A tweet and a weekend with a wave of personal hostilities: That's all it takes to persuade politicians to retreat.

After Robert Habeck, Schleswig-Holstein's Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) has now put her Twitter presence on hold.

On Friday evening, she wanted to put things into perspective in the debate about child deaths in the corona pandemic and instead poured oil on the fire of an overheated debate.

On Sunday, Prien announced that she would deactivate her Twitter account.

She will take a few weeks to decide whether and how she wants to use Twitter in the future.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Henrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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You don't have to position yourself in this dispute to realize that the pressure on the network is increasing.

This raises the question of whether new rules can change anything.

The EU is currently working flat out on uniform Europe-wide rules for social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

At the end of 2020, the EU Commission presented a draft for a law for digital services (DSA).

The European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, the body of the member states, are currently negotiating the details.

standards for digital corporations

Like the European General Data Protection Regulation, the project is intended to set standards for digital groups across Europe for the first time.

The former Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP) sees this as a "milestone".

Platform operators like Telegram, who ignored the rule of law, also came under economic pressure with the DSA.

"They will no longer be able to afford to refuse in the future," praises the deputy chairwoman of the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

In a legal opinion for the foundation, the Munich professor for digital law, Henrike Weiden, came to the conclusion that the DSA could be much more effective against such "stubborn platforms".

This is particularly the case when the Commission is given direct oversight of the very large online platforms, as requested by the Council.

However, every regulation also has its limits: "The uninhibited mob that just chased the Kiel Education Minister Prien through the net will not be stopped by regulation alone," warns Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

"Every user must help ensure that justice and decency grow again in social media."

European legislation is not yet complete, but it is already casting its shadow.

In the coming weeks there will probably be more and more heated discussions about how sensible the new regulations are in detail.

After all, with the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), Germany already has a comparatively sharp sword that is second to none in an international comparison.

In the run-up to this legislation, fears of “overblocking” were great.

Critics feared that the platforms would rather delete too many posts than too few.

Conversely, associations such as "Hateaid" praise the fact that victims can finally take effective action against hatred and hate speech on the Internet.

Finally, the NetzDG sets tight deadlines for the deletion of illegal posts and forces platforms to name a specific contact person.

The NetzDG could soon be over as a result of the European regulations if they come into force as planned next year.

It would then be largely superfluous because it would be replaced by a European regulation directly applicable in all EU member states.

There will then no longer be tight deadlines, but platforms will be obliged to set up reporting channels.

In addition, the DSA makes specifications that the EU institutions hope will have positive consequences for the culture of discussion in social media.

The services have to check annually whether they pose a threat to society or democracy.

Very large platforms also have to consider public health risks and possible addictions and other negative consequences for the mental or physical health, social and financial well-being of users – and this is not only about illegal content, but also about “problematic” content .

The main question here is to what extent the platforms specifically promote the distribution of inflammatory or radical content because it generates more clicks.