Google, Facebook, Twitter and Mozilla must do more to combat fake news
as Europeans head towards an election or the companies will face the
threat of regulatory action, the European Commission said on Tuesday.
Companies and trade bodies representing the advertising industry signed up to a voluntary code of conduct in October to ward off more heavy-handed legislation. Critics say not
enough has been done since they signed up.
The European Union’s executive said signatories to the code of practice had taken steps to remove fake accounts and limit sites promoting fake news but said more was needed.
“Now they should make sure these tools are available to everyone across the EU, monitor their efficiency, and continuously adapt to new means used by those spreading disinformation. There is no time to waste,” EU Commissioner for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said.
European Parliament will hold elections in May while Belgium,
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Poland, Portugal and Ukraine all go
to the polls in coming months.
Russia has faced allegations -
which it denies - of spreading false information to influence the U.S.
presidential election and Britain’s referendum on European Union
membership in 2016, as well as Germany’s national election in 2017.
The
Commission called on Facebook to provide more clarity on how it uses
its tools to fight fake news and told Google to expand its actions to
more EU countries.
It said Twitter should provide more details on its measures while it
said Mozilla’s online browser should have more information on how it
would limit details about users’ browsing activities.
The Commission also lamented the absence of advertisers signing up to the pact.
Google said it had announced several measures such as disclosing whether
political organizations or political issue advocacy groups were paying
for European parliamentary election advertisements, and setting up a
library with these details.
- Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment