European Commission is investigating Meta and TikTok

Translated by Alessandra Fumagalli 

The European Commission began a formal proceeding against Meta - Instagram and Facebook’s agency - due to supposed violation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European regulation, which has become not force for less than a year about security and transparency of the digital services. EU thinks that Meta was not able to prevent the circulation of disinformation and misleading advertisements on the social networks.  

More in details: which are such violations? 

The supposed violations deal with Meta policies and procedures regarding the misleading advertisements and political contents on its social networks. They also concern the lack of an effective supervision tool of the civic debate and the real-time elections before the European Parliament’s elections, due to the lack of a politic tool for real-time analysis, CrowdTangle. researchers, journalists and people could use it in order to supervise the elections in real time. Recent Commission’s Guide Lines for the supplier of big online platforms about the risks for the elections imply the fact that these types of tools can be used in a pre-electoral face.   

According to the Commission, the transparency of the electoral campaigns would be at risk without a disinformation tracking system, especially after the recent charges of interference against Moscow. 

Further suspicions state that the mechanisms for the warning of illegal contents ("Notice-and-Action”), for the users’ and the workers’ complaints are not in compliance with the Digital Services Act and there are lacks of the provision of access to public available data to researchers. 

The proliferation of misleading advertisements and disinformation campaigns can be an important risk for the next elections. 

Also the latest agency’ decision is suspicious: the fact that political contents will be less visible on Instagram and Facebook, which may not be in compliance with the transparency’s regulations. 

What will we expect? 

According to the regulation, Meta will have to: 

• cooperate with the Commission, giving the suitable information in order to make evaluations; 
• take all the necessary measures in order to replace CrowdTangle’s service;
• communicate which remedial actions have been taken. 

If Meta would take the required measures, or if those measures would be unsatisfactory, they could be implemented by the Commission.

Not only Meta, but also TikTok

Some investigations have been taken also against TikTok Lite, the Chinese social version, that seems quite something else than “lite”. There are some suspicions that there is an awarded program, which was created in order to rise in the users, especially young people, that could be harmful and cause addiction. 

Moreover, European Commission’s President, Ursula von der Leyen, during a political debate in Maastricht, stated that she would not rule out banning TikTok in the European Union, if she would be re-elected, following what the Unites State are doing. 

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