'Mr. Musk Knows That He Is Not Off The Hook': EU Official Slams X For Spread Of Russia-Ukraine Misinformation

A vice president of the European Commission is sending out an alert regarding the spread of misinformation on social media, as big elections draw closer.

Vera Jourova, who heads the Values and Transparency commission of the EU, warned of the risk of fake news and propaganda from pro-Russia actors on social media and denounced X, formerly Twitter, as "the platform with the largest ratio of mis/disinformation posts" of all the big tech platforms.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Jourova placed a special emphasis on the responsibility of big tech companies to stop Russia's "multi-million euro weapon of mass manipulation."

"The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half-truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy," she said.

Currently, 44 companies have voluntarily signed to use the Code of Practice on Disinformation presented last year. These include Facebook, owned by Meta META, Alphabet GOOGGOOGL subsidiaries Google and YouTube, Bytedance's TikTok and LinkedIn. 

X quit its voluntary participation in the code last may when Elon Musk took control of the company, but it's still subject to a separate piece of non-voluntary legislation governing tech media giants called the Digital Services Act, which directs platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok to offer users a non-personalized version of their feeds in the EU.

“Mr Musk knows that he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practice because now we have the Digital Services Act fully enforced,” Jourova said. The act began being enforced last month.

“So my message for Twitter is you have to comply with the hard law and we will be watching what you are doing,” she added.

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The signing companies are releasing self-conducted reports, which average 200 pages each, covering 6 months of analysis on how misinformation is spreading across their platforms.

A pilot program was conducted on three undisclosed EU-member countries to identify how misinformation is spreading across large social media platforms. The program found that accounts spreading misinformation normally have more followers than their non-disinformation counterparts and tend to be newer accounts.

Alphabet said that in the first quarter of 2023, YouTube "terminated more than 400 channels involved in coordinated influence operations linked to the Russian-state sponsored Internet Research Agency," and Google removed ads from roughly 300 sites linked to state-funded propaganda sites.

TikTok fact-checked 832 videos related to the Russia/Ukraine war and removed 211.

Microsoft said that Bing Search has either promoted information or downgraded questionable information "in relation to almost 800 thousand search queries related to the war."

Jourova is expecting the Kremlin to be active before the parliamentary elections in Slovakia and Poland in the coming weeks, as well European Parliament elections next year. 

While the code only affects EU countries, apprehensions regarding the dissemination of misinformation extend to the U.S. In a recent poll, a significant number of U.S. voters said they were concerned about the risks that generative AI poses in spreading misinformation before the 2024 presidential election.

Jourova said she's meeting Open AI executives on Tuesday to discuss how ChatGPT, DALL·E and other products have the potential to create and disseminate misinformation across the web.

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Image made with Midjourney AI.