Twitter Got a Yellow Card from the European Union for Failing to Address Disinformation on its Platform

Vice President of the Commission for Value and Transparency, Vera Jourova. (photo: Twitter @VeraJourova)

JAKARTA - Twitter, which is led by Elon Musk, received a yellow card from the European Commission on Thursday, November 9, because its efforts to tackle disinformation failed. Unlike what Google Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and TikTok do.

The company has presented a progress report on compliance with an enhanced European Union (EU) code of practice on disinformation in the past six months.

The report includes data on how much advertising revenue the company has prevented disinformation from, the number or value of political ads received or rejected, and detected instances of manipulative behavior.

The European Commission last year linked the code to a new online content rule known as the Digital Services Act which allows regulators to fine companies as much as 6% of their global turnover for breaches.

Vice President of the Commission for Value and Transparency, Vera Jourova, said Twitter needed to be criticized. While Twitter itself did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the media.

"I am disappointed to see Twitter's report lagging behind others and I expected a more serious commitment to their obligations stemming from the Code," Jourova said in a statement, citing Reuters.

EU executives said Twitter's report was lacking in data and contained no information about a commitment to empower fact-checkers. EU industry chief Thierry Breton warned there would be tough penalties for non-compliance.

“It is in the interests of all signatories to comply with their commitment to fully implement a code of practice against disinformation, in anticipation of obligations under the Digital Services Act,” said Breton.

The activist NGO Avaaz also said that Big Tech failed to comply with EU rules.

"The circus on Twitter breaks the foundations of the code. They have set the bar so low that no one sees another platform failing," said its campaign director Luca Nicotra.

“Google is making no progress at all in collaborating with fact-checkers and is completely behind on transparency and access to data. TikTok is trying to catch up, but their algorithm is still accelerating disinformation in a big way. one of the biggest sources of disinformation," he said.

Google says it's committed to creating successful code. Meta says it has invested heavily in its efforts and its team is continuously working to improve its approach. TikTok said in a blog post that they will continue to increase their efforts.

The next report is due next July. The code signatories on Thursday launched a transparency center that allows EU citizens, researchers and NGOs to access information online about their efforts to fight disinformation.