{"id":357670,"date":"2024-04-30T12:33:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T10:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/04\/30\/meta-indagine-ue-digital-services-act\/"},"modified":"2024-05-07T13:08:59","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T11:08:59","slug":"meta-under-eu-investigation-for-possible-dsa-violations-on-political-content-and-election-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/04\/30\/meta-under-eu-investigation-for-possible-dsa-violations-on-political-content-and-election-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta under EU investigation for possible DSA violations on political content and election monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – After X and TikTok, it is Meta’s turn. The European Commission today (April 30) opened\u00a0formal proceedings under the Digital Services Act (DSA)<\/strong> to assess whether the Facebook and Instagram provider may have breached\u00a0the Digital Services Act, which\u00a0entered into full force<\/a>\u00a0on February 17, particularly for\u00a0policies and practices related to misleading advertising and political content. The suspected infringements\u00a0also regard the non-availability of an effective third-party real-time election-monitoring tool\u00a0<\/strong>ahead of the June 6-9 European elections.<\/p>\n

The Commission\u00a0said in a statement<\/a>\u00a0that proceedings\u00a0 focus on four areas. First on deceptive advertising and misinformation<\/strong>, since the Commission suspects that Meta is not aligning with obligations to counter disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behavior, the proliferation of which “may present a risk to civic discourse, electoral processes, and fundamental rights, as well as consumer protection.” Then there is the issue of the political content approach <\/em>that demotes<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>political content in the recommender systems of Instagram and Facebook<\/strong>, and this may not comply with Digital Services Act obligations: “The investigation will focus on the compatibility of this policy with the transparency and user redress obligations.”<\/p>\n

\"Digital<\/a>The third area of investigation\u00a0is\u00a0the mechanism to flag illegal content, <\/strong>the so-called ‘notice and action mechanism’ that allows users to report the presence of illegal content on its services. The Commission suspects that the requirements, by which this mechanism must be easy to access and user-friendly, are not met.\u00a0<\/strong>It also suspects that Meta has not put in place an effective internal complaint-handling system to lodge complaints against content moderation decisions taken.<\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0the\u00a0non-availability of an “effective real-time monitoring tool” of civic discourse and elections by third parties<\/strong><\/strong> ahead of the upcoming European and national votes\u00a0in EU member states. “Meta is in the process of deprecating \u201cCrowdTangle\u201d, <\/strong><\/strong>a public insights tool that enables real-time election-monitoring by researchers, journalists, and civil society, including through live visual dashboards, without an adequate replacemen<\/span>t,” the Commission warns, reminding that “access to such tools should instead be expanded.”\u00a0The suspicion is that Meta “has failed to diligently assess and adequately mitigate the risks” in this regard<\/strong>, <\/strong>considering\u00a0the reach of the Facebook and Instagram platforms in the EU (over 250 million monthly active users) and that the ability to track misinformation and error, identify interference and overall real-time transparency, could be undermined.<\/p>\n

At this point, the Commission services will continue to gather evidence on these four areas of potential breach\u00a0of the Digital Services Act, with further requests for information, interviews, and inspections. In\u00a0parallel, it\u00a0may take interim measures and non-compliance decisions<\/strong>. <\/strong>“The initiation of formal proceedings does not prejudge their outcome,” the Commission points out, noting that\u00a0the DSA does not set any legal deadline for the conclusion of formal proceedings<\/strong>. <\/strong>The length of the investigation may depend on factors such as the complexity of the case and the extent to which Meta, will also cooperate with commitments to remedy the issues in the proceedings. If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act. This is true at all times, but especially in times of democratic elections,”\u00a0 EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said. Since\u00a0coming into force at the end of last year, since August 25, Meta has been on the list of 19 digital platforms that must comply with obligations provided for in the Digital Services Act.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The EU Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether the provider that runs Facebook and Instagram breached the Digital Services Act on misleading advertising, misinformation, reporting illegal content, and failure to provide an “effective tool” ahead of the European elections<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5647,"featured_media":273200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25710],"tags":[25871,26086,26087,27368],"class_list":["post-357670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-net-tech-en","tag-digital-services-act-en","tag-dsa-en","tag-meta-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357670"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358882,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357670\/revisions\/358882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}