Twitter Gets Scolded by EU Over Its Disinformation Report
Twitter's report was short of data and lacked commitment to encourage fact-checking on the platform, says an EU official.
Twitter fell short on explaining how it plans to curb disinformation.
The European Commission singled out Twitter in a statement Thursday, saying the social media company fell short on providing sufficient information about its efforts to fight disinformation on the platform.
The EU's 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation had been signed by 34 major platforms as of June, including Twitter, Google and Meta. On Thursday, the group launched a new Transparency Center site, which includes reports and data from many of the signatories on how they're handling disinformation.
Every signatory besides Twitter provided sufficient data and information on their commitments to curb disinformation on their platforms, said EU officials. Twitter's report, however, was "short of data, with no information on commitments to empower the fact-checking community," the statement reads.
"I am disappointed to see that Twitter report lags behind others and I expect a more serious commitment to their obligations stemming from the Code," Věra Jourová, EU vice president for values and transparency, said in a release. "Russia is engaged also in a full-blown disinformation war and the platforms need to live up to their responsibilities."
Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the helm of the social media platform in October, it has experienced a number of changes, layoffs and media controversies. On Wednesday, Twitter said that it will begin charging users $100 a month for basic access to its application programming interface, a tool for analyzing public tweets. The company also said this week that people who pay for its Twitter Blue subscription will be able to post tweets up to 4,000 characters.
Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.