Did Spotify Give in to European Censorship?

Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, followed up on his committee’s report on how Europe enforces censorship of Americans on U.S. platforms by taking his complaints to the censors themselves.

The Ohio Congressman led a bipartisan delegation to explain to regulators in Brussels, London, and Dublin exactly why Americans find European censorship of American social media platforms so disturbing.

“America innovates, China replicates, and Europe regulates,” complained a member of the delegation, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI). In an interview in Brussels, Fitzgerald noted that “there are seven corporations that are currently listed as gatekeepers by the DSA (Digital Services Act) and six of the seven are American corporations” being punished for their speech.
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“Nothing we heard in Europe eased our concerns about the (EU’s) Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, or (the UK) Online Safety Act,” Jordan said. “These sweeping regulations create a serious chilling effect on free expression and threaten the First Amendment rights of American citizens and companies.”

Like so many media outlets, Spotify was caught in the crossfire between free speech and medical authority during the pandemic. Joe Rogan on his popular podcast interviewed a vaccine-skeptical doctor who asserted that the antiparasitic medication, Ivermectin, can cure COVID-19. Spotify also removed “War Room,” the Steve Bannon podcast for calling on President Trump to seize CDC Director Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray and put their “heads on spikes.”

In this investigation, we caution House investigators to always keep in mind that Spotify has a First Amendment right to ban Bannon, curtail Rogan, and play the treacly “Dr. Fauci Say” (“Doctor Fauci, save me, I’m going insane”!) 24 hours a day. The First Amendment allows Spotify to make its own editorial decisions regarding Ivermectin or anything else. It can only be dissuaded by the free market of its listeners if it should decide to dedicate itself 24/7 to ridiculing President Trump or former President Biden, the Bible, the Quran, or apple pie.

If it decided to pull Bannon for making a graphic and menacing statement, Spotify was well within its rights to do so. And when rocker Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s COVID coverage – agree or disagree – he was fully exercising his First Amendment right to free association. Or in this case, disassociation.

The First Amendment only restricts the government’s ability to abridge speech.

The House Judiciary Committee should, then, be commended for correctly targeting its investigation on how the Biden administration and the European Union may have used coercive state power to bludgeon Spotify into censoring itself for them. Such “jawboning” from powerful regulators can never be treated as mere suggestions. It is more like the Mafia’s protection racket shakedowns: You have a nice little media company there, shame if anything happened to it.

At the time Spotify took this action, Biden press secretary Jen Psaki praised it as a “positive step” while urging other social media platforms to do more. Now the House Judiciary Committee is asking Spotify to turn over any communications and judicial orders from the EU, the UK, and a host of other governments since 2020.
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This is the right approach. We praise Chairman Jordan and his colleagues for taking their case directly to the sources of censorship. Meanwhile, as we recently pointed out, conservatives in the United States should not punish the targets of past official censorship and coercion by enacting a censorship regime of their own.

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