German “Citizens Council” Calls for Criminalization of Disinformation

by Robert Kogon | The Daily Skeptic

A German “Citizens Council” has submitted recommendations to the German Ministry of the Interior calling, among other things, for the potential criminalization of “disinformation”. The council was assembled by the Bertelsmann Foundation, Germany’s most influential public policy think-tank, in partnership with the Ministry of the Interior itself, and it was tasked with formulating recommendations on how best to combat “disinformation”.

The project as a whole, known as “Forum Against Fakes”, included both a “council” of 120 German citizens, ostensibly selected to represent the diversity of German society, and an online survey. The “Citizens Report”, which was handed over to Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser on September 12th (see photo above), includes a recommendation titled “Consideration of criminal prosecution and/or penalising of the dissemination of disinformation”. The text (p.37) reads:

The German Government should consider whether criminal prosecution or other types of penalties are possible based on the definition of disinformation.

The “justification” of the proposed measure continues:

Preserving freedom of speech is important to us. Nevertheless, the creation and dissemination of disinformation has to be deterred and the perpetrators’ sense of wrongdoing heightened.

The “Citizens Council” also recommends supplementing the EU’s Digital Services Act, the centrepiece of the EU’s efforts to suppress ‘disinformation’, with a new law, which would require “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) to reserve 1% of their global turnover for the purpose of “combating disinformation”. Among others, Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon and Wikipedia have been designated as VLOPs by the European Commission.

The relevant text (p.32) says:

They [the online platforms] must use 50% of this budget to ensure that, once a month, every user is shown a post explaining disinformation, which works like a timed ad. (The post must be viewed for a certain amount of time and only then can be closed.)

The remaining 50% of the budget is to be contributed to an “independent agency for financing campaigns against disinformation”, which is discussed elsewhere in the document.

Furthermore, the relevant section proposes the formulation of “minimum legal requirements” which “oblige the platforms to programme their algorithms in such a way that possible disinformation is not disseminated and not recommended to users”.

The Bertelsmann Foundation is affiliated with the privately-owned German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Indeed, under the ownership structure created by the late Reinhard Mohn, the foundation itself became the majority owner of the corporation, with the Mohn family retaining a minority stake. Penguin-Random House, the largest book publisher in the English-speaking world, is a fully-owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann.

(Translations from German by the author.)

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.