On Tuesday 30 April, the European Commission announced that it had opened proceedings against Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) to determine whether it had breached the Digital Services Act.
The Commission criticises Meta for not exercising sufficient moderation over the advertisements it posts on its social networks, particularly those of a political nature. The company is suspected of failing to comply with DSA obligations “related to addressing the dissemination of deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the EU”.
“The proliferation of such content may present a risk to civic discourse, electoral processes and fundamental rights, as well as consumer protection”, the Commission explains in detail in its press release.
At the same time, the Commission is concerned about the process initiated by Meta to deprecate the ‘CrowdTangle’ tool, which enables researchers, journalists and civil society to monitor the virality of content on platforms in real time, a tool used in particular during elections.
For the European executive, the main problem is the lack of a replacement tool: “We want to make sure that Meta can be monitored in real time by journalists or civic associations during elections. The unavailability of this specific tool or of any replacement at this stage makes the operation of the networks much more opaque”, explains a senior official.
More marginally, the Commission believes that the tools for reporting illegal content on Facebook and Instagram could be made easier to access.
With regard to the introduction of an alternative to CrowdTangle, the Commission has given Meta five working days to present its remedial actions.
The Commission’s complaints coincide with the start of the European election period and the EU’s fears that its elections could be disrupted by foreign interference and the dissemination of misleading content.
A month ago, the Commission published a document setting out the main moderation and risk management guidelines for digital platforms in the run-up to the European elections (see EUROPE 13379/7). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)