Facebook and Other Co.'s Efforts to Fight Misinformation Not Enough, EU Says
29 Octobre 2019 - 8:13PM
Dow Jones News
By Max Bernhard
Facebook Inc (FB) and other online platforms have improved their
response to fake accounts and propaganda but there is still work to
be done, the European Union said Tuesday after publishing
companies' progress reports on tackling disinformation.
Among the companies that signed on to the bloc's self-regulatory
Code of Practice on Disinformation are Facebook, Alphabet Inc's
(GOOG) Google, Microsoft (MSFT), Mozilla and Twitter(TWTR), as well
as seven trade associations.
"Large-scale automated propaganda and disinformation persist and
there is more work to be done under all areas of the code. We
cannot accept this as a new normal," EU officials said in a
statement.
The comments come as Facebook faces scrutiny from employees and
the public about its decision to exempt political candidates' ads
from its own fact-checking program. The company has also seen
public backlash over its handling of disinformation and propaganda
on the social media platform during and leading up to the 2016 U.S.
presidential elections.
While they praised the companies' commitments to more
transparency and closer cooperation with researchers, fact-checkers
and governments, the EU said that the companies' self-assessments
provided little insight on the actual impact of their measures to
counter disinformation campaigns.
The EU said "further serious steps by individual signatories and
the community as a whole are still necessary."
According to the EU, Facebook said in its self-assessment that
it disabled more than 2 billion fake accounts in the first
quarter.
Online platforms and fact-checkers can help reduce harmful
virality, the EU said but the platforms still need to cooperate
more with a wider range of "trusted and independent"
organizations.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial
agreement to supply news through Facebook.
Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a
commercial agreement to supply video content through Twitter.
Write to Max Bernhard at max.bernhard@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 29, 2019 14:58 ET (18:58 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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