On 7 October 2026 the German federal cabinet adopted Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig's Gesetz gegen digitale Gewalt (GgdG), according to ZDFheute and netzpolitik.org. The bill now goes to the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Its goals are sound. Parts of its machinery are not yet proportionate.
The strongest case for the bill
Victims of online abuse currently face a procedural wall. To sue an anonymous harasser they must first learn who it is. The existing disclosure route sits in § 21 TDDDG, which the bill would replace with a court procedure, as Gleiss Lutz explains in its analysis of the April draft. Even a successful order can arrive too late if the access provider no longer holds the IP-address assignment.
The harm is not marginal. A Bitkom survey reported by t3n found that 25% of respondents aged 16 and over say they have personally experienced digital violence. Among 16 to 29 year olds the figure was 43%. This is an industry-association survey rather than official data, but it matches what victims' groups such as HateAid describe. A state that offers no workable route to identify an abuser has in effect privatised the cost of enforcement onto the victim.
What the bill does
As described in the government's account of the bill and press coverage, the GgdG creates a court procedure to identify anonymous accounts, with information claims against platforms, messengers and internet access providers. It adds preservation orders so evidence is not lost while a case proceeds. It also adds a claim to have a social-network account temporarily blocked and unlawful content removed. The official procedure is listed on the Federal Ministry of Justice's legislative page.
On the criminal side, it creates new offences for sexualised deepfakes (§ 184k StGB), identity misuse and covert GPS stalking. According to netzpolitik.org, the cabinet version went beyond the April draft in several respects. It criminalises possession and knowing retrieval of rape recordings, with up to three years' imprisonment or a fine. It adds an offence for operating fake accounts in another person's name where that seriously damages their reputation. It also narrows the voyeurism offence to sexualised depictions. The deletion claim is now a court-ordered remedy for individual unlawful content, decoupled from account blocking. Messengers with group chats such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal are now covered, where the draft originally targeted social media.
The decoupling of deletion from blocking is a real improvement. Removing one unlawful post is a targeted remedy. Suspending someone's whole account is a blunt one.
Where the design worries us
Data retention. The cabinet text keeps a role for IP addresses stored in advance. Hubig has said the scheme means storing IP addresses and port numbers for three months, which she called lawful in this reduced form. She defended it again after the cabinet vote: "Die IP-Adressenspeicherung gehört zum Schutz vor digitaler Gewalt dazu." Klaus Landefeld of the industry association eco called three months of suspicionless retention disproportionate, and the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte rejects blanket storage. The sensible position is that a victim-protection statute should not be the vehicle for universal retention. The disclosure claim should work with data that is preserved on a targeted basis, which is exactly what the preservation orders are for.
The blocking threshold. According to ZDFheute, account blocks are available for serious violations with a risk of repetition. The Federal Bar Association (Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer) warned that the threshold is too low and that courts will be overburdened. Gleiss Lutz noted that the April draft allowed a block even after a first violation if repetition was likely. Silencing a whole account on a prediction of future behaviour is a prior restraint in miniature. Account suspension is also a power the EU already regulates: Article 23 of the Digital Services Act governs suspension of users who frequently provide manifestly illegal content. Gleiss Lutz flagged a possible clash between § 4 and that article. Germany is adding a parallel, court-ordered suspension regime on top of a harmonised European one.
Scope creep. Political speech sits close to the deepfake and fake-account offences, because parody, satire and memes are the same technology used for different purposes. The fake-account offence turns on harm to reputation, a standard that can capture mockery of public figures. The Bundestag should write in an explicit exemption for satire and clearly political expression and keep the reputational-harm test strict.
What a proportionate version looks like
The contrast with NetzDG is worth stating. NetzDG pushed platforms to decide legality under deadline and fine pressure, which encouraged over-removal. The GgdG puts the decision in front of a judge, which is the better constitutional design. That advantage is lost if low thresholds make injunctions routine.
We would ask the Bundestag for four changes:
- Detach the disclosure procedure from general IP retention and rely on targeted preservation orders.
- Raise the account-block standard to repeated or grave violations established by a court, not a forecast.
- Add explicit satire and political-expression carve-outs to the deepfake and fake-account offences.
- Resolve the interaction with DSA Article 23 so that German courts and platforms do not face two suspension regimes.
The bill's central idea, that victims deserve a way to identify abusers through a court, is right. Parliament should keep that and trim the rest.