Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

EU Code of Practice on Disinformation

Brookings: “In 2018, the European Commission (EC) created the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation (Code), the first self-regulatory piece of legislation that intended to motivate companies to collaborate on solutions to the problem of disinformation. Twenty-one companies agreed to commit to this Code, and these rules resulted in tangible solutions: Facebook, Google, and Twitter developed Ad Libraries to catalog political advertisers, Twitter published its takedown data, and multiple companies expanded their fact-checking tools and misinformation labels and created journalism and media literacy educational programs. However, the initial Code faced criticism, mainly because companies were not required to report quantitative outcomes, making it difficult to measure the impact of the new governance. Due to these complaints, a group of thirty-four stakeholders, including companies, trade associations, industry associations, and international organizations revised the original EC Code. On June 16, 2022, the Commission released the amended and strengthened Code, where all companies operating in the EU were given the opportunity to sign on. This updated Code makes 44 commitments and includes 128 specific measures, compared to the original Code’s 21 commitments. Signatories will have six months to fulfill the commitments and measures, and seven months to provide baseline reports to the EC, so implementation will begin in early 2023. At this time, it is also not certain how many and which companies will lean toward compliance with the proposed Code changes, which are unpacked in the next section…”

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.