By Stephanie Bodoni | Bloomberg
Elon Musk’s X was cited as the biggest outlet for peddlers of disinformation as the European Union urged Silicon Valley platforms to step up their vigilance to combat Russia’s “war of ideas.”
European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said platforms need to act ahead of national and European elections over the next year.
“This is a multi-million euro weapon of mass manipulation aimed both internally at the Russians as well as Europeans and the rest of the world,” Jourova told reporters Tuesday. “The very large platforms must address this risk. Especially that we have to expect that the Kremlin and others will be active before our European elections.”
The EU released reports on how each of the major tech companies, including Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, are faring in the battle against disinformation.
Most of the major platforms agreed to work with the EU on a voluntary code of conduct, which aims to set industry standards for fact-checking and other measures. The bloc also performed a pilot project to gauge the extent of the problem.
“X, former Twitter, who is not under the code any more, is the platform with the largest ratio of mis- or disinformation posts,” Jourova said. “The pilot also showed that disinformation actors were found to have significantly more followers than their non-disinformation counterparts and tend to have joined the platform more recently than non-disinformation users.”
