Oh boy. Ever since people started ridiculously blaming fake news on Facebook for the election outcome, we‘ve pointed out that these calls will be used to justify censorship of opposing views — and that‘s a very bad thing. We‘ve already seen authoritarian countries with long histories of punishing and silencing dissent jump on the „fake news is a problem!“ bandwagon to justify heavy handed censorship. Both China and Iran have pointed to „fake news“ as a reason for new internet censorship plans.

But, of course, now the disease is spreading, and spreading quickly. Over in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has now endorsed a proposal to criminalize publishing fake news. Let‘s repeat that: she‘s endorsing a plan to make it a criminal offense to publish „fake news.“