The EU is investigating Facebook and Instagram over concerns about disinformation during elections

The investigation comes under the new EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which targets illegal content online and requires major tech companies to do more to protect users online.

The European Commission (EC) announced its suspicions that the moderation of advertisements carried out by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is insufficient and that the growth of paid advertisements in these circumstances could harm “electoral processes and fundamental rights, including consumer protection rights”.

EU leaders are particularly concerned about Russia’s attempts to manipulate public opinion and undermine European democracy.

The purpose of the investigation is to ensure that effective measures are taken to prevent weaknesses in Instagram and Facebook from being used in foreign interference attempts, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said.

“We suspect that the moderation carried out by Meta is insufficient, that it lacks transparency regarding advertising and content moderation procedures,” said EU Competition Commissioner Margarete Vestager.

The Digital Services Act makes online companies more accountable for content moderation and requires major platforms to manage and mitigate the risks that their services could harm the election process. The DSA allows the EC to fine platforms up to 6% of their annual turnover in the previous financial year if they fail to adequately assess and respond to such risks.

From August 2023, DSA requirements apply to certain platforms with more than 45 million EU users (10% of the EU population), so-called very large online platforms or very large online search engines. These platforms also include Instagram and Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

Meta did not comment on the EU investigation, but said the company has a “well-developed process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms.”

“We hope to continue cooperation with the European Commission and provide it with more detailed information about this work,” added the representative of “Meta”.

Brussels is particularly concerned that Meta is not an effective tool to monitor elections ahead of the EP elections in June. The EC pointed to Meta’s decision to shut down CrowdTangle, a digital tool used to track the spread of fake information online. Meta announced that it will replace CrowdTangle with a new technology called Content Library, which is still under development.

The EC said the company has five working days to explain what measures it has taken to mitigate the risks posed by CrowdTangle’s decommissioning.

Facebook and Instagram have over 260 million monthly active users.

The EU is conducting a wide-ranging investigation, including into measures by Meta to reduce the inclusion of political content in Facebook and Instagram’s recommendation systems. Brussels is concerned that this could conflict with the DSA’s rules on transparency.

The EU also suspects that the ‘Meta’ mechanism for flagging illegal content is not sufficiently accessible or user-friendly, the EC said.