FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM ARE SUBJECT TO FORMAL PROCEEDINGS BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR POSSIBLE INFRINGEMENT OF THE DIGITAL SERVICES LAW
By Asier Martínez Jurio / Aquí Europa
This Mars, April 30, 2024, the European Commission has opened a formal procedure to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have infringed the Digital Services Act. The reason is due to malpractices related to misleading advertising and content of a political nature in its services.
In addition, the infringements are also due to the unavailability of an effective civic discourse and third-party election monitoring tool prior to the European Parliament elections, in the context of Meta’s shutdown of its real-time public information tool CrowdTangle without a proper replacement.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “This Commission has put in place means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. If we suspect a breach of the rules, we act. This is true at all times, but especially in times of democratic elections. The big digital platforms must live up to their obligations to devote sufficient resources to this issue, and today’s decision shows that we are serious about compliance. Protecting our democracies is a common struggle with our member states. Today in Prague I would like to thank Prime Minister Fiala for his active role in raising the issue at European level, together with Belgium’s activation of the emergency mechanism for the exchange of information between Member States.”
On the other hand, the Commission intuits that the “Notice-and-Action” mechanism, whose function is to highlight illegal content, and the rest of the users’ recourse and complaint tool, are not in line with the guidelines of the Digital Services Act.
The announcement of the proceeding is based on a preliminary analysis of the risk assessment report sent by Meta in September 2023, Meta’s responses to the Commission’s formal requests for information (on illegal content and misinformation, access to data, subscription to the ad-free policy and generative AI), publicly available reports and the Commission’s own analysis.
The proceeding alleges the following actions:
– Misleading advertising and misinformation. The Commission suspects that Meta does not comply with the obligations of the Digital Services Act related to the fight against the dissemination of misleading advertisements, disinformation campaigns and inauthentic behavior coordinated in the EU. The dissemination of such content may pose a risk to civic discourse, electoral processes and fundamental rights, as well as to consumer protection.
– Visibility of political content. The Commission also considers that Meta’s policy linked to the “political content approach,” which dismisses political content in Instagram’s and Facebook’s recommendation systems, including their feeds, does not comply with the obligations of the Digital Services Act. The investigation will focus on the compatibility of this policy with transparency and user redress obligations, as well as requirements to assess and mitigate risks to civic discourse and electoral processes.
-The lack of availability of an effective real-time third-party civic discourse and election monitoring tool prior to the upcoming European Parliament and other elections in several Member States. Meta is in the process of phasing out the “CrowdTangle”, a public information tool that allows real-time election monitoring by researchers, journalists and civil society, also through live visual scoreboards, without an adequate replacement.
– The mechanism that detects illegal content. The Commission suspects that Meta’s notification and action mechanism, which allows users to notify the presence of illegal content on its services, does not comply with the regulations of the Digital Services Act. This includes the suspicion that accessibility requirements are not met. At the same time, the Commission suspects that Meta has not established an effective internal complaint handling system for filing complaints against content moderation decisions taken.
After the formal initiation of the procedure, the Commission will continue to gather evidence, e.g. by sending additional requests for information, conducting interviews or inspections.
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This article was originally published in Aquí Europa, with whose permission we reproduce it.
