Comes ahead of EU elections (Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - New York, 30 Apr - The European Commission said it has opened formal proceedings against Meta to assess whether the provider of Facebook and Instagram may have breached the Digital Services Act in not doing enough to show it is effectively combatting disinformation.

"This Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries," Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

"If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act. This is true at all times, but especially in times of democratic elections. Big digital platforms must live up to their obligations to put enough resources into this and today's decision shows that we are serious about compliance." The suspected infringements cover Meta's policies and practices relating to deceptive advertising and political content on its services, the Commission said.

They also concern the non-availability of an effective third-party real-time civic discourse and election-monitoring tool ahead of the elections to the European Parliament, against the background of Meta's deprecation of its real-time public insights tool CrowdTangle without an adequate replacement.

Further, the Commission suspects that the mechanism for flagging illegal content on the services as well as the user redress and internal complaint-mechanisms are not compliant with the requirements of the Digital Services Act and that there are shortcomings in Meta's provision of access to publicly available data to researchers.

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(RADIOCOR) 30-04-24 16:22:39 (0639) 5 NNNN