‘Facebook gives too little information to EU about anti-disinformation measures’

Facebook is said to have repeatedly withheld important information about its efforts to combat disinformation. The company has signed a code of conduct to combat disinformation, but according to the EU, the company barely proves that it is working on it.

In addition to the lack of evidence to show that it fights disinformation, the European Commission would also complain that Facebook does not use enough fact-checkers, writes The Guardian. The newspaper states that it has seen a monthly report on the code of conduct. These fact checkers have to check the shared messages to make sure everything is factually correct. These would have been deployed in only 8 of the 28 European member states.

According to the code of conduct, online platforms, social media and advertisers pledge to fight disinformation on a voluntary basis. Making political ads more transparent, closing fake accounts and demonetizing disinformation spreaders are part of the code. With the code of conduct, the Commission aims to ensure that political campaigns conducted online are transparent, fair and trustworthy. This in the context of the upcoming elections, such as the European Parliament elections at the end of May.

Every month the European Commission publishes a report on the progress of the code of conduct participants. The first report was published in January. It called on the companies to do more against disinformation. At the time, the Commission wrote that it expected Facebook, among others, to develop a more systematic approach against incorrect information. This new approach should provide results data. With that data, the Commission can more easily monitor Facebook’s approach.

The Commission appears to be dissatisfied with the latter point in the report yet to be published. For example, the ‘lack of hard figures’ would be very worrying. In addition, the social media companies are said to have performed ‘below expectations’ when it comes to combating disinformation. According to The Guardian, the Commission is warning companies to follow the report’s code of conduct and recommendations. Otherwise, the EU could potentially come up with legislation to combat disinformation.

Twitter and Google are also mentioned, according to the British newspaper. Twitter would not report sufficiently on ad transparency. Google would report better, but again provides too little data about the use of an unspecified policy. The report will be published on Thursday, according to The Guardian.

Update 15:13: In a response, Facebook says it is working on ‘result indicators’ around political advertisements, but that these will become available at a later time. The spokesperson did not give an exact date, only “as soon as the ad archives are available outside the United States.” The platform provides figures on the number of deleted fake accounts every six months in a Transparency Report. Between April and September 2018, the company said it deleted 1.5 billion fake accounts.