Over the past several years, investigative reporting has revealed a range of coordinated efforts to suppress online speech in western countries. Often referred to as the Censorship-Industrial Complex, these networks of information suppression (mostly operating under the guise of “countering-disinformation” or “hate speech”) have been particularly widespread in the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. Within the EU, Germany plays an outsized role in this Complex, with a plethora of government and private nodes engaged in monitoring online speech and advocating for increasing levels of content suppression.

While significant studies and journalism have been undertaken to investigate the German government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic centers, foundations, think tanks, and more that push for and implement the country’s censorship regime, our conversations with a range of German free speech advocates suggested that a full mapping was yet to be done.

With liber-net’s background working with journalist Matt Taibbi on the Twitter Files and in mapping Censorship-Industrial Complex (a US-focused map in hindsight), we set out to apply a similar methodology to Germany. Working with a host of German specialists, researchers and advisors, we have produced a database of more than 300 organizations contributing to online content suppression activities in Germany, far beyond the scale we had anticipated.

That database, and a lengthy report outlining the key players and origins of this content controls system, will be launched at the European Parliament on November 19th, 2025. A subsequent event will be held in Berlin on November 21st. Please contact us if you are interested in attending the Brussels event. You can sign up for the Berlin event here.

If you would like to receive the report once it has been launched, please sign up to our mailing list.