Stopping the European Censorship Machine

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.