In our balanced Constitutional system, the fifty states of the United States are said to be “experimental laboratories” of democracy. But a single state has limited authority to experiment with regulating internet networks. California is trying it with its Consumer Privacy Act. But under federal communication law, the private tech companies have enormous freedom, proprietary protection against transparency, immunity from libel, and now a lust for going into debt to build big fat data centers for some imagined future of AI dominance.

Practical experiments in regulating, or further liberating, the internet are now being conducted in bigger “laboratories” around the world. Europe is one of them. America is another. And authoritarian countries like Iran, China and Russia are experimenting with their own very different approach.

Europe’s experiment is a good one. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation is intended to limit Big Tech’s reach into the privacy of Europeans. The regulations attempt to strike a balance between keeping the internet useful and used by Europeans and, on the other hand, giving those same consumers the privacy and transparency we don’t get in the United States.

“Free for All” was the ironic title of a book about the internet’s impact on American journalism. The “Free” part meant news organizations lost much of their revenue (from subscribers, but especially from advertisers) before they figured out the flimsy life-jacket of pay walls. And “Free for All” turned out to be a barroom brawl that left Big Tech on top, and fact-based and edited (not anonymous) stories and information beat up pretty badly.

Europe took notice of an odd phenomenon. “Freedom of speech and of the press” (two of our First Amendment rights) were in some ways diminished for everybody when opened too wide for corporate manipulation, anonymous ranting by extremists, and data mining of individuals. 

The EU recently fined Elon Musk’s social media company, X, $140 million for violating its digital transparency requirements. In response, Musk called for the abolition of the EU. President Trump then issued a ban against four of the European architects of the EU’s regulations entering the United States.

An Italian newspaper here, Corriere della Sera, says today on its front page that this brings to a “new level” Trump’s technological “cold war” against Europe.  

“What’s behind the Trump administration’s barrage of harsh measures and threats against Europe?” (Google translation) it asks. It answers: “The history of tensions over technology regulation—and the absolutist ideology behind accusations of ‘censorship.’”

Italians walking around in a historic central city all have cellphones, of course. But a foursome of men at a café table, or people waiting in line outside a Farmicia, seem less melded to their phones than Americans. They seem better at talking together, or simply doing nothing – maybe they are thinking, or just waiting without restlessness. 

The EU regulations don’t block my New York Times or even ultra conservative sites like The Christian Post, but do block Decaturish, a free local newspaper from home.  

I get this when I try to get Decaturish online. 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons. We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation.

But there is a way around such blockages, called a Virtual Private Network. A French neighbor in Decatur recommended Nord VPN, a Lithuanian firm, as a work-around in Italy. 

A cousin of mine is involved in a more sophisticated work-around called Lantern, designed in part by techies out of Georgia Tech, that gives hope to some in Russia, North Korea and China that they can use the worldwide internet without being identified or monitored.

Anonymity in wide-open online America may be a place of cruelty, crudeness, and other toxins to civil society. But in authoritarian countries, anonymity can be a lifesaver and a hope for freedom. That’s how complicated digital networks can be around the world today.

It seems that experimental laboratories of regulation and freedom, where freedom is honored, should be allowed to work out different approaches with trans-Atlantic amity, not bullying.