Over the past several turbulent years, the European Union (EU) has certainly not been without its own initiatives whose ultimate goal has been to significantly ramp up government regulation and impose stricter control of content, and by the same token, of creators and news and other information sources on the internet.
Two diverse, yet when all is said and done, disturbingly complementary examples spring to mind immediately: the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (that produced, among other things, the infamous Article 17), and then, the code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online – that, unlike the Directive, flew largely under the radar where general public is concerned (though certainly not when it comes to US tech giants that it aims to rope in and restrain).
