UK social media campaigners among five denied US visas
Clare Melford and Imran Ahmed, who have campaigned against hate speech and disinformation online, have been banned from entering the US
French President Emmanuel Macron led European condemnation of the move, describing it as "intimidation".
A French ex-EU commissioner and two senior figures at a Germany-based anti-online hate group were also denied visas.
Imran Ahmed, an ex-Labour adviser who now heads the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and Clare Melford, CEO of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), were labelled "radical activists" by the Trump administration and banned from entering the US.
Two British social media campaigners are among five people denied US visas after the State Department accused them of seeking to "coerce" American tech platforms into suppressing free speech.
The US billed the measures as a response to people and organisations that have campaigned for restrictions on American tech firms, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying they belonged to a "global censorship-industrial complex".
He said: "President Trump has been clear that his America First foreign policy rejects violations of American sovereignty. Extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech is no exception."
Ahmed has links to senior Labour figures. He was previously an aide to Labour minister Hilary Benn, and Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has served as a director of the group he founded.
The US government labelled Ahmed a "collaborator" for the CCDH's purported past work with the Biden administration. BBC News has contacted the CCDH for comment.
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