The EU will reportedly launch formal proceedings against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, amid concerns that it is not doing enough to counter Russian disinformation ahead of the EU elections in June, according to reports.
He is also expected to raise concerns about the lack of effective monitoring of election content and a potentially inadequate mechanism for reporting illegal content.
The European Commission is understood to be concerned that Meta’s moderation system is not robust enough to counter the potential proliferation of fake news and attempts to suppress voting.
The Financial Times reported that officials were particularly concerned about the way Meta platforms were handling Russia’s efforts to undermine the upcoming European elections, although it was expected to stop short of subpoenaing the Kremlin in the process.
Reports suggest that the commission is particularly concerned about Meta’s plan to discontinue CrowdTangle, a public information tool that allows disinformation researchers, journalists and others in real time across the EU to monitor the spread of fake news and attempts to suppress voting.
Under sweeping new laws forcing tech companies to regulate their own content to comply with the law in the EU, Facebook and others are required to have systems in place to protect against the systemic risk of election interference.
A Meta spokesperson said: “We have a well-established process to identify and mitigate risks on our platforms. “We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”
If the move is confirmed in Meta, it will come just days after the commission carried out stress tests on all major social media platforms to determine whether adequate safeguards were in place against Russian disinformation.
The stress tests involved a series of fictional scenarios based on historical attempts to influence elections, as well as the manipulation of information through cyber means.
This included deepfakes and attempts to suppress authentic opinions through online harassment and threats.
In February, the EU identified this suppression of opinion as a new weapon to silence legitimate democratic voices.
“The goal was to test the platforms’ readiness to address manipulative behavior that could occur in the run-up to the election, in particular different manipulation tactics, techniques and procedures.” the commission said.
This allowed them to test social media’s resistance to manipulation, which politicians predict will intensify in the next six weeks.
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The European parliamentary elections will be held from June 6 to 9 against a backdrop of growing misinformation across the bloc.
On Monday, parliament published advice to voters with a list of previous incidents, including the claim that only pens with ink of a certain color will be accepted on ballot papers.
Politicians have also warned voters to be vigilant against misinformation, given the experience of recent national elections.
In elections in Slovakia, Spain, Finland and Estonia, stories spread on social media that voting booths had pens whose ink disappeared, while voters were told of physical threats, including bombs, at polling stations. electoral during the Spanish elections last year.
The EU DisinfoLab has tracked 17,000 incidents of fake news disinformation with many attempts to discredit Ukraine’s defense in the war against Russia, including Vladimir Putin’s pseudo-historical motives for his invasion.
Last week the website of a Czech news agency was hacked to display fake news. One of the articles claimed that the Czech counterintelligence service had prevented an assassination attempt on the Slovak president, Peter Pellegrini, another contained an alleged reaction by the Czech Foreign Minister, Jan Lipavský, to the news.
Last month, the Czech government uncovered what it believed was a disinformation network orchestrated by Moscow.
The Belgian Prime Minister also recently revealed that the federal prosecutor had opened an investigation into alleged payments to MEPs by Russia with a view to electing more pro-Russian MEPs to the European Parliament.