EU Commissioner: Social media companies should be more active against fake news

Andrus Ansip, EU Commissioner for the Digital Market, says social media companies should become more active in the fight against fake news. He believes that companies should regulate this themselves, but that the EU is prepared to ‘provide clarification’.

The commissioner told the Financial Times that it is not the job of the European Commission or governments to censor online content. “Fake news is bad, but a ministry of truth is even worse.” According to the spokesperson for Ansip, the European Commission is monitoring the actions of companies and there are plans to ‘provide advice’ on the various voluntary measures.

The Commissioner did not elaborate on the Commission’s possible measures, but pointed as an example to the rules of conduct that the organization agreed with tech companies in May to combat hate speech on the internet. Ansip told the newspaper: “Businesses need to be more active. It was normal to think that the role of quality media would decrease and that of social media would increase. Because of fake news, people can no longer trust those sources and people go back to quality media.”

Facebook recently announced measures to curb the spread of fake news through its platform. The company did this in both the US and Germany. For example, it works together with fact-checking companies to check messages. Ansip will not comment on the measures taken to the Financial Times.

The discussion around fake news on Facebook received a lot of attention during the US presidential election. In Germany, that led to plans to fine platforms like Facebook if they don’t remove fake news within a day. The European Commission already called on companies in December to take stricter action against these kinds of messages.