Big Tech Not Doing Enough To Remove Fake News: Activist NGO Avaaz

BRUSSELS: Twitter, Google’s YouTube, Meta platform Facebook, Microsoft’s LinkedIn and TikTok are not doing enough to remove fake news from their platforms, raising doubts about their ability to comply with new EU online content rules , activist NGO Awaaz said on Tuesday.

The companies are due to submit a report this week on the measures they have taken to comply with the updated EU code of practice on disinformation linked to online content regulations known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force last November. Have done

Avaaz said it analyzed a sample pool of 108 fact-checks of content related to the 2022 US anti-vaccine film and found efforts by social media platforms, including Meta’s Instagram, to address misinformation fall short.

“Overall, just 22% of the misinformation content we analyzed was either labeled or removed by the six major platforms,” ​​Avaaz said.

It said the companies did not do enough to combat misinformation in languages ​​other than English.

Avaz said, “Despite the platform’s explicit commitments in code to improve its services in all EU languages, our research found that in some EU languages ​​– Italian, German, Hungarian, Danish, Spanish and Estonian – None of the platforms took any action against the violating posts.” ,

“This study shows that most major platforms are failing to comply with their Code of Conduct commitments and may be in breach of upcoming DSA obligations,” the group said.

Meta, Alphabet, Twitter and Microsoft vowed to take a tougher line against disinformation after last year committed to an updated EU code.

Companies face fines of up to 6% of their global turnover for DSA violations.

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