Jan 22, 2026 · 45m · allin
Europe's Free Speech Failure and the "Censorship Industrial Complex" with Sarah B. Rogers
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In a live panel at Davos 2024, All-In Podcast hosts Jason Calacanis and David Sacks interview Under Secretary Sarah B. Rogers on the growing divide between European speech regulation and U.S. First Amendment protections. The discussion covers global digital governance, government overreach, and decentralized alternatives to state censorship.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 41.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.0 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 35:20 Exposing CCDH plot against Twitter
Rogers forcefully exposed leaked emails from foreign NGOs showing an explicit campaign to destroy an American platform and circumvent First Amendment protections through European regulatory coercion.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 21:45 Sacks rejects government censorship framing in Kimmel caseSacks explicitly refused Calacanis's framing of the Jimmy Kimmel controversy, clarifying that short-lived reactions by private network affiliates did not constitute government censorship.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:53 Rogers corrects Sacks on UK speech arrest statisticsRogers corrected Sacks's premise, clarifying that 12,000 represented annual arrests across existing speech statutes rather than prosecutions under the Online Safety Act alone.
The host holds their own ▶ 18:39 Sacks analyzes DSA as protectionist tech tariffSacks demonstrated clear domain expertise by framing European regulatory fines not as genuine speech enforcement, but as protectionist trade tariffs functioning like digital speed traps against US platforms.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Banter and Davos First Impressions | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | The hosts engage in light banter about their accommodations in Davos before introducing Sarah B. Rogers. Calacanis asks a foundational introductory question about her mandate as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. | |
| European Free Speech Restrictions vs American First Amendment Standards | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Rogers provides an extensive legal breakdown of European censorship laws including the UK Online Safety Act and EU Digital Services Act. Calacanis intervenes to clearly frame the American platform perspective against foreign fines. | |
| UK Speech Prosecutions, High Arrest Numbers, and Totalitarian Drift | 4 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Sacks brings up UK prosecutions, and Rogers corrects him by clarifying that over 12,000 individuals were arrested in 2023 under various speech statutes. She illustrates this with specific high-profile cases like comedian Graham Linehan. | |
| NATO Values, Mass Migration Criticism, and Two-Tier Policing | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Sacks questions why the US subsidizes the defense of NATO allies enforcing illiberal speech restrictions around immigration. Rogers validates his point by detailing Lucy Connolly's 31-month prison sentence for an anti-migration tweet. | |
| Big Tech Fines as Censorship Tariffs and Protectionist Speed Traps | 6 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Sacks argues that regulatory enforcement by the EU operates as a digital speed trap and protectionist tariff against American tech firms. Rogers agrees and introduces the concept of a censorship tariff levied on US platforms. | |
| Global Free Speech Trends, Satire, and Democratic Feedback Loops | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Sacks analyzes political dynamics, explaining how censorship insulates power from necessary public feedback. He also pushes back on Calacanis's framing of domestic media controversies, clarifying that the Kimmel situation involved network affiliates rather than state censorship. | |
| AI Deepfakes, Defamation Laws, and Avoiding Regulatory Overreach | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Rogers argues against hasty AI regulations, demonstrating how traditional torts like defamation and existing criminal statutes already address deepfake abuses. Sacks reinforces this logic by noting that committing crimes with AI tools remains fully actionable under current law. | |
| US-EU Diplomatic Outlook, Great Firewalls, and State-Coerced Censorship | 7 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Sacks demonstrates strong legal knowledge citing Missouri v. Biden and the Twitter Files regarding state-coerced domestic censorship. Rogers supports his analysis by listing verified true facts that were improperly suppressed during COVID-19. | |
| The Censorship Industrial Complex, Debanking, and Community Notes | 7 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Rogers explains state pressure via dark NGOs and details her Supreme Court victory in NRA v. Vullo regarding indirect debanking through financial regulators. Sacks and Rogers praise decentralized solutions like Community Notes over centralized fact-checkers. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Rogers: U.S. culture and tech platforms are shifting away from censorship
“But I think in the United States, we've shifted back toward a less censorious approach, and so have these platforms.”
Rogers: UK regulator Ofcom fines US websites that don't operate there
“Under the Online Safety Act, we now have active litigation by the relevant regulator Ofcom against several American websites. These are websites that don't reach into the UK. They're not, they're, these aren't websites dedicated to discussing the Queen. They'r…”
Rogers: US sanctioned former EU official over Elon Musk enforcement threat
“We recently issued some sanctions, which we'll get into, and one of the individuals we sanctioned, ah, was a former EU official who threatened Elon Musk with enforcement action because X within the United States had said that it was going to host on a live, ah…”
Sacks: UK government censors free speech to protect those in power
“I think the government is afraid of the people criticizing it, and therefore they're engaged in what censors always do, which is protect the people in power.”
Rogers: UK speech arrests in 2023 exceeded Russia, China, and Turkey
“So that was in a single year of slightly over 12,000 Brits arrested for speech acts, and that is more than were arrested that year in Russia, more than in China, more than in Turkey.”
Rogers: UK sentenced a mother to 31 months for anti-migration tweet
“There was a thirty-one-month sentence handed down to a suburban mother named Lucy Connolly in the UK because after a man called Axel Rudabanka stabbed, I think it was a seven-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl, and a nine-year-old girl at a birthday party, …”
Sarah B. Rogers: European regulators fined X roughly 140 million euros or dollars
“There was a large fine handed down during my recent European tour against X, and I believe it was a hundred and forty million euros, but that might be dollars.”
Rogers: EU Digital Services Act acts as censorship tariff on US tech
“I've referred to the DSA before as a censorship tariff, because the cost of maintaining the censorship apparatus under the DSA is intentionally levied on specific companies, mostly American ones.”
Calacanis: Free speech is declining in Europe and rising in Middle East
“We're living in a time where we're seeing freedom of speech expression go down in Europe and go up in the Middle East.”
Calacanis: South Korea requires social security numbers to post online
“South Korea does require, you have a social security number essentially to post online.”
Rogers: Existing defamation laws cover false AI deepfakes of public figures
“When it comes to deepfakes, I think we have, in, in America and in Europe, strong legal remedies against defamation. So if someone creates an image of a public figure that is false, and people are believing that image, and a reasonable viewer would believe tha…”
Sacks: Governments should apply existing laws before enacting AI-specific regulations
“There are plenty of existing laws that apply to AI, and we should just think about using all of those before you start then creating a bunch of AI specific ones.”
Rogers: Blocking American social media would cost Keir Starmer his job
“And I think if Keir Starmer said we're putting up a great firewall and you're not allowed to access any American social media anymore, he'd be out of office.”
Sacks: Biden administration pressured social networks to censor content
“And I would say President Trump, because I do think that that, President Trump's election definitely changed the direction of free speech in the United States, never mind the rest of the world, because I think under the Biden administration, we now know from c…”
Calacanis: Mark Zuckerberg is a political weathervane driven solely by growth
“I mean, if it was up to Zuckerberg, he would have continued to do it under Kamala. He did it with no problem under Biden. He's a weathervane. His entire position is based on what makes the system grow.”
Rogers: US House committee and CIA assessed COVID lab leak potential
“And another thing that was suppressed, was the assessment that the virus might have leaked from a lab, and we now know that was the same assessment of a House committee and the CIA.”
Rogers: Leaked emails show NGO's top priority was killing Musk's X
“We have emails that have leaked from some of these NGOs. So one of them, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Which is a British NGO whose leader was the target of some of our visa sanctions. There are emails exchanged with Democratic politicians in the Uni…”