The European Commission opened an investigation on Tuesday against the social networks Facebook and Instagram, suspected of not respecting their obligations in the fight against disinformation before the European elections in June. Leaders have recently expressed concern about possible manipulation of public opinion by Russia.
“This Commission has put in place tools to protect European citizens from disinformation and manipulation by third countries,” underlined the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. “If we suspect a violation of the rules, we take action. This is always true, but particularly during elections,” she added.
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Not the first investigation
This is the fifth formal investigation launched by the European Commission under the new Digital Services Regulation (DSA) which came into force last year to combat illegal content and products online. Brussels has already opened two investigations targeting TikTok, one of which last week pushed this subsidiary of Chinese ByteDance to suspend a controversial function of its new TikTok Lite application which rewards users for time spent in front of screens. This functionality is suspected of creating risks of addiction among adolescents.
A procedure was launched at the beginning of March against the Chinese online commerce giant AliExpress, a subsidiary of Alibaba, suspected of not sufficiently combating the sale of dangerous products such as fake medicines. The first formal investigation also focused on risks linked to disinformation. It was initiated on December 18 against the social network X (formerly Twitter) for alleged failures in content moderation and transparency.
23 sites placed under surveillance
The regulation on digital services has applied since the end of August to the most powerful online platforms such as X, TikTok as well as the main services of Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon.
In total, 23 very large internet players, including three pornographic sites (Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos), were placed under the direct surveillance of the European Commission, which recruited more than a hundred experts in Brussels to assume its new role as digital policeman. Violators face fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover, or even a ban on operating in Europe in the event of serious and repeated violations.