German Federal Minister Targets Telegram

The messenger Telegram is increasingly coming under the disapproving gaze of the German authorities. The new Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, wants to quickly curb the platform, which has been ignoring the German legal situation for a long time.

Telegram has two problems that build on one another. The service has developed into a central platform for users who want to agitate against other people or who are increasingly radicalizing themselves on the ideological basis of crude conspiracy myths. And the worst manifestations cannot be stopped here, as the operators make any intervention impossible.

The central legal element in this country is the Network Enforcement Act. This explicitly does not apply to direct communication between two users, as it actually forms the core of a messenger platform. But for the numerous public groups that play a central role in the problems mentioned. And this has been going on for some time, as Faeser told the Funke media group.

No Contact Yet

According to the DPA news agency, the Federal Office of Justice has already conducted two proceedings against Telegram based on the Network Enforcement Act. The platform operators simply did not react to it. “This federal government will not accept that,” said Faeser.

The law in question requires that obviously criminal content be deleted within 24 hours. If it can only be assumed that contributions are illegal, the operators have one week to check and then delete them. Telegram simply ignores such messages. In addition, the messenger does not have a loadable address via which German authorities can contact official representatives of the company behind Telegram. The German platforms of the operators of iOS and Android, on the other hand, are gratefully accepted in order to distribute their own app, and money is also earned in Germany with advertising.