There has been criticism of the European Union's Digital Services Act at a committee hearing in the United States.
The meeting, of the US House Judiciary Committee in Washington, came after a report claimed the legislation amounted to censorship and electoral interference.
The act regulates companies such as X, TikTok and Meta - the operators of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Witnesses included Irish human rights Irish lawyer, Lorcan Price, who said: "There can be no doubt that the European Digital Services Act is the tip of a massive censorship industrial complex.
"The enormous fines levied on X corporations by the European Commission since the last hearing has proved, beyond all doubt, that the EC [European Commission] means to strangle free speech by a systemic assault on US companies," he added.
Comedic writer Graham Linehan, who co-created Father Ted and was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London last year under British hate speech laws, called for the US to put pressure on the Irish Government.
"In 2015, while the Irish were celebrating their vote for marriage equality, the Gender Recognition Act was quietly passed.
"No public consultation, no referendum, no women's rights organisations consulted," he said, adding that Ireland's "women and girls deserve the debate that they were denied".
The leading Democrat on the committee, Jamie Raskin, said the US faced a much bigger threat to free speech from the immigration clampdown in Minneapolis.
"We're having another hearing about the imaginary threat to the transphobic material of Irish comedians against the European Union and we can't seem to have a hearing about ICE agents shooting Americans in the face for exercising their first amendment rights."
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Republican Jim Jordan said the EU was using its laws to interfere in the free speech of US companies.
"We called this out and we called it what it was - censorship and election interference," he said.
"The European Commission successfully pressure social media companies to change their global content moderation rules."
Mr Price appeared to largely agree with this viewpoint, and that of Republican Congressman Russell Fry, who said that unelected European bureaucrats were attempting to set the global laws on what constitutes hate speech.
The European Commission dismissed the claims of censorship and election interference as "pure nonsense" and "completely unfounded".
"Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe," spokesman Thomas Regnier added.
