BKA: Large platforms hardly ever report criminal content
The Digital Services Act was intended to create instruments to combat criminal content on social media. According to the BKA, this has achieved little so far.
(Image: Cristian Storto/Shutterstock.com)
The Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) has criticized the fact that social media platform providers are doing too little to combat the radicalization of young people. Within a year, the providers of major online services reported just 61 cases of dangerous content to the BKA. According to the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), they are obliged to report criminal content if it could pose a threat to a person's safety or life.
In contrast, the BKA itself reported 11,000 links to the platform operators during the same period. In 360 cases, deletion orders were issued, said BKA President Holger Münch in an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. Orders are possible if criminally relevant content is not deleted. This means that the situation has improved only marginally since October 2023, when the BKA said that it was not receiving any reports from large platforms.
Islamists adapt to new target group
According to the BKA's findings, jihadist suspects are getting younger and younger. Islamists are adapting to this by increasingly using digital platforms and preparing short, concise and image-heavy content suitable for social media. The BKA is responding to this development with its own unit for deleting this content.
However, the fight against this has shown that the content is uploaded again quickly via new accounts. "The question is: are we just slowing things down? Or are we actually reducing it? We can't judge that conclusively because we don't have a complete overview," says Münch.
Recommendation algorithms also a problem
Recommendation algorithms also contribute significantly to the spread. However, the platforms take too little responsibility for monitoring content. Münch calls for tougher regulations, including in the form of fines - the BKA currently has no such option. It is also problematic that an evaluation of the DSA is not due to take place until 2026.
(mki)