The European Commission opens an investigation into Meta

by Alessio Pisanò BRUSSELS - The European Commission has opened a formal procedure to assess whether Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force on 17 February. Meta's alleged violations specifically concern the company's policies and practices related to false advertising […]

by Alessio Pisanò

BRUSSELS – The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force on 17 February. The alleged violations by Meta concern in particular the company’s policies and practices relating to misleading advertising and political content published on its platforms.
After the formal initiation of proceedings, the Commission will continue to gather evidence and investigate the company’s conduct by making further requests for information and conducting interviews or inspections. The areas on which the investigation will focus cover various areas, first and foremost misleading advertising and disinformation, which can also represent a risk for electoral processes.

Among the aspects that have ended up in Brussels’ sights is also the visibility of political content on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which is limited by Meta. The Commission will also investigate the absence of an effective tool for civic debate and third-party real-time election monitoring in view of the upcoming European Parliament elections and other elections in several Member States. Meta, Brussels observes, has decommissioned ‘CrowdTangle’, a public in-depth analysis tool that allowed the monitoring of elections in real time by researchers, journalists and civil society, without however replacing it. The Commission’s guidelines on DSA provide for access to these tools to be expanded. The mechanism with which the two platforms report illegal content is also under examination.
Behind the Commission’s action there is also the suspicion that Meta has not established an effective internal complaint management system to speak out against the content moderation decisions adopted by the company.