The European Union officials on Tuesday urged major social media sites to strengthen their enforcement against online misinformation, notably on the conflict in Ukraine.
Vera Jourova, vice president of the European Commission, specifically criticized platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in prepared remarks on Tuesday for having the "largest ratio of misinformation and disinformation posts" among the platforms that submitted reports to the EU.
The number of followers of disinformation actors was found to be much higher. They have a tendency to be platform newcomers compared to non-disinformation users," Jourova stated.
The publication of X's report comes in the wake of a decision made this spring to back out of agreements to adhere to a voluntary code of conduct regarding misinformation. A statement from X was not immediately forthcoming.
The transparency files that attest to the corporations' attempts to uphold the code are reflected in the reports that the EU presented this week. A platform's overall compliance with the EU's stringent set of mandatory rules for online platforms, the Digital Services Act, which went into force this summer, is evaluated in part by how closely it adheres to the voluntary code. DSA infractions may result in billions of dollars in fines for major social media companies.
The reports come from businesses including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok and cover a variety of content genres and platform enforcement measures. According to the European Commission, the biggest platforms have pledged to release reports every six months, and this week's publication is the first set to do so for a whole six-month period.
According to Google's report, it blocked more than 31 million euros in advertising revenue from EU-based accounts spreading misinformation in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, TikTok claimed that it had removed more than 140,000 videos with more than one billion views that had violated the platform's anti-misinformation guidelines.
In the meantime, Google said that in the first quarter of the year, its subsidiary YouTube removed hundreds of channels linked to the Russia-backed disinformation group known as the Internet Research Agency, and Microsoft claimed that it prevented the creation of more than 6.7 million fake accounts on LinkedIn.
But Jourova said the companies cannot rest. "I expect the platforms to do more work with better results," she added.