It will take more than visa sanctions.
Shortly before Christmas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers made a dramatic announcement: the U.S. was placing five individuals described as “agents of the global censorship-industrial complex” on a visa sanctions list in an effort to curb foreign suppression of Americans. The undoubted headliner of the group is Thierry Breton, the former E.U. Internal Market Commissioner who spearheaded efforts to enforce the E.U.’s Digital Services Act (DSA) during the last years of his tenure in the European Commission. The list also includes the two managing directors of the hitherto relatively obscure German organization HateAid, which serves as a so-called “trusted flagger” under the DSA.
As someone who has written extensively on the reality of foreign censorship of Americans under the DSA (I covered this topic in the Spring 2025 issue of the Claremont Review of Books) and has specifically called attention to the role of trusted flaggers using the example of HateAid, I was pleased that the State Department is aware of the organization. But unfortunately placing HateAid’s directors on a visa sanctions list will do nothing to impede the organization from continuing to contribute to the censorship of Americans under the DSA.
The sanctions list appears to be premised on the idea that foreign censorship of Americans is essentially the product of bad actors. Indeed, talk of an amorphous censorship-industrial complex tends to reinforce this idea. This bad actors paradigm may be appropriate for the other organizations whose officials are included on the sanctions list, even if one should have a closer look at the sources of their funding before concluding they are unambiguously private actors. But it is certainly not appropriate for HateAid.
HateAid is not just a private organization that lobbies online platforms to censor. Rather, it is a formally private organization that has been invested with what is, in effect, a public function by a foreign government (Germany) under a foreign law (the DSA). It is funded by the German government and served that government in an advisory capacity even before it was appointed as a trusted flagger.
Under the DSA, trusted flaggers discharge the quasi-public function of identifying online content that is illegal under the laws of the country whose government appointed them. In the case of HateAide this includes Germany’s myriad “hate speech” laws that have criminalized all sorts of speech that is perfectly legal in the United States. Even mere insults are a crime under German law. Much of HateAid’s would-be public advocacy work in Germany is devoted to defending public officials—in particular Green Party politicians—against content that on closer inspection bears a remarkable resemblance to what Americans would call criticism or satire, not hate.
Their expertise having been certified by the government that appointed them, the DSA demands that trusted flaggers be given priority treatment by the platforms on which the “allegedly problematic” content has been posted. This means that content should, as a rule, be removed or otherwise suppressed, for instance, by having its visibility restricted. (Visibility suppression should normally be reserved for legal but harmful content. But the flagging prerogatives of trusted flaggers de facto extend to the latter.)
So in short, visa sanctions or not, HateAid will continue to exercise the powers with which the German government has invested it under the DSA. And online platforms will continue to take special account of HateAid’s notices of “illegal” speech simply because it is the law—even if it is not American law and the speech in question is constitutionally protected in the U.S.
Unlike the oft-invoked censorship-industrial complex, the European censorship apparatus is anything but amorphous. It is a highly formalized system involving myriad regulatory hoops through which the platforms are expected to jump. It demands that they be in continuous contact with E.U. officials and member-state authorities (or proxies like HateAid) on their content moderation.
For example, under the DSA major platforms and search engines are required to submit periodic risk assessment reports showing that they are doing enough to combat “systemic risks,” such as the threat of “disinformation,” that supposedly arise from the use of their services. X’s most recent such report—which is otherwise heavily redacted—notes that during the reporting period, “We continued to proactively engage and exchange information with the European Commission, the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Parliament, and Member States’ key authorities….”
The EEAS is the E.U.’s foreign service. Imagine the uproar if X was found to be consulting with, say, our own U.S. State Department on combatting disinformation or any other aspect of its content moderation. This is precisely the sort of thing that President Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order “Ending Federal Censorship” was intended to forbid. But it is precisely the sort of thing going on under the aegis of the DSA, and it is happening all the time. The whole point of the DSA is, after all, to establish public oversight—that is, European oversight—of platforms’ content moderation.
To get an idea of not only how extensive but also how invasive such oversight can be, consider this recently published study by none other than HateAid. The study aimed to test platform compliance with the DSA by reporting allegedly illegal content and measuring the extent to which it was removed. It should be recalled that HateAid’s task is to uphold German law, not any other law. Nonetheless, the report refers to global removals, not just local removals (for example, geo-blocking of content in Germany).
Readers may be surprised to learn that of all the platforms, X was found to be the most compliant, removing nearly three-quarters of the content reported to it. They may be even more surprised to learn that, whereas the percentage of items removed declined on Meta platforms in 2025—after President Trump’s inauguration—HateAid reported that X “showed modest improvement”—that is, it removed even more reported content.
But perhaps the most significant thing about this study for our purposes is that it was almost entirely conducted before HateAid was named a trusted flagger. Imagine how much higher the removal rates are now—perhaps even approaching 100%, which is clearly the organization’s goal.
Moreover, precisely this kind of testing exercise has been integrated into the E.U.’s formal DSA oversight under the aegis of the so-called Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online+ (that is, a revised version of this code). Although adherence to the Code is voluntary, participation serves as a means of demonstrating DSA compliance. All of the major platforms, including X, are signatories. Under the Code, platform compliance is periodically tested by monitoring organizations. If the European Commission names a trusted flagger as a monitor, the platforms may not refuse the nomination (see footnote seven here).
The only way to deprive trusted flaggers like HateAid of their censorship powers over Americans is to bring this whole massive European censorship apparatus tumbling down. The American government needs to get the DSA repealed or, barring this highly unlikely eventuality, to counter-regulate—that is, to ensure that American tech companies do not comply with the DSA, or at least not in any way that restricts Americans’ First Amendment rights. If European governments have a problem with American speech, then the platforms can geo-block, but nothing else; no global removal and no visibility filtering. I have offered a sketch of such counter-regulatory legislation in “Make Speech Free Again,” which appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of the CRB.
If the U.S. does not go after the DSA system itself, then it is game over: free speech is gone, and our censors are European.
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