The investigation focuses on Russia’s Doppelganger online disinformation campaign, Meta revealed to Newtechmania.
An official investigation against Meta has been launched by the European Union (EU) in response to allegations that the platform failed to remove election-related disinformation. While the statement issued by the European Commission does not specifically mention Russia, Meta has verified to Newtechmania that the investigation being conducted by the European Union is aimed at the Doppelganger campaign, which is an internet disinformation operation that promotes pro-Kremlin propaganda.
According to sources cited by Bloomberg, the investigation was also centered on the Russian misinformation operation. These sources described the operation as a series of “attempts to replicate the appearance of traditional news sources while churning out content that is favorable to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
The probe comes a day after France announced that 27 of the 29 member nations of the European Union had been targeted by pro-Russian online propaganda in advance of the European legislative elections that will take place in June. As of Monday, Jean-Noel Barrot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, issued a call to social media platforms, urging them to remove websites that are “participating in a foreign interference operation.”
The company had been at the vanguard of exposing Russia’s Doppelganger effort, according to a spokeswoman for Meta, who told Newtechmania that the company had first brought attention to the initiative in 2022. The business has stated that it has conducted an investigation, disrupted, and blocked tens of thousands of the assets that are associated with the network. While admitting that Doppelganger has had difficulty successfully building organic audiences for the pro-Putin fake news, the owner of Facebook and Instagram has stated that it continues to maintain high alerts in order to monitor the network.
Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, may have violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is a significant piece of legislation that was passed in 2022 and gives the European Union the authority to regulate social platforms. According to the President of the European Commission, this may have occurred. According to the regulation, the European Commission has the authority to impose severe fines on companies that violate the rules. These fines can be as high as six percent of a company’s annual global turnover, which has the ability to alter the way social companies function.
“We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms,” Meta said in a statement that was provided to Newtechmania. In the future, we are looking forward to continuing our collaboration with the European Commission and providing them with additional information regarding this research.
“Meta’s policies and practices relating to deceptive advertising and political content on its services” will be the subject of the investigation undertaken by the European Commission. Additionally, it addresses “the lack of availability of an effective third-party real-time civic discourse and election-monitoring tool in advance of the elections to the European Parliament.”
The latter is a reference to the fact that Meta has discontinued its CrowdTangle tool, which was utilized by researchers and fact-checkers for a number of years in order to investigate the manner in which content migrates across Facebook and Instagram. During the previous month, dozens of organizations signed an open letter stating that the planned shutdown of Meta during the key global elections in 2024 poses a “direct threat” to the integrity of national elections around the world.
In an interview with Newtechmania, Meta stated that CrowdTangle presents only a small portion of the data that is accessible to the general public and that it would not be sufficient as a full-fledged election monitoring tool. The organization claims that it is in the process of developing new tools for its platform in order to supply researchers and other third parties with data that is more thorough. In order to assist in the identification of disinformation, it is stated that it is now onboarding critical third-party fact-checking partners.
On the other hand, given that elections are scheduled to take place in Europe in June and in the United States in November, Meta had better get working on its new API if it wants the tools to function properly when it matters the most.
The European Commission (EC) provided Meta with a period of five working days to address its concerns before it would consider taking the case to a higher level. A letter written by the President of the European Commission, von der Leyen, stated that “this Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries.” In the event that we have reason to believe that the rules have been broken, we will take action.