According to a top EU official, X, the online platform formerly known as Twitter, has the highest proportion of disinformation among social networks examined in a pilot analysis.

The three-month investigation in EU countries Spain, Poland, and Slovakia revealed that X fell far short of an EU code of practise on anti-disinformation standards, according to European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova.

When Twitter launched in 2018, it was one of dozens of companies running social media networks that signed up to the voluntary code of practise.

The company withdrew from the EU code after being taken over by Elon Musk, who rebranded it X.

“X, formerly Twitter, who is not under the code anymore, is the platform with the largest ratio of mis- and dis-information posts,” Jourova stated.

She was speaking after the 44 companies that remained signatories to the code of conduct, including Facebook parent Meta, YouTube owner Google, and Chinese-owned TikTok, submitted their first full reports of code compliance.

Though voluntary, aspects of the code serve as the foundation for parts of new EU legislation known as the Digital Services Act, which went into effect last month and threatens massive fines of up to 6% of global turnover for companies found in violation.

“Mr Musk knows that he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practise, because now we have the Digital Services Act fully enforced,” Jourova stated.

“My message to Twitter is that you must follow the hard (DSA) law.” “We’ll keep an eye on what you do,” she said.

The European Union’s fight against disinformation has grown in importance as more people become aware of Russia’s attempts to sway European public opinion while fighting in Ukraine.

Brussels wants online platforms to work hard to combat misinformation and disinformation ahead of the EU elections in June of next year.

Russia’s online tactics pose a “particularly serious risk,” according to the commission’s vice president.

“The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space.”

She claimed that between January and April, Google terminated over 400 YouTube channels involved in “influence operations” linked to the Russian government and removed ads from 300 sites associated with Russian propaganda agencies.

She also claimed that fact-checking screenings on TikTok on shortform videos in Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages resulted in 211 removals, and that Microsoft’s Bing search engine has downgraded “questionable information” on hundreds of thousands of queries related to the war.

She also stated that work has begun on safeguards to prevent massive disinformation outflows through generative artificial intelligence ahead of the European elections.

Jourova also stated that she would be meeting with representatives from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, soon.

Info source – AFP