Big Tech isn’t doing enough to remove fake news: activist NGO Avaaz

BRUSSELS: Twitter, Google’s YouTube, Meta Platform’s Facebook, Microsoft’s LinkedIn and TikTok are not doing enough to remove fake news from their platforms, casting doubt on their ability to comply with the new EU rules for online content, activist NGO Avaaz said Tuesday.

The companies will present reports this week on the measures they have taken to comply with the updated EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, which is linked to the rules on online content known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) which came into effect last November.

Avaaz said it analyzed a sample of 108 fact-checked pieces of content related to a 2022 U.S. anti-vaccine film and found that efforts by the social media platforms, including Meta’s Instagram, to remove disinformation fell short.

“Overall, only 22% of the disinformation content we analyzed was tagged or removed by the six major platforms,” said Avaaz.

It said the companies were not doing enough to tackle disinformation in languages ​​other than English.

“Despite the platform’s explicit commitments in the code to improve their services in all EU languages, our investigation found that in certain EU languages ​​- Italian, German, Hungarian, Danish, Spanish and Estonian – no platform took any action. took action against message violations,” said Avaaz. .

“This study suggests that most of the major platforms are not complying with their Code of Practice obligations and may be in breach of future DSA obligations,” the group said.

Meta, Alphabet, Twitter and Microsoft vowed last year to crack down on disinformation after committing to the updated EU code.

Companies risk fines of up to 6% of their global revenue for DSA violations.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed)