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.
