Meta needs to analyse risks if it drops fact checkers in EU too: Commission

If Meta were to fire its fact checkers in the EU, as it announced yesterday it would in the US, it needs to submit a risk assessment to the European Commission first, a spokesperson for the EU institution said. 

“We take note of Meta’s announcement, we have no comment on something happening in the US. But, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), before removing these policies, very large platforms will have to conduct a risk assessment and send it to the EU Commission,” the spokesperson said. 

“We keep monitoring [...] compliance with their DSA obligations in the EU,” he added.

Europe's DSA requires large tech companies such as Facebook and Instagram to counter illegal content online and mitigate against disinformation or election manipulation.

NGOs expressed worries about the company’s announcement yesterday to replace its fact-checkers in the US with a new "community notes" system similar to Elon Musk's platform X.

While Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the move was about getting back to what he says are the company's "roots around free expression", civil society organisation ARTICLE 19 said this is “a blatant attempt to cater to specific political interests”.

“The approach outlined by Mark Zuckerberg seems to closely parrot talking points taken from conservative media in the US who have long criticised Meta’s content moderation practices as liberally biased with little regard to the actual human rights and freedom of expression challenges on its platforms,” the statement said.

Zuckerberg yesterday spoke about the US election result, claiming that Meta would work with incoming US President Donald Trump to push back on countries that are trying to rein in social media platforms.

In May, online platform X received additional questions from the Commission about its decision to reduce its content moderators by 20% compared to the previous year.

The move is a next step in an ongoing investigation which the Commission started in December 2023 related to X's handling of risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers under the EU’s DSA.

X removed moderators for Bulgarian, Croatian, Latvian and Polish coverage, leaving language experts for Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, the latest report said.