In the past decade, China was a black sheep when it came to social media. Whatever the new app was, odds were it was banned in China. X/Twitter? Banned. Facebook? Banned. Instagram? Banned.

But over the past few months, a dark horse has emerged in the censorship olympics: the European Union.

Earlier this year, the government of Italy took down ChatGPT citing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a monstrous 261-page law cracking down on the European web. By taking down OpenAI’s flagship app, Italy put itself in the same camp as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. Only after a few photo-ops and Sam Altman’s endorsement of the EU’s draconian licensing scheme did the bureaucrats back down.