The European Commission presented on Thursday 10 September an overall assessment of the effectiveness of the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation. This evaluation, the result of a series of various contributions (see EUROPE 12359/5), covers the first year of application of the text, signed in October 2018.
Verdict? The Code has made it possible to strengthen the accountability of its signatories – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla, since joined by TikTok – and to increase the transparency of their policies against disinformation, the Commission welcomes, referring to it as a “very valuable instrument“.
However, some shortcomings persist.
The European institution regrets in particular the inconsistent and incomplete application of the Code from one platform and State to another.
Among the shortcomings identified, it also notes “the lack of clearer procedures, commonly shared definition and more precise commitments”, which keep certain issues, such as manipulative behaviour or fairness in online political advertising, outside the scope of the Code.
The Commission also notes several gaps in the coverage of the text’s commitments: the lack of relevant key performance indicators to assess the effectiveness of the platforms’ ‘anti-disinformation’ policies, for example.
“Platforms need to be more accountable and responsible; they need to become more transparent”, commented the Vice President of the Committee on Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova. “The time has come to go beyond self-regulatory measures”, she added. The signatories choose, on the basis of their assessments, the Code commitments they will adhere to and identify the policies they will pursue to implement these commitments.
Countering infodemic
Last June, the Commission had announced that it wanted to set up, within the framework of the Code of Good Practice, a programme to monitor the measures taken by the platforms to curb theinfodemic, i.e., disinformation linked to the Covid-19 pandemic (see EUROPE 12455/19).
It had committed to requesting monthly reports on these measures from the platforms. Reports from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Twitter and Mozilla, covering the period from the “beginning of the crisis” to the end of July, were also published on Thursday.
According to these documents, new tools and services deployed by the various platforms have led to an increased emphasis on authoritative sources of information.
More than 160 million people have, for example, visited the Covid-19 pages on Twitter, which gathers the latest tweets from trusted government, media and civil society sources. However, some services have not been deployed in all EU countries.
The reports also show increased collaboration with fact-checkers and researchers. It also appears that the platforms have succeeded in limiting false advertising related to the coronavirus and that efforts to detect cases of manipulation have been intensified.
To view the evaluation of the Code: https://bit.ly/2GIHk6R; reports from Facebook (https://bit.ly/3in8E8M ), Google (https://bit.ly/2RamHTa ), Microsoft (https://bit.ly/3ii37QJ ), TikTok (https://bit.ly/3hfd401 ), Twitter (https://bit.ly/2FsZs3Z ) and Mozilla (https://bit.ly/3bJazlq ). (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)