EU censorship is not an abstract bureaucratic artifact but a living network of hundreds – if not thousands – of actors intervening daily in the flow of open communication. It incorporates state-funded non-governmental organisations (“NGOs”) that “fact-check” whether online posts and comments are following Brussels’ narrative.
Germany is at the centre of this censorship regime, allocating nearly €1.5 billion per year to its NGO censorship complex, and its influence on the international NGO infrastructure is enormous.
The internet has become the primary battleground for free expression. With ever-expanding funding streams, the German government is building an NGO-driven censorship apparatus that quietly injects the poison of the totalitarian impulse into public discourse. Now, a group called “Liber-Net” has succeeded in illuminating this sprawling, kraken-like suppression network.
If you are an active participant in online debates – especially if you occasionally express views critical of the government – you’ve likely already encountered one of the countless “fact foxes.” Point to independent research on CO2’s impact on global climate that undermines the logic of the green transition, and suddenly the likelihood rises that a state-funded non-governmental organisation (“NGO”) will sic one of these “fact-checkers” on you, flag your content, accuse you of hate speech and launch a bot-driven harassment cascade designed to dehumanise and trivialise your replies.
Just how deep the state’s covert censorship apparatus now reaches has long been difficult to assess. Censors love darkness, hidden channels and opaque financing. But a spectacular investigative effort by “Liber-Net” – a civil society group advocating for digital rights – has, for the first time, shone a bright light into that darkness.
In an interview with Berliner Zeitung, Liber-Net director Andrew Lowenthal describes in detail how this multi-layered NGO ecosystem operates and the extent to which it is intertwined with state authorities.
Liber-Net identified more than 330 actors – directly or indirectly funded with taxpayer money – who participate in online content moderation. Their mandate: mark politically inconvenient posts, flag them as “harmful” or suppress them entirely. They provide the operational foundation that gives life to the Digital Services Act (“DSA”), the European Union’s largest regulatory project aimed at disciplining the digital public sphere.
Lowenthal outlines a system in which government agencies, quasi-public institutes, and ideologically aligned NGOs coordinate in lockstep. It is a network that does not operate openly, is not democratically legitimised and certainly not transparent – yet it has unleashed an intimidation machine that only runs into resistance from a handful of American platforms, most notably Elon Musk’s X.
This is the new engine room of European information control: decentralised, specialised, lavishly funded – and invisible to the average citizen, until now.
Liber-Net confirms what long lingered as mere suspicion: EU censorship is not an abstract bureaucratic artifact but a living network of hundreds – if not thousands – of actors intervening daily in the flow of open communication.
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