Having to lie all the time is exhausting work. And so it’s understandable if the media slips now and then even in the same article. But this Politico article is pretty short, so it’s hard to tell if this is clumsiness or Orwellian DoubleThink in which you are required to believe that censorship doesn’t exist… and it’s a good thing.

But then again that has been the default leftist position on everything from grooming kids to cancel culture, so maybe that’s just the way it works.

Paragraphs 1-2

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg was not telling the truth when he said the European Union was institutionalizing censorship, the bloc’s top tech official said.

“We know that it’s not true,” European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen told POLITICO. “In Europe freedom of speech is one of our fundamental values and it’s also respected and protected [in] our Digital Services Act. So it’s very misleading also to say that.”

Paragraphs 7-9

She also said she would consider widening an ongoing EU investigation into whether Elon Musk’s X platform has breached the bloc’s social media rules. On X, Musk has repeatedly urged Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in an upcoming election.

The Commission formally charged Musk’s platform with failing to respect EU rules in July and is finalizing its decision — a first-of-its-kind verdict under the new tech law.

“Of course we have freedom of speech in Europe and [Musk] is free to express his views but then in the same time when it comes to X, X is having obligations under our Digital Services Act and X is supposed to assess and mitigate the risks they are posing to our electoral processes and to civic discourse.”

Everyone is free to express their views. Unless we don’t like them.