Fight Harder Against Fake News, EU Tell Tech Giants

(Bloomberg) -- Europe warned the world’s biggest tech and advertising companies that they need to intensify efforts to combat disinformation on their platforms ahead of European elections, or face regulation.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, acknowledged that companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., had made "some progress," in particular with removing fake accounts and demoting sites that promote disinformation.

But officials said that ahead of European elections in the spring, more needed to be done to ensure adequate transparency of the political ad-buying process, promote cooperation between platforms and EU member states, and promote access to firms’ data for research purposes.

"We need to go further and faster before May,” European Security Commissioner Julian King said in a statement. "We don’t want to wake up the day after the elections and realize we should have done more."

Representatives for Twitter, Google and Facebook all said separately in response that their companies already invest heavily in the fight against fake news, remove rogue accounts from their networks, and would continue to work with the EU to help solve the issues.

European officials worry that Russian-backed campaigns -- mostly through social media platforms -- could boost support for political parties sympathetic to Moscow in the upcoming European Parliament elections.

The EU’s warning comes in response to reports submitted by tech and advertising companies that agreed to a joint code of conduct in Europe last September, after the EU called on them to present a plan to fight the spread of disinformation online in Europe. The reports cover measures the companies’ took until the end of last year so may not fully reflect plans that companies have introduced since then.

The EU said it would carry out a comprehensive review of the periodic reports after 12 months. Regulation may be proposed if the results are deemed unsatisfactory.

As part of its efforts, Google and Facebook committed to deploying transparency tools for political ads in Europe after an initial roll-out in the U.S. Those policies require advertisers looking to run political ads to provide documentation to the companies confirming their identities. Disclaimers will also run alongside approved ads stating who paid for them.

Facebook’s chief lobbyist Nick Clegg visited Brussels on Monday to tout the company’s new policies around political ads from March, as well as its new operations center in Dublin to coordinate efforts to combat disinformation in Europe.

Mariya Gabriel, EU Digital Commissioner, on Tuesday said while the companies are planning some measures in time for the elections, campaigning had already begun in many countries "so we have to speed up some of these measures."

The EU said it wanted Facebook to boost cooperation with fact-checkers and the research community across all of Europe, and called on Google to roll out its tools to other European countries.

It also noted that Twitter has prioritized actions against malicious actors and closed fake accounts, but that more information is needed about how this would restrict those who spread disinformation from promoting their tweets.

To contact the reporter on this story: Natalia Drozdiak in Brussels at ndrozdiak1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Nate Lanxon

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.