The New Priests of Truth - Inside Germany’s Censorship Ecosystem

Andrew Lowenthal is an Australian digital rights activist,
co-founder and former director of the media and technology
nonprofit EngageMedia, and the founder of Liber-net, an initiative
dedicated to restoring free speech online and exposing digital
authoritarianism. Over many years he worked across Southeast Asia
on censorship, media freedom and civil society empowerment before
shifting his focus to Western democracies, where he observed a
rapid expansion of state-aligned speech control. Lowenthal was also
part of the Twitter Files investigations in 2022 alongside Matt
Taibbi, helping uncover the networks of government agencies,
academic labs, NGOs and platforms involved in coordinated content
suppression. His expertise lies in mapping these ecosystems and
analyzing how governments, foundations and major technology
companies shape the boundaries of permissible speech.In this
conversation, Andrew Lowenthal breaks down the findings of his
extensive report “The Censorship Network in Germany”, created
together with a team of German researchers. We discuss why
Germany—despite being under the same EU framework as other member
states—has developed a uniquely aggressive and institutionally
intertwined censorship landscape. Lowenthal explains how more than
300 actors, from ministries to NGOs to fact-checkers, form an
ecosystem that flags, moderates and shapes online discourse under
the banners of “disinformation,” “hate speech,” and “threats to
democracy.” We explore the financial flows behind this system, the
blurring of boundaries between state and civil society, and the
cultural anxieties that drive Germany’s distinct approach.