Welcome to the EU’s Election Cleanroom Where Only Approved Opinions Survive Online

In the EU’s fight against "disinformation," democracy is becoming less about voting and more about speech vetting.

Christina Maas

By the time the Portuguese stroll to the polls this May, armed with nothing more than a voter ID and the faint hope that democracy still means something, they’ll be greeted not just by political propaganda and the usual stink of scandal.

No, this time, they’ll be met by something sleeker, quieter, and vastly more condescending: the European Commission’s Rapid Response System (RSS), a shiny new tool in Brussels’ ongoing campaign to scrub elections clean of opinions they don’t like.

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