Can Europeans avoid their content being ~~censored~~ filtered by using a VPN?
I suspect content hosting companies will let anyone upload anything but only make the content visible to people in countries that allow it. A VPN won't help. The directive isn't saying "An American uploaded this so it's fine for everyone to see." It's saying "The original version of this is owned by someone else so no one in the EU can watch this derivative work." Who uploaded it doesn't actually matter.