The United States will impose prohibitions of visa to foreign citizens who consider being censoring Americans, the Secretary of State Frame Rubio said Wednesday, and suggested that the new policy could address officials regulating US technology companies, US companies, Reuters reported.
Rubio did not appoint any specific censorship instance. But American technology companies and the Trump administration have challenged American allies in Europe, claiming the censorship of social media platforms. Restricting officials to visit the United States seemed to be a climbing of Washington.
Rubio said in a statement that a new visa restriction policy would apply to foreign citizens responsible for the censorship of protected expression in the United States. He said it was unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest orders for publications on social networks made on US soil.
“It is equally unacceptable that foreign officials demand that American technological platforms adopt moderation policies of global content or participate in censorship activities that reach beyond their authority and in the United States,” Rubio said.
Some foreign officials have taken “flagrant censorship actions against US technology companies and US citizens and residents when they have no authority to do so,” said Rubio.
American social media companies, such as Facebook and Instagram's father, tar, have declared that a law moderation of EU content, the Digital Services Law, amounts to the censorship of its platforms. The president appointed by Trump of the Federal Communications Commission of the United States in March warned that the EU digital services law excessively restricts freedom of expression.
In January, Meta said that it would end its Verification Program for the events of the USA. In favor of community notes on controversial publications, but the company continues to verify in other places, even in Europe and Latin America.
The EU regulators have issued preliminary findings that X, the Trump Elon Musk ally platform, which also depends on the community's notes, saying that it violated the rules of moderation of content of the block.
EU officials have defended the Digital Services Law, which is intended to make the environment online safer and just by the technological giants that make more to address the illegal content, including the speech of hate and the material of child sexual abuse.
A spokesman for the European Commission said the commissioners were aware of Rubio's announcement, which “seems to be general.” The spokesman declined to comment.
The EU has been looking for a commercial agreement with Washington to avoid the threatened tariffs of 50% of President Donald Trump in European imports. Rubio's announcement occurred just before meeting with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in Washington.
Europe 'a focus of digital censorship'
Trump officials have repeatedly intervened in European politics to denounce what they see as the suppression of right -wing politicians, even in Romania, Germany and France, accusing European authorities to censor points of view as criticism of immigration in the name of the disinformation of counteracting.
In April, Rubio closed an office of the State Department that had tried to counteract foreign misinformation, accusing him of censorship and wasting money from US taxpayers.
In a publication on social networks on Wednesday, Rubio added: “Either in Latin America, Europe or another place, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans have ended.”
Rubio did not appoint specific countries or individuals that would be attacked.
The Judge of the Brazilian Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes, has faced X on the fulfillment of the orders to eliminate the accused accounts of disseminating the wrong information. The Trump media company, together with the Rumble video exchange platform, has also sued the judge for an order to eliminate the accounts of Allan Dos Santos, an American defender of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Chris Pavlovski, CEO of Rumble, welcomed the visas prohibition policy on Wednesday. “As Rumble has experienced, these enemies of freedom of expression around the world try to reach the United States and replace the first amendment,” he said in a statement.
The Brazilian government is waiting to completely understand who could be the target of the ban and what would be its reach, a government source told Reuters on anonymity.
The Trump administration has repeatedly called European nations for alleged censorship of online content.
Vice President JD Vance denounced the moderation of content while he was in Paris in February, qualifying her as “authoritarian censorship.”
Rubio has said that threats to freedom of expression are an attack on shared values that are important for the European American relationship and said the problem was being raised in diplomacy with the EU and Britain.
Officials of the Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Work of the State Department are visiting the members of EU France and Ireland this week to press these governments for freedom of expression, said an official of the State Department to Reuters, requesting anonymity.
An opinion article by Samuel Samson, the main advisor of that office, accused Great Britain and Germany of censoring online speech and said that the EU digital services law was “used to silence dissident voices through the moderation of Orwellian content.” He also cited the Britain prison of two abortion activists.
“Far from strengthening democratic principles, Europe has become a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom and many other assaults on democratic self -government,” Samson wrote.
