Are online platforms finally starting to comply with European requirements to fight disinformation? The joint statement published on Tuesday 23 April by the European Commission, to accompany the third monitoring report of the code of good practice, in any case adopts a more accommodating tone than the previous ones.
This exercise assesses the progress made in March 2019 by Twitter, Facebook and Google. Overall, European Commissioners Andrus Ansip (Digital Single Market), Julian King (Security Union), Věra Jourová (Consumers and Justice) and Mariya Gabriel (Digital Economy and Society) find that improvements have been made in political advertising, service integrity and education. However, they identify certain shortcomings, in particular with regard to the transparency of thematic advertising and third-party control.
A monthly follow-up
Convinced that the regulatory approach was not ideal, given the necessary implementation time, the European Commission opted in spring 2018 for a voluntary approach (see EUROPE 12010/5). The platforms have therefore drafted, together with representatives of advertisers, commercial television and civil society, a code of good practice on the following themes: advertising control and placement, political advertising, integrity of services, consumer empowerment and the empowerment of the research community (see EUROPE 12104/1). Since then, the Commission has assessed progress in these areas on a monthly basis, before considering, if necessary, more binding initiatives (see EUROPE 12204/2).
In its statement accompanying the exercise, the Commission welcomes the fact that all three platforms have started to label political advertisements. The four Commissioners also say they are “happy” to see that the collaboration under the code of good practice has encouraged Facebook, Google and Twitter to take additional steps to ensure the integrity of their services and fight malicious robots and fake accounts.
Among the drawbacks, the Commission considers that “further technical improvements and the sharing of methodology and data sets for false accounts are necessary to enable third party experts, fact checkers and researchers to carry out an independent evaluation”. It also regrets that Google and Twitter have not yet announced further progress in the transparency of thematic advertising. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)