Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) wants to call on Apple and Google to ban the Telegram app from their offer because of calls for violence and hate speech.
She wanted to remind the two providers of apps on mobile devices of their "social responsibility", said the minister on Wednesday in Berlin after a meeting with the interior ministers of the SPD-led state governments.
Telegram has become a "fire accelerator" for Reich citizens, conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists, said Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD).
In the case of pornographic and Islamist-terrorist content, the company finally showed “that they can if they want to”.
"The social network Telegram and comparable providers serve people in Germany as a networking platform for lateral thinkers, corona deniers and right-wing extremists," said the interior ministers in a joint paper.
Together with the European partners, they want to engage in more dialogue with foreign governments on this problem "and also clearly represent our expectations at a high-ranking political level".
With a view to the current protests against the state anti-corona measures, Faeser said it was “a difficult time for the security forces”.
Pistorius said the AfD was "massively involved" in organizing registered and unregistered protests.