Regulating Hate Speech: The European Digital Services Act and Ireland’s Hate Crimes Bill

 

Today there is widespread and growing concern about the role that the internet can play in the dissemination of harmful material, including hate speech. However, the regulation of hate speech has always been a controversial subject, due to risks for freedom of expression.

This paper examines two current legislative initiatives in relation to hate speech in order to assess if they could pose risks of censorship for legitimate and non-hateful material: the European Digital Services Act (DSA) and Ireland’s Hate Crimes Bill (HCB).

By examining how the HCB and the DSA would interact, this paper can serve as a case study on how the European DSA may interact with the national hate speech laws of an individual EU Member State, in this case Ireland.

This paper asserts that the interaction of the DSA with the HCB may have consequences which were not intended by the creators of either piece of legislation separately. There is a risk that this could lead to the censorship of legitimate, non-hateful content, including politically vital material and content that is created to oppose hatred. In some cases, this could risk exacerbating the very problem that such laws are designed to address.