Government spending on digital speech regulation in Germany has surged over the past decade, increasing more than five times since 2020 and totaling around €105.6 million by 2025.
The findings come from The Censorship Network: Regulation and Repression in Germany Today, a detailed investigation by Liber-net, a digital civil liberties group that monitors speech restrictions and information control initiatives across Europe.
The report describes a sprawling alliance of ministries, publicly funded “fact-checkers,” academic consortia, and non-profit groups that now work together to regulate online communication.
It started as a handful of “anti-hate” programs and has evolved into a broad state-financed system of “content controls,” supported by both domestic and foreign grants.
Liber-net’s accompanying databases and map document more than 330 organizations and over 420 separate grants, rating each on a one-to-five scale according to its level of direct censorship involvement.
Between 2020 and 2021, public funding for these initiatives tripled, and by 2023 it had doubled again.
Hellbound and Down 