EU probes Facebook and Instagram for political advertising and disinformation ahead of European elections
Kyiv • UNN
The European Commission has launched an official investigation into Meta (Facebook and Instagram) for potential violations of the Digital Services Act related to misleading advertising, disinformation campaigns, lack of effective tools for monitoring public discourse and elections, inadequate mechanisms for detecting illegal content and compensating users, and shortcomings in providing access to data for researchers.
The European Commission on Tuesday announced that it has opened an investigation into the handling of political advertising by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, ahead of the European Parliament elections in June, UNN reports.
Details
"Today, the European Commission opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have violated the Digital Services Act (DSA)," the statement said.
"This European Commission has created tools to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act. This has always been true, but especially large digital platforms must invest sufficient resources in this, and today's decision shows that protecting our democracies is a joint fight with our member states," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The suspected violations reportedly "encompass Meta's policies and practices regarding deceptive advertising and political content on its services.
In the area of misleading advertising and disinformation, the European Commission reportedly "suspects that Meta is not complying with the DSA obligations related to the dissemination of misleading advertising, disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behavior in the EU." "The dissemination of such content can pose a threat to civil discourse, electoral processes and fundamental rights, as well as to consumer protection.
The suspected violations, as indicated, also relate to "the lack of an effective real-time third-party public discourse and election monitoring tool in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, as Meta abandoned its real-time public analysis tool CrowdTangle without an appropriate replacement.
In addition, the European Commission reportedly suspects that the mechanism for flagging illegal content on the services ("Notices and Actions"), as well as the redress mechanisms for users and internal complaints, do not meet the requirements of the Digital Services Act and that there are shortcomings in Meta's provision of access to publicly available data to researchers. The opening of the proceedings is based on a preliminary analysis of the risk assessment report submitted by Meta in September 2023, Meta's responses to the European Commission's formal requests for information (on illegal content and disinformation, access to data, subscription to the advertising ban policy, and generative artificial intelligence), publicly available reports, and the European Commission's own analysis.
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