Telegram: Interior Minister Faeser appeals to Google and Apple

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser has addressed an appeal to Apple and Google: The two companies should become aware of their overall social responsibility and ban Telegram from their app stores. However, there is no legally binding order to do so.

The background: Telegram, right-wing extremism and lateral thinking

The app Telegram is considered a haven for right-wing extremists as well as the loose group Querdenken, which, in addition to vaccination skeptics, consists primarily of people who spread conspiracy ideologies. The leading role of the app Telegram is not only due to its functionality – it stands out from the mass of messenger apps due to the unlimited number of participants in open groups – but also due to the fact that the Dubai-based company behind the app completely eludes law enforcement authorities. There is no effective containment of criminally relevant content, and requests for information are generally not responded to.

In a joint paper of the Federal Minister of the Interior with the interior ministries of the SPD-led states, this circumstance is described as follows: “The social network Telegram and comparable providers serve people in Germany as a networking level of contrarians, Corona deniers and right-wing radicals.”

Faeser considers shutdown

Interior Minister Faeser is a thorn in the side of Telegram as a lawless space. Repeatedly, she – like other representatives of the German government – had pushed to enforce effective regulation of the app. Since that is proving difficult, she is also considering other means of containment – up to and including blocking Telegram in Germany or the EU. However, such a step would not only be difficult to enforce legally, but also problematic in terms of the message it sends: (partial) Internet shutdowns have so far been known mainly from totalitarian regimes. The best example of this is China with its Great Firewall, within which only content approved by the dictatorial regime is accessible. Against the backdrop of the liberal-democratic values that are essential to the self-image of the Western world, to which reference is usually made to justify measures against totalitarian states, such an approach would not only be contradictory, but also a fundamental questioning of the political-social self-image.

Faeser herself understands the shutdown of Telegram as ultima ratio, which should be considered if other means fail. In this regard, she advocates an EU-wide solution and a correspondingly united approach by the EU states.

The message to Google and Apple

The message that Faeser now sent via Twitter to Google and Apple is clear: She wants to take the companies in the responsibility and solve the Telegram problem in this way. Whether Google and Apple will comply with the Interior Minister’s request and ban the app from their app stores is unclear. The Ministry of the Interior’s legal options are likely to be limited in case of doubt. Google and Apple’s move could also be seen as an attempt to outsource government responsibility to private companies – Facebook already complained about something similar when it was legally required to identify and delete criminal posts itself.