What is Europe doing to fight disinformation? by Camino Mortera-Martinez
Focusing on the most blatant disinformation and helping target audiences understand the difference between real and fake news is the best way to fight disinformation. Using misleading information or even outright lies for electoral or geopolitical gains is not new. But the internet has made it possible to spread fake news instantaneously to thousands if not millions of users. This has the potential to alter the outcome of democratic processes: easily shareable social media content may do more to shape some people’s political opinions than mainstream media reports. But the line between suppressing freedom of speech and shutting down disinformation campaigns is thin. To fight back, the EU needs not only to punish those spreading fake news but also to help citizens distinguish between what is true and what is not. One good way to identify a disinformation campaign is to look at who is sharing it. Researchers look at behavioural patterns to single out accounts which are fake or do not seem to be manned by humans. A high concentration of those accounts sharing similar content is an early indicator that something is not quite right. For example, groups affiliated with the Russian government, like the so-called Internet Research Agency, allegedly used fake social media personas (‘trolls’) and automated accounts (‘bots’) to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Similarly, Twitter users with abnormally high levels of activity (and hence, presumably fake), helped controversial far-right leader Jair
Bolsonaro win Brazil’s presidential elections in October. Europe is not immune to disinformation. The committee on foreign relations of the US senate thinks that Russian bots contributed to the Brexit vote and to civil unrest in Catalonia. But, for now, European countries do not want to deal with these problems through legislation. Both EU governments and the European Commission think that moving targets like online disinformation campaigns are better left to those with the right tools to stop them. The in-house expertise of social media and internet companies is crucial. The European Commission has asked internet companies to come up with a voluntary code of practice on online disinformation. The code, which the EU unveiled in September, requires participating social media companies and other platforms to be more transparent with their algorithms and advertising campaigns, to flag fake news and close down accounts which may promote them. The code would allow users to decide what sort of social media content they want to see; improve algorithms so results from well-respected sources appear first in search results; allow fact-checkers and research organisations to access data; and deprive questionable users of advertising revenues.