Washington is building a censorship-bypass site and claiming that it is a helpful public service which will keep poor European countries informed about the things their government have censored.
The US State Department said that this will include hate speech, terrorist propaganda, and “conservative views” three sources familiar with the plan said.
The site is set to run on “freedom.gov”, the sources said, and one of them said officials discussed adding a virtual private network function to make a user’s traffic look like it came from the US.
That same source said user activity on the site will not be tracked.
State Department, undersecretary for public diplomacy Sarah Rogers is heading the project, which was expected to be unveiled at last week’s Munich Security Conference but was delayed, the sources said.
Reuters could not determine why it did not launch, but two sources said some State Department officials, including lawyers, raised concerns about the plan without spelling out what spooked them.
In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson said: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department; however, that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs.”
The spokesperson denied that any announcement had been delayed and said it was inaccurate that State Department lawyers had raised concerns.
The portal risks aggravating the Trump administration’s already tense ties with European allies, worsened by disputes over trade, Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s push to assert control over Greenland.
It puts Washington in an awkward spot, encouraging citizens to flout local laws while insisting it is defending free speech.
The Trump administration has made free speech, particularly what it says is the stifling of conservative voices online, a centrepiece of its foreign policy in places like Europe and Brazil.
Europe’s speech rules differ sharply from those in the US, where the constitution shields most expression, while European limits grew from efforts to stop extremist propaganda that helped fuel Nazism.
US officials have denounced EU policies they say suppress right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, and have targeted rules like the EU’s Digital Services Act and Britain’s Online Safety Act.
The EU delegation in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the US plan.
EU rules that bite hardest on big platforms such as Meta’s Facebook and X restrict access to content classified as illegal hate speech, terrorist propaganda or harmful disinformation under measures dating to 2008.
EU regulators can order removals and impose bans as a last resort, and X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was fined 120 million euros in December for noncompliance.
Germany, for example, in 2024 issued 482 removal orders for material it said supported or incited terrorism and forced providers to take down 16,771 pieces of content.
Meta’s oversight board in 2024 ordered the removal of a Polish political party’s posts that used a racial slur and depicted immigrants as rapists, a category EU law treats as illegal hate speech.
Former State Department official Kenneth Propp said: “The site would be perceived in Europe as a U.S. effort to frustrate national law provisions.”
Propp, now at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Centre, said the plan is “a direct shot” at European rules and laws, and that freedom.gov would be seen as Washington trying to gum up enforcement.
Two sources said Edward Coristine, a former member of Musk’s job-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, is involved via the National Design Studio set up by Trump to beautify government websites.
