The European Commission announced this Tuesday the opening an investigation into Meta for his management ofMisleading political and foreign disinformation content«, in addition to not having an electoral supervision tool before the european elections from June 6 to 9, understanding that it violates the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Specifically, Brussels focuses on management of “misinformation” in Meta, Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp matrixpointing out that it must increase protection regarding this content, while pointing out that it has not launched an independent tool for the real-time monitoring of political and electoral discourse before the elections to the European Parliament.
The investigation focuses on the spread of “misleading advertising, disinformation campaigns and other maneuvers” in the EU, after indicating that the proliferation of this content “poses a risk to civic discourse, electoral processes and fundamental rights«.
Also will study the ‘political content approach’ in Metasomething that for the European Executive degrades the political content in the recommendation systems of Instagram and Facebook, including their feeds, in violation of the obligations of the DSA.
Another element that worries Brussels is the withdrawal of the real-time public information tool CrowdTangle without launching an equivalent or superior tool that will do the job for this task.
As highlighted by the community president, Ursula von der Leyen, in the electoral context it is necessary to act against violations of European regulations. «This Commission has created the means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. “The large digital platforms must live up to their obligations and dedicate sufficient resources to it,” he assured.
In this sense, he has assessed that the opening of the investigation into Meta “demonstrates the seriousness of Brussels regarding the compliance with the digital directive and the protection of democracy “against practices of interference and disinformation.”
Furthermore, the European Commission also has suspicions about the operation of Meta’s internal mechanism for users to report contentsince in his opinion the procedure is not easy to locate nor is its use intuitive, in breach of the requirements established in the DSA.
Community sources indicate that now the “ball is in the court” of the digital platform and they leave the different options in their hands to try to resolve possible problems. breaches in European legislation while Brussels reserves the right to take further measures.
«We just want to emphasize that it is about something quite urgent«explain the sources, who place special emphasis on Meta having a tool to monitor the European elections in real time.