On 1 October 2017, the so-called Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, or NetzDG) came into force with a transitional regulation. The law applies to operators of social media platforms and their handling of the phenomena of hate speech and fake news. As the jury for the Anglicism of the Year 2016 award wrote, these two terms served as a “crystallisation point for societal debates on how to deal with this phenomenon, which is not entirely new but has entered the public consciousness with force.” We ask: how did it come about that the debates around these terms actually led to a law in Germany?