The European Union has threatened Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta with fines of up to six per cent of the global turnover of the platform.
The announcement by European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier on January 8 came after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said he would side with Donald Trump in the US president-elect’s war on censorship at home and abroad.
Officials have focused on Zuckerberg’s promise to axe fact-checking practices with third-party media organisations in the US. Regnier warned a similar move in Europe would put Meta at risk of being fined.
Speaking to state-owned media MDR, Regnier insisted that fact-checking was a key way of reducing the risk of what he called “disinformation or negative effects on civil society discourse” under the bloc’s censorship-enabling Digital Services Act (DSA).
While collaborating with third-party journalists was not mandatory under the regulation, Meta abandoning the practice would necessitate it “conduct its own risk assessment and submit a report to the [European] Commission”, showing it could keep “disinformation” and “hate speech” off of its platform.
“If the platform then fails to comply with the Digital Services Act, we could actually impose a fine that could entail up to six per cent of the global turnover of such a platform,” Regnier added.
“We will make sure that these very large platforms, no matter where they are based, once they offer their services here in the EU, also adhere to our rules.”
Brussels Signal approached the European Commission for comment on January 7 after Zuckerberg first announced his change in perspective. As of writing, no reply has been received.
Meta, the parent company of social media giants including Instagram and Facebook, has said it planned to “restore free speech”. https://t.co/KDyVbGqKxk
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 7, 2025
Regnier was not the only official discussing using the DSA against social media platforms.
The head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency communications regulator, Klaus Müller, had warned on X on January 8 that any company that abandoned fact-checkers was at greater risk of EU fines.
“According to the DSA, the co-operation of very large online platforms [VLOPs] with fact-checking organisations is not mandatory, but their risk of sanctions is reduced if they do so in the context of the DSA,” he wrote.
“According to the [EU] election guidelines, this is considered a risk-minimising measure under Section 35 DSA with regards to systemic risks at elections. If a VLOP does not work with fact-checkers, it must prove that it is taking other, equally effective risk-minimizing measures.”
Germany’s Federal Digital Minister Volker Wissing told reporters on the side-lines of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas running from January 7-10 that he was pushing the commission to “take a close look at Meta’s actions, examine them rigorously and, if necessary, initiate the necessary measures”.
He added that the new Executive Vice-president of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, “takes these issues very seriously and she has my full support and trust”.
US Democrats “openly talk” about using the European Union’s Digital Services Act legislation to censor Americans, journalist and free speech activist Michael @Shellenberger has told Brussels Signal. https://t.co/rdmglPf6fb
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) December 5, 2024
