Combating online disinformation (aka fake news)

This week representatives of online platforms (e.g. of Facebook, Google, Mozilla, Twitter), advertisers and advertising industry met with the EU Commissioner, Mariya Gabriel, to present her with their individual roadmaps describing how to limit online disinformation (Code of Practice to fight online disinformation). These roadmaps have been developed pursuant to the self-regulatory Code of Practice to fight online disinformation, agreed on last month. The commitments of the industry go beyond protection of consumers, e.g. against fake online accounts and their practices, towards combating broader understood fake news, e.g. by ensuring also transparency in online political advertising (see further here on the Code of Practices).

Amongst current best practices we may find on the list: 

• in advertising policies: "Facebook's ads policy", which contains examples of prohibited types of content that includes false and misleading content; 
• in service integrity policies: "YouTube spam policy" and "YouTube impersonation policy" - which respectively restrict spam and impersonation
• in policies and actions to empower consumers: "Reporting Twitter Ads" enabling users to report advertising on Twitter.

The list of best practices contains quite a few examples of such self-regulation, however, it does not refer to specific provisions in these policies. It would still require some legwork to then find out which policies have actually been adopted by these online platforms/advertisers. Not to mention that it is another matter altogether to establish to what extent these policies are being enforced.