Europe wields new tech law to protect EU election

The European Union is ordering Big Tech firms to help it secure its upcoming election in June, amid fears of disinformation and online hacking threats.

Major online platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube and TikTok will have to increase their efforts to fight disinformation ahead of the bloc's election under its new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission said Tuesday.

The Commission, which enforces the law on two dozen very large online platforms and search engines, released new guidelines to mitigate risks to elections like falsehoods going viral and coordinated Russian bot campaigns or fake media.

Firms can face fines of up to 6 percent of their annual global revenue if they fail to comply with the law.

“We know that this electoral period that’s opening up in the European Union is going to be targeted either via hybrid attacks or foreign interference of all kinds,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said in February. “We can’t have half-baked measures.”

Hundreds of millions of Europeans will cast ballots to elect new members of European Parliament across the bloc on June 6-9.

Platforms like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok were asked to ensuring political ads and AI deepfakes are clearly labelled. They also have to set up specialized teams with enough resources to monitor potential threats and narratives growing in some of the 27 EU countries.

The Commission suggested companies set up tools such as pop-up warnings when users want to share debunked posts containing misinformation and have emergency procedures in place for when a deepfake of a European leader goes viral on its pages.

Platforms will also have to ensure their algorithm promotes diverse content. Researchers have found that some platforms like YouTube excessively pushed far-right, anti-immigration videos during Finland’s presidential elections earlier this year.

Some large social media, including Facebook, have been singled out for lacking enough content moderation in less-spoken European languages like Slovak. X, which is already under formal investigation, has slashed its content moderation teams.

Under the DSA, major online companies have to meet wide-ranging requirements to crack down on illegal and harmful content, including with detailed assessments and mitigations of major societal risks — like threats to elections.

The guidelines are suggestions from the Commission on how to comply with the DSA rulebook. Companies are flexible in how they use them but those that do not follow the EU's suggestions "must prove to the Commission that the measures undertaken are equally effective," the EU executive said in a press release.

The Commission also said it is planning to carry out so-called stress tests or a "wargaming scenario" at the end of April with some major platforms. Companies like Meta, TikTok and X previously asked for such voluntary exercises overseen by the Commission's enforcement team to check if their operations complied with the DSA.