When Kanye West made antisemitic comments on Instagram and Twitter earlier this month, Meta and Twitter responded by locking his account, reasoning he violated their community guidelines.

Crucially, the decision to freeze his account—temporarily halting his expression in those spaces—was made independently by the companies. No government actor was involved. The First Amendment generally precludes the U.S. government from limiting private speakers’ and companies’ ideas or controlling how social media firms govern their spaces.

But other governments may soon fill that void, and regulate how American tech giants referee speech on their platforms. Earlier this month, the European Union approved legislation aimed at regulating social media platforms: the Digital Services Act. The law will take effect in 2024, in time for the next U.S. presidential elections, and promises big shifts in how online speech is refereed not just in Europe, but also here at home. The law, among other requirements, places substantial content moderation expectations on large social media firms—many based in the U.S.—which include limiting false information, hate speech, and extremism.

It’s not clear how social media firms will adapt to the law, but the fines they will face for failing to comply will be massive. Firms can be fined up to six percent of their annual revenue—that’s $11 billion for Google and $7 billion for Meta. Essentially, the EU has created a significant new legal incentive for firms to regulate expression on their platforms.

The law, while written to protect EU residents, will almost certainly lead social media firms to change their moderation policies worldwide. Thus, with the DSA, the EU will effectively be doing what the First Amendment ostensibly prohibits our own government from doing: regulating the editorial judgments made by social media platforms on which Americans communicate with each other.

This isn’t the first time an EU law has changed Americans’ rights online. When was the last time you were asked about cookies when you visited a website or given the option to limit a tech firm’s access to your private data? Most of those changes stemmed from the EU’s General Data Protection Act, which went into effect in 2018.

Elon Musk now owns Twitter but the EU is watching carefully lest the self-styled "free speech absolutist" turn the social media site into a platform for hate speech.

After Musk tweeted "the bird is freed," Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton responded with a wave emoji and "In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.

"Breton's tweet was accompanied by the hashtag DSA, a reference to Digital Services Act — which requires providers of digital services to take swift action against illegal online content, such as hate speech.

The commissioner also tweeted a video showing him and Elon Musk in May after discussing the Digital Services Act.

In the clip, Breton tells Musk "I was happy to ... explain to you the DSA, a new regulation in Europe " and Musk replies: "I agree with everything you said."