Ashton Kutcher (archive image): "Please send me a direct message"
Photo:
Chris Pizzello / dpa
Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher has 17.5 million fans from all over the world on Twitter.
Some of them may have wondered who he marked in his tweet from Wednesday evening: Birgit Sippel, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, three German Social Democrats.
Sippel sits for the SPD in the EU Parliament, Esken and Walter-Borjans are known to be party leaders.
Apparently, Kutcher is dealing with a serious political issue: he would be "happy to have the opportunity to discuss the implications of your position on the EU communication code on the privacy of abused children with you," the actor wrote to the SPD politicians.
"Please send me a direct message."
Esken responded promptly, thanked you for contacting us, and asked Kutcher for a direct message from her.
"I followed you back," wrote Esken.
Kutcher "liked" her tweet.
It is unclear whether he has already sent her a direct message.
An SPD spokesman only confirmed at the request of "Welt" that the party leader had personally answered Kutcher.
Before that, there was no contact between the two.
Hollywood star Kutcher is known as the successor to Charlie Sheen in the series "Two And A Half Men" and is married to fellow actor Mila Knuis.
It was not clear which arrangement Kutcher meant.
In the summer, however, the EU Commission presented a new "strategy for combating abuse of children more effectively".
Among other things, the aim is to prevent and strengthen criminal prosecution with regard to sexual abuse of children - "both offline and online".
End-to-end encryption hinders detection tools
The Commission worries that the increasing end-to-end encryption of messenger services could reduce the number of reports of sexual abuse, "because the detection tools currently used do not work with end-to-end encrypted communications."
Therefore, Brussels wants to examine technical solutions through which child sexual abuse can be detected and reported in such chats.
Kutcher apparently referred to this in another tweet to Esken: He stressed that children's privacy is important.
He also addressed the use of technical means to detect, report and remove material showing child sexual abuse.
From the tweet, however, it was not clear what he thought of it exactly.
Kutcher also wrote that the technical know-how of the high-profile digital politician Esken could have a positive effect on the quality of life of "countless children".
However, he did not go into detail here either.
MEP Sippel also responded to Kutcher's tweet and posted a link with contact details.
Walter-Borjans, however, remained silent.
SPD Vice Kevin Kühnert used the unexpected stage of the party for a different idea: Kühnert wrote to actor Leonardo DiCaprio that if he wanted to know something "about the welfare state concept of the #SPD or something like that", he should send a direct message.
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