Fast lane, regulatory tool, mandate of expertise: Exploring the perceptions of trusted flaggers’ roles in Finland

In the Digital Services Act (DSA), trusted flaggers are established as actors contributing to the removal of illegal content online. This article presents an exploratory case study on trusted flaggers in Finland and how their roles were understood and shaped during the first year of the DSA implementation. This study analyses documents and interviews with the digital services coordinator and trusted flagger organizations. The findings discuss how trusted flaggers’ roles are constructed at the intersection of organizational practices, platform affordances and regulatory logic of the DSA. First, trusted flagger status is perceived as a mandate of expertise, enhancing organizations’ legitimacy in connection with their expertise, but the status is not seen to significantly alter organizations’ work. Second, the status is understood as a fast lane, highlighting varying digital platform affordances that differentially affect takedowns of illegal content, affirming asymmetric power dynamics between platforms, trusted flaggers and users. Third, as a regulatory tool, trusted flaggers’ contributions to the DSA objectives are perceived to be limited thus far, but they are expected to develop in the future. This study provides empirical insights into the perceived limitations and possibilities of trusted flaggers’ roles as part of European platform regulation.