Facebook and Instagram are under investigation by the European Union (EU) because of worries that they are not doing enough to stop misinformation on the internet.
The EU declared on Tuesday that it was looking into the owners of Facebook and Instagram, claiming that the US business may have violated the online content regulations of the bloc.
The EU asserts in a press release on Tuesday that Meta might have violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), a collection of regulations aimed at safeguarding consumers by promoting safer online environments.
The possible violations under investigation include Meta’s response to “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” and disinformation campaigns in the EU, as well as the dearth of reliable third-party tools for real-time election and civic discourse monitoring.
It referred to Meta’s decision to close CrowdTangle, a digital platform that is thought to be very helpful in combating misinformation online.
“We suspect that Meta’s moderation is insufficient, that it lacks transparency of advertisements and content moderation procedures,” EU digital chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
“So today, we have opened proceedings against Meta to assess their compliance with the Digital Services Act,” she said.
Reacting to the probe, EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said the probe sought “to make sure that effective actions are taken in particular to prevent Instagram’s and Facebook’s vulnerabilities are exploited by foreign interference.”
Alongside the announcement of the investigation, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, stated:
“This Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act.
“This is true at all times, but especially in times of democratic elections. Big digital platforms must live up to their obligations to put enough resources into this and today’s decision shows that we are serious about compliance.
“Protecting our democracies is a common fight with our Member States.”
The investigation will also evaluate the extent to which Meta controls misleading advertising, the measures taken to limit the exposure of political content on Facebook and Instagram, and the effectiveness of the systems in place for users to report unlawful content.
We earlier reported that to comply with new European legislation intended to limit the market dominance of Big Tech through a variety of requirements and limits, TikTok is debuting a data portability API.
