The EU wants to hold corporations more accountable for disinformation on their platforms.
(Photo: dpa)
Brussels The EU Commission is stepping up its fight against opinion manipulation and Russian propaganda on the Internet. The Brussels authority has agreed on new rules of conduct with online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google and TikTok. The so-called “Code of Practice” updates and tightens a corresponding agreement from 2018. The previously unpublished document is available to the Handelsblatt. It specifies the responsibility of platform operators to take action against the growing flood of disinformation.
Among other things, the agreement aims to destroy the financial incentives for spreading disinformation. Anyone who systematically spreads untruths should no longer benefit from advertising revenues in the future. At the same time, the platforms should check the reliability of information more closely, so-called “fact checking” should be improved in all member states and all languages; the workers used for this should be paid “fairly”.
The companies have also committed to improving access to their data for independent scientists. The signatories to the code of conduct have six months to implement the agreements. The commission wants to monitor the implementation.
The fight against disinformation is of great relevance for the EU – especially in the current situation. Russia is increasingly managing to create the impression that Western sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine are threatening a global hunger crisis.
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This antagonizes people in many developing countries against the EU and complicates European attempts to isolate Russia internationally. The EU has not imposed any trade bans on food exports. It is the Russian Navy that, with its naval blockade in the Black Sea, is preventing Ukraine, one of the world’s most important grain producers, from being able to export its goods.
The EU has been fighting disinformation for some time
Disinformation has proven to be a weakness of western democracies, and it is also a major concern for EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Examples of the effect of disinformation are also Brexit, the Trump election in the USA and the resistance of “lateral thinkers” against corona protection measures.
The EU Commission emphasizes that the revised code of conduct is intended to draw lessons from the experiences of the past few years. “Russia is waging an information war against the democratic world,” Vice President of the European Commission Vera Jourova told Handelsblatt. “Once the new rules come into force, we will be better able to tackle disinformation, including Russian ones.”
In a statement for the Handelsblatt, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton underlined the importance of the measures intended to cut off advertising revenue for those who spread disinformation. “From Brexit to the Russian war on Ukraine: For years, online networks have allowed disinformation to spread unhindered – and even made money from it.” That will soon be over. Breton made it clear: “Platforms should no longer earn a single euro from the spread of disinformation.”
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