BRUSSELS, April 30 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms' ( META )
Facebook and Instagram have failed to tackle disinformation and
deceptive advertising in the run-up to European Parliament
elections, the European Commission said on Tuesday as it opened
an investigation into suspected breaches of EU online content
rules.
The move by EU tech regulators came amid concerns about
Russia, China and Iran as potential sources of disinformation,
but also inside the EU, with some political parties and
organisations seeking to attract voters with lies in the June
6-9 vote to select the next five-year parliament.
The Digital Services Act which kicked in last year requires
Big Tech to do more to counter illegal and harmful content on
their platforms or risk fines of as much 6% of their global
annual turnover.
The EU investigation will focus in particular on a
Russia-based influence operation network dubbed Doppelganger
which clones authentic media and was exposed by Meta in 2022,
people familiar with the matter said. Meta says it has blocked
tens of thousands of links connected to it.
"We suspect that Meta's moderation is insufficient, that it
lacks transparency of advertisements and content moderation
procedures," EU digital chief Margrethe Vestager said in a
statement.
"So today, we have opened proceedings against Meta to assess
their compliance with the Digital Services Act," she said.
Meta, which has more than 250 million monthly active users
in the European Union, defended its risk mitigating process.
"We have a well established process for identifying and
mitigating risks on our platforms. We look forward to continuing
our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them
with further details of this work," a spokesperson said.
The Commission said it suspects that Meta does not comply
with DSA obligations related to addressing the dissemination of
deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns and
coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the EU.
It also singled out the non-availability of an effective
third-party realtime civic discourse and election-monitoring
tool ahead of the elections to the European Parliament.
The Commission also cited concerns about Meta's phasing out
of its disinformation tracking CrowdTangle without an adequate
replacement.
Meta has five working days to inform the EU about remedial
actions taken to address the concerns.