What to Make of Macron Calling U.S. Free Speech Concerns “Pure BS”?

French President Emmanuel Macron. PHOTO CREDIT: Faces Of The World on FLICKR

French President Emmanuel Macron at an AI summit in New Delhi on Wednesday said that U.S. objections about European crackdowns on free speech are, pardon our French, “pure bullshit.”

Macron argued that “we have no clue” how a social media “algorithm is made, how it’s tested, trained, and where it will guide you – the democratic consequences of this bias could be huge … Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it’s guided from one hate speech to another.”

So-called free speech? Let’s take a look at what’s missing from Macron’s analysis from the American point of view.

First, Who Gets to Define Hate Speech?

American law, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, doesn’t prohibit hate speech, unless it calls for imminent acts of violence. The reasoning is that once you begin parsing speech, the fine distinctions are endless and are apt to wind up with the kind of absurdities we’ve seen in Europe and Canada, where even well-reasoned, evidence-based criticisms of a minority social practice or a tenet of elite ideology are treated as too obscene to tolerate.

Once a society goes after “hate speech,” activists and bureaucrats start to draw the line. The House Judiciary Committee reports that such determinations are made for the European Union by a hodgepodge of left-wing NGOs that tend to find almost any critique of prevailing orthodoxy as “hate.” If this sounds overwrought, consider the former EU Commissioner who tried to censor an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign – as if the opinions of a former president and major-party nominee were something the public needed to be shielded from.

Second, Can the EU Censor Americans in America?

The First Amendment in the United States will not be harmed if Europeans censor Europeans in Europe. The problem is that when a post made by an American on an American-based platform is removed by the EU, the global nature of the internet necessarily means it is removed in the United States as well.

Forgive us, President Macron, but we find that to be “pure connerie.”

Third, Is the EU Taxing America’s Speech Platforms?

The European social media landscape is dominated by American companies because Europe has increasingly proven unable to innovate and compete in high technology. Many Americans believe that Europe’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, which effectively outlaw the business model of American social media companies, smack of rank protectionism.

For example, the EU is trying to compel U.S. companies to offer their services without selling user data to advertisers. This would cripple Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok by essentially requiring U.S. companies to provide their services for free. When Meta responded to European demands by creating a two-tiered system for Facebook and Instagram – one in which European users could consent to tracking in exchange for the free service or pay a subscription fee for no tracking – the EU slapped Meta with a €200 million fine.

The EU is also trying to compel U.S. companies to share the guts of their algorithms with competitors – virtually guaranteeing that China will gain access to their business secrets and possibly customer data.

Worst of all, Europe has found reasons to hit American tech firms with almost $12 billion in fines from 2021 to 2025. And its laws allow the EU to levy fines on U.S. companies of up to 10 percent of their global turnover or revenue. Even for corporate giants, these fines could have death-penalty consequences.

Is There Room for Common Ground?

The House Judiciary Committee has commendably detailed the censorship threat from Europe. American leaders have expressed outrage to Europe in no uncertain terms. Washington would be well advised, however, to lower the temperature and look for some common ground in defense of free speech before more damage is done.

There are many technical problems with making algorithms public property, as Macron suggests. But there may be ways for Washington and Brussels to promote more accountability and transparency online that would satisfy European concerns.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his recent speech in Munich, cleared the way for a more respectful discussion that could lead to productive agreements. It is time for the difficult spadework of business diplomacy to start. But first, let’s bury the bullshit.

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