The European Union slaps Twitter on the knuckles for its measures to combat misinformation

The EU is not satisfied with Twitter’s report on the fight against disinformation.

European Union officials are showing their teeth on Twitter after the company posted a misinformation report on its platform compared to competitors like Google or Meta. Twitter now has until July to submit a revised report to the European Union.

EU not satisfied with report shared by Twitter

More recently, the EU has formalized its Transparency Hub, which is a set of reports from several technology companies that have signed the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation, as part of the EU’s commitment to counter disinformation and misinformation online. Reports submitted by companies such as Google, Meta, and even Adobe detail how each company implements the Disinformation Code of Practice on their platforms. The European Union was quite satisfied with the reports already received, with the exception of Twitter.

According to an EU press release, while Twitter met the deadline to return the document, the company’s report is woefully lacking in data and information on how Twitter verifies information circulating on its website. Now Twitter has to submit a second version of its report before July, this time to complete.

about his fight against misinformation

“Today’s reports mark an important step in the fight against disinformation online. It is not surprising that the quality of documents varies greatly depending on the resources allocated to this project,” the European Commissioner for the EU Internal Market said in a statement. “All signatories have an interest in meeting their obligations and fully implementing the Disinformation Code of Practice before fulfilling the obligations they are required to comply with under the Digital Services Act.”

Now that Elon Musk is CEO of Twitter, the company seems to be less focused on fighting misinformation than deploying more or less useful features. Recently, users have noticed that Twitter is testing a 4,000 character limit for tweets. Disinformation continues to do its job on the platform. Following the completion of Elon Musk’s takeover of the company in late October, the company quickly reversed its Covid-19-related misinformation policy. That being said, Twitter’s concerns about disinformation predate the Musk era.