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.)
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Make Speech Free Again: How the U.S. can defeat E.U. censorship.