Attempting to address advertising models that reward disinformation, the European Union is revising its policy on social media, online platforms, and other digital entities. A new European Commission (EC) draft guidance policy (COM 2021/262), unveiled on 26 May, aims to widen the scope and reporting obligations of the union's 2018 self-regulatory Code of Practice on Disinformation, and is set for legislative approval by autumn 2021 and enactment in early 2022."No one should be authorised as the arbiter of the truth: neither the Commission nor governments nor bureaucrats, but we do want platforms to embed fact-checking against disinformation into their practices and remove it. That should be systematic," Vera Jourova, Commissioner for Values and Transparency, told reporters including Janes on 26 May. "We will set up an oversight system and there will be sanctions on those who do not behave responsibly."The 2018 code enabled a clampdown on much Covid-19 pandemic-related disinformation in 2020, but the EC highlighted several weaknesses. Although tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Mozilla, TikTok, and Twitter - plus large advertisers-signed on to the code, "nobody has really performed optimally under the code," Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton told reporters on 26 May. "Only one of the biggest has done better than the others," he said, without naming the organisation.
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