The Corona years were not only a health crisis. They were also a large-scale test of how states, authorities, platforms and media can deal with unwanted information. What seemed partly improvised at the time is now much more organised, institutionalised and technically prepared.
New internal documents from the USA show how far this development already went during the pandemic. In the office of the then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, there was a separate “Misinformation Tiger Team” that, according to internal papers, was preparing a campaign with “maximum pressure” on large technology companies. The aim was to get platforms to restrict certain health information more strongly. Even more remarkable: As early as 2021, there was internal discussion about not limiting these structures to Covid, but generally expanding them to “health and medical misinformation”.
Corona was thus not just a one-off exceptional situation, at least for parts of the state apparatus. The mechanisms that have been built up should continue to be used.
In Europe, too, structures were created during the pandemic that have long since reached beyond Covid. The EU Commission operated its own Covid-19 disinformation monitoring programme, which required platforms to regularly report on how they downgraded or removed content, made “authoritative sources” more visible and took action against information deemed false or misleading. The Commission itself later described the programme as a kind of stress test for the European Code of Practice against Disinformation.
What was still partly voluntary cooperation between governments and platforms during Corona is now more formalized.
With the Digital Services Act, for example, there are now so-called trusted flaggers. These bodies, recognised by national authorities, report content that they consider illegal; Platforms must treat such reports as a priority. Formally, the platforms continue to decide on a removal themselves. However, the infrastructure for privileged reporting and rapid processing of problematic content is now firmly anchored in European law.
Germany goes even further. The German government openly states that government agencies monitor and analyze disinformation campaigns on the Internet. The Ministry of the Interior is in charge, with security authorities, states, municipalities and civil society actors involved. In June 2026, the Joint Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats was also opened, which is intended to detect and combat disinformation, among other things. The German government explicitly mentions cooperation with the EU, NATO and international partners.
Switzerland is also expanding corresponding structures. As early as 2024, the Federal Council decided to strengthen analysis and coordination in the area of disinformation and influence activities. In the meantime, there is an interdepartmental working group that is supposed to draw up a situation report, coordinate national and international cooperation and, if necessary, propose measures for prevention or defense.
All these measures are officially justified by protection against manipulation, foreign influence and dangerous misinformation.
But this is exactly where the problem lies.
During a serious crisis, it is not some abstract authority that decides what “disinformation” is. They are governments, authorities, platforms, reporting offices recognized by them and institutional partners. And the Corona years have shown that scientific assessments can change and that statements that were treated as false, dangerous or undesirable at a certain point in time had to be partially reassessed later.
The decisive lesson from Covid therefore seems to have been not only of a medical nature.
States have learned how quickly information spaces can be observed. They have learned how to put platforms under political and regulatory pressure. They have created reporting structures, institutionalised cooperation and passed laws that anchor these processes permanently.
For the next pandemic, much of it would not have to be built up first.
It already exists.
Of course, this does not automatically mean that every dissenting opinion will be censored in the next health crisis. There is no evidence for this. But the technical, regulatory, and institutional infrastructure that can be used to monitor, prioritize, downgrade, or remove information is much more advanced today than it was at the beginning of 2020.
But who will control those who decide what information is permissible, dangerous or undesirable in the next state of emergency?
Because if the same institutions that decide on political measures also have a say in what criticism of these measures is treated as “disinformation”, a power problem arises.
Covid has shown how quickly societies accept extraordinary interventions under the impression of a crisis. Since then, many of the structures at that time have not been dismantled.
They have been further developed.
Sources:
- Protect the Public’s Trust – internal US documents on the “Misinformation Tiger Team” and the planned expansion beyond Covid. Protect The Public’s Trust
- EU Commission – Covid-19 Disinformation Monitoring Programme. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
- EU Commission – Covid programme as a “stress test” for the reinforced Code of Practice. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
- EU Commission – Trusted Flaggers under the Digital Services Act. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
- Federal Government – State Monitoring and Analysis of Disinformation and GAZ Hybrid. Federal Government
- Swiss Federal Council/SEPOS – Expansion of analysis, coordination and measures against disinformation. Swiss Federal Administration
