Two senior EU officials issued a statement on Wednesday in which they said that social media giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter should provide reports every month on their fight against fake news pointing out the role of China and Russia in spreading misinformation.
The leader of the EU foreign policy Josep Borrel and the Vice President for values and transparency of the European Commission Vera Jourova shared their concerns for the massive fake news propaganda mostly on Coronavirus topics used to undermine the influence of the EU.
Jourova was talking to the reporters as she said:
“It really showed that disinformation does not only harm the health of our democracies, it also harms the health of our citizens. It can negatively impact the economy and undermine the response of the public authorities and therefore weaken the health measures.”
She also said that the next fake news front was vaccination, citing a study showing that the willingness of the Germans to be vaccinated had fallen by 20 percent in the last two months.
The commission said that online platforms should provide monthly reports with details on their actions to promote authoritative content and to limit coronavirus disinformation and advertising related to it.
Vera Jourova also said that the famous Chinese video app TikTok owned by ByteDance will join the bloc’s voluntary code of conduct to combat fake news on its platform. Signatories to the code of conduct include Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Mozilla.
Borrel also talked about the fake news comparing them to involving warriors wielding keyboards instead of swords.
“Foreign actors and certain third countries, in particular, Russia and China, have engaged in targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns in the EU, its neighborhood and globally,’’ he said.
According to Reuters, the EU executive plans to counter foreign actors by stepping up its communication strategy and diplomacy, and provide more support to free and independent media, fact-checkers, and researchers.
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