with Solzhenitsyn's books etc. Eventually the USSR fell apart.

Now they are treating Europe like they treated USSR. Musk and other big influencers on X have already been calling for the breakup of the EU, after the EU fined X $100M. I bet that was at least some of the reason behind this.

The irony is that the Trump admin has been deporting non-citizens for speech, his FCC has been intimidating media like ABC and CBS into firing people or canceling programs and interviews, his DOJ has been telling social networks to fork over the identities of citizens who criticized ICE online, and his CBP will begin demanding that tourists hand over 5 years of their social media history, as well as their biometrics, family's information and whatever else.

This is the administration who would lecture Europe about freedom of speech? Didn't they just get through 10 years of telling European countries to be "nationalist" and resist the influence of their own federal government in Brussels -- but I guess we can just ignore their laws and broadcast anything into their countries, tempting them to set up a "great firewall" like China.

Well, if freedom of speech means violating other countries' laws, in this case can European governments just start streaming copyrighted movies for free to US viewers, and piss off the RIAA / MPAA? Or maybe they can do what Cory Doctorow has been proposing: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-01-29...

It's like when USA ignores European trademarks (actually even stronger, PDOs) like Champagne or Parmesan but expects Europeans to honor US trademarks.