Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

E-safety restrictions in the European Union could shut down EU access to Catholic prayer and contemplation app Hallow.

If so, the EU would be following the Chinese Communist Party, which banned the popular prayer app last July, citing “illegal content”.

Expressing his concerns, Hallow founder, CEO, and former atheist Alex Jones said,

“The EU is shutting us down by over-regulation, apparently targeting any religious app, making it effectively impossible for us to operate in the EU.”

Jones then surrendered the app to Jesus Christ, stating that the roadblocks to Hallow’s EU expansion were heartbreaking.

“Offensive”

Here’s why the subscription-based Christian service now faces an uncertain future:

Europe’s 2022 Digital Services Act came into effect in February 2024.

Specifically, “illegal content” – mentioned 100 times in the act – is defined as content that breaks “existing rules in the offline environment.”

Such as “images depicting child abuse, revenge porn, stalking, fraud, false advertising, and copyright theft.”

More generally, though, “illegal content includes disinformation, hate speech, terrorist, or unlawful discriminatory content.”

Hate speech is broadly defined as anything that appears to “incite violence against a group or individual.”

This includes words that could be viewed as offensive, “racist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, or ableist.”

For example, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s recent comments about “not all cultures being equal” is an infringement of the EU’s DSA.

This isn’t a stretch.

The UN’s 2017 Rights of Indigenous Peoples mandates that “all cultures are equal”, and to say otherwise is violent and racist.

According to the EU DSA, John Anderson should be dobbed in for sharing John Howard’s “illegal” words.

YouTube would then be pressured to either cancel Anderson’s account, boot his content, or face losing 6% of their annual global turnover in fines.

You read that correctly.

Failure to comply with the state’s restricted speech laws “shall be 6% of the annual worldwide turnover of the provider of intermediary services concerned in the preceding financial year.”

If this revenue-raising trap wasn’t bad enough, failing to comply includes punishment for failing to provide proof of compliance with the DSA.

No Privacy

Online platforms must hand over reports containing sensitive data, personal information, and user content to the EU once a year.

This is why Elon Musk gave an infamous “F*** you” to the EU in August last year.

In a separate clash, Musk refused to comply with EU bureaucrat Thierry Breton, who leaned on the DSA to demand X not platform then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In a letter addressed to Musk, Breton threatened to punish him with “every tool at the EU’s disposal in order to protect EU citizens from serious harm.” (You can read Breton’s letter here.)

Breton used the EU’s easily weaponised DSA to try and prohibit free speech, and apparently do what the EU has done before: interfere in elections.

Ironically, Breton quit the EU in September, inadvertently admitting the organisation was run by tyrants.

The astounding absurdity of @ThierryBreton 🤡 as tyrant of Europe 😂 https://t.co/fdLp8rbF0M

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 11, 2025

Supercharging its eSafety legislation, the EU moved its revised 2016 “hate speech code of conduct” into the DSA in January.

This supercharges the DSA by further taking the ability to self-regulate out of the hands of private business, and into the hands of an over-regulating bureaucracy.

As Spanish EU member, Jorge Buxade explained in a video on X,

“The DSA is a tool for censoring conservatives. Elon Musk fighting for Free Speech on X is an example we need to follow.”

There is no real appeal. No debate.

Bureaucrats in Brussels decide what is and isn’t “hate”.

Branded by Tucker Carlson as “the biggest Christian prayer app ever”, Hallow has support.

Hollywood heavyweights Mark Wahlberg and Jim Caviezel are closely associated with the Christ-centred Catholic app.

Offering to assist in the legal arena, anti-lawfare juggernaut Alliance Defending Freedom has also reached out.

Musk’s defiance and EU members like Buxade should give Alex Jones hope, despite the future of God working through Hallow in Europe looking bleak.

He is the mover of mountains, and the God of making twisted pathways straight, even the EU’s crooked fear-of-free-speech eSafety laws dressed up as combatting hate.