No Overall Strategy Against Digital Violence

BZ reports on lecture held by Johanna Rinceanu

As part of the “16 Days Against Violence Against Women” campaign, criminal law expert Johanna Rinceanu delivered a lecture on “Digital Violence Against Women” on December 3. The Badische Zeitung covered the event.

In her lecture on digital violence against women, Max Planck Institute researcher Johanna Rinceanu outlined the different forms digital violence can take and dis­cussed international models of Internet regulation aimed at countering harmful online content. She noted that in the European Union for example, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which entered into force in 2024, has been requiring online platforms to ensure the removal of illegal content. Rinceanu criticized the fact that under the DSA, the primary responsibility for addressing illegal content rests with private, profit-driven digital platforms.

The law effectively delegates the tasks that should be under the remit of the judiciary to tech companies – notably the “Big Five”: Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. These private companies thereby act as powerful gatekeepers, controlling public discourse and operating at the sensitive interface between corporate interests and human rights protections. She pointed out that such corporations have no incentive to limit harmful content, as sensa­tion­alism, hate speech, and hostility often drive online engagement. In the current corporate-dominated environment, there is no coherent, functioning strategy to combat digital violence.

However, Rinceanu stressed that the Internet is not a legal vacuum: “Everything prohibited in the real world is also prohibited in the digital world.”

“Freiburger Juristin zeigt auf, wie gerade Frauen von Hass im Netz betroffen sind” (Freiburg-based law expert shows how women in particular are affected by online hate). Badische Zeitung, December 5, 2025 (in German, paywall).

Johanna Rinceanu held the lecture “Meinungsfreiheit in der digitalen Welt?” [Freedom of expression in the digital world?] on May 13, 2025 as part of the series “Die Verfassung der Freiheit – Demokratieprobleme der Gegenwart” [The constitution of freedom – Contemporary problems of democracy] at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. Listen to the entire lecture on Deutschlandfunk Nova (in German) here.