On Tuesday 29 January, the European Commission published a first mixed assessment of the commitments made by platforms and the advertising industry to combat disinformation following its Communication of spring 2018 (see EUROPE 12010). However, it postponed until the end of 2019 (and therefore until the next term of office) the possibility that it left open for itself to legislate on this issue.
"There are encouraging signs of the beginning of action... What we are asking is to accelerate, to redouble our efforts and to be even more concrete for all citizens and Member States", concluded Commissioner Mariya Gabriel at a press conference.
Individual commitments
The European Union is particularly concerned about the influence of fake news during the European elections scheduled for May 2019. Convinced that the regulatory approach was not ideal because of the time needed for implementation, the European Commission opted in spring 2018 for a voluntary approach. It has set up a multi-stakeholder forum - composed of representatives of platforms and advertisers on the one hand, and representatives of civil society and commercial television on the other - to define a set of key indicators in this area.
On this basis, the signatories - Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla for the platforms, the World Federation of Advertisers, the European Association of Communication Agencies and the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe for the advertising sector - presented their individual roadmaps (see EUROPE 12118).
Good, but can do better
For this very first assessment of the roadmaps, the Commission presents a mixed picture. As far as platforms are concerned, it observes progress in some areas, such as the removal of fake accounts, the transparency of political advertising and the efforts to demonetise purveyors of disinformation. But it also considers that some measures are still lacking, such as the transparency of issue-based advertising and operational cooperation with fact checkers and the research community.
In addition, the availability of consumer empowerment tools appears to be limited to certain Member States, the Commission notes. At a press conference, Commissioners Mariya Gabriel and Julian King also deplored the fact that some initiatives are limited to only certain states: for example, the fact that Facebook works with fact checkers in only 7 Member States. "The reports, at this stage, are fragmented, opaque and selective: we need to improve that [...] We don’t want to wake up the day after the elections and realize we could and should have done more", commented Commissioner King, who is in charge of the Security Union, and who also deplored the fact that new measures were announced by the platforms the day before the report was published (see EUROPE 12181).
As far as the advertising sector is concerned, while the report welcomes the fact that 4 organisations have co-signed the code of good practice, it regrets that no member company has endorsed it.
The co-signers’ version of events
At a conference on the same day on this topic, platforms and the advertising world affirmed that they pay particular attention to fake news. Facebook has stated that 30,000 people are working on this issue and that 800 million fake accounts were closed in 2018. In the face of public criticism, including from a representative of Avaaz (urging Facebook to warn its users that ‘our democracies are on fire’), Facebookrepresentative Thomas Myrup Kristensen stressed the importance of media training.
Townsend Feehan of the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Europe provided a draft response to the fact that no professional member had co-signed the statement. In her view, this was due to the too vague definition of fake news and the fact that the presence of fact checkers did not mitigate the notion of a company's legal liability. According to her, there is a general misalignment between the scale of the problem and the scope covered by the code of conduct.
The Commission's progress report covers the period up to 31 December 2018. It will produce one report per month between February and May 2019. The next Commission will have to carry out a comprehensive assessment (to decide on possible additional measures) before the end of 2019.
Link: https://bit.ly/2RWvMRu. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)