European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová | Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images
Věra Jourová: Platforms ‘need to open up’ algorithms to deal with disinformation
Social media firms ‘must step up efforts,’ European Commission vice president says.
Tech platforms need to do more to prevent the spread of manipulation campaigns online, European Commission Vice President Vĕra Jourová said.
“It cannot be as cheap and as easy as it is today to organize targeted manipulation campaigns and run them on social media,” Jourová told Friday’s POLITICO Brussels Playbook when asked about whether self-regulation designed to prevent manipulation and fake accounts had been effective.
Jourová oversees the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, which entered into force last year and under which platforms committed to deleting fake accounts, making sure they’re not monetized, and to regularly reporting on manipulation.
But the success of self-regulation has been called into question, with a report released Friday by a NATO-accredited group demonstrating that social media networks are failing to root out fake accounts.
“Self-regulation is not working,” the report said. “In contrast with the reports presented by the social media companies themselves, our report presents a different perspective: We were easily able to buy more than 54,000 inauthentic social media interactions with little or no resistance.”
Speaking ahead of the study’s release, Jourová said: “Society also needs to know what happens behind the algorithms, and platforms need to open up to researchers and governments.”
She added: “They simply must step up efforts against disinformation, especially from foreign sources. I will critically evaluate the code of practice and translate this assessment into the European Democracy Action Plan. It will address the measures to counter threats to democracy such as disinformation.”
Jourová’s comments are in line with Council plans to “continue working with social media platforms to achieve higher standards of responsibility, transparency and accountability on addressing disinformation,” as stated in a set of draft conclusions for next week’s General Affairs Council, seen by POLITICO.
The Council “invites the [European] Commission to present initiatives on the way forward in addressing disinformation on online platforms,” the draft says, noting there should first be “an assessment of the implementation of the Code of Practice on Disinformation” before anything else is done.