European Union

Europe's Plot To End Americans' Online Anonymity

European regulators and NGOs are pushing their domestic speech laws and surveillance onto the American internet. But there's a way to fight back.

Zach Weissmueller | 11.5.2026 11:00 AM

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The war against anonymity is raging in Europe. 

"The witch hunters work like a mob, and if enough of them phone the police, the police are going to come," says Bernie Spofforth, a political activist who was detained by U.K. police for a social media post.

It's coming to the United States, thanks in part to lobbying by "a massive network of NGOs" connected to the U.K. government, says Brian Chau, founder of a new AI-driven investigative journalism outlet called Effort.news. The technique, says Chau, is to smuggle in speech codes and effectively end online anonymity under the guise of "child safety."   

Their success could doom free speech on the internet. The good news is there's a way to fight back.

The U.K.'s War on 'Misinformation'

In England, you can go to jail for posting an angry opinion on the internet. 

"They turned up with three police cars, a police van, four, five policemen. I don't even know how many were there," Spofforth says, recounting the night of August 8, 2024. "And they came into my house and arrested me."

Her alleged crime? Posting misinformation.

After the murder of three children at a dance studio in the town of Southport, rumors swirled that a Muslim asylum seeker was the killer. Spofforth says she copied and pasted the rumor on X and added: "If this is true, then all hell is about to break loose."

It wasn't true, but all hell broke loose anyway.

"I saw that this post had become very popular. It had a lot of reposts," Spofforth says. "Now, if something gets a lot of reposts and you haven't done the investigative work yourself, then the chances are it's either a really brilliant post or a really bad one. And I just deleted it."

Politicians and the local police chief blamed misleading posts like Spofforth's for whipping up the riots that rocked Southport.

"The people to blame for the disorder are those conspiracy theorists who were putting out disinformation, completely incorrect information online," the police chief said.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer blamed social media in a press conference following the Southport riots for inflaming the situation. He warned "social media companies and those who run them" that "violent disorder, clearly whipped up online" is a crime "happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere." 

Spofforth says it wasn't mere social media posts that whipped up the riot. 

"I think it is the murder of three little girls in a Taylor Swift dance class and the brutal stabbing of 10 others. That was what caused the problem," she says. "The deflection for the government is, 'Well, this wouldn't have happened if we clamped down on disinformation and misinformation. And these people need to be shut up.'"

Spofforth admits that it was a mistake to post a false name and speculate about a triple-child murder. But being arrested and held for 36 hours, which is what Spofforth says happened to her, illustrates the difference between a country with First Amendment protections and one lacking them.

"In the U.K., you don't need to break the law to be arrested," she says. "So if someone says that they feel they have been harmed by what you've said, then you can be arrested. If someone says that what you've said is deeply offensive, they're very distressed by it, you can be arrested. It's insane."

In the U.K., these kinds of arrests are common. Police detained comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence for three posts on X saying that he felt "hate" for "misogynists and homophobes," that he could "smell" a picture of a trans activist gathering, and that "if a trans-identified male is in a female-only space,… make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

Dimitrie Stoica was sentenced to three months in jail for violating the 2023 Online Safety Act after faking himself running from rioters on a livestream. Lucy........

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