Facebook, Twitter, and Google Still Aren't Doing Enough About Disinformation, EU Says (theverge.com)

Facebook, Twitter, and Google still aren't doing enough to battle disinformation on their platforms, European Union officials said in a statement released this week. "As part of a plan to fight disinformation on social media, the companies signed on to a voluntary proposal to crack down on the problem last year, which included making plans to increase transparency and fight fake accounts," reports The Verge. "The European Commission is now publicizing monthly progress reports on the topic, and has released the first, covering January." From the report: In the statement, the officials criticized the companies' responses, saying "we need to see more progress." "Platforms have not provided enough details showing that new policies and tools are being deployed in a timely manner and with sufficient resources across all EU Member States," the statement said. "The reports provide too little information on the actual results of the measures already taken."

Facebook, Twitter, and Google were each singled out for not providing enough information in their reports to officials, who said in today's statement that they remain "concerned by the situation." The statement pressed the platforms to move faster ahead of European Parliament elections in May. In an accompanying op-ed in The Guardian this week, EU commissioners said, "if we do not see sufficient long-term progress, we reserve the right to reconsider our policy options -- including possible regulation."

Comments

Re:Modern examples

[AmiMoJo]

if it's on all 4 major networks (Breitbart(*), Fox, CNN, MSNBC) then it's probably not fake.

Consensus is a shitty way of determining if news is fake or not. For a start it's not like all four of them will send a journalist to report on every story, for the most part they all pick up the AP or Reuters story and add their own spin.

A better option is to weight sources. The BBC is mostly reliable and can be relied on to publish corrections. If it's on Brietbart it's probably false. Then WAIT, don't leap to conclusions and start shit-posting instantly, and if it's important maybe do some research to better understand the story, and see how it develops over time. Stuff that is fake tends to get debunked fairly quickly, so all you really need to do is avoid being part of the mob that gets triggered by it.