Social media: TikTok, Meta, Twitter and Microsoft take measures against fake news about war and Covid. The focus on the pandemic is fading out

TikTok, Meta, Twitter and Microsoft keep taking measures against fake news about Coronavirus and the war in Ukraine. Such platforms are also busy revising the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation. Today, the European Commission published a report about the measures taken by online platforms against fake news in January and February 2022. “Fake news about the war in Ukraine show that online platforms keep staying on the frontline. Pro-Kremlin media do not deserve to benefit from the powerful tools provided by these platforms to spread their lies and fake news about the war. But they will not stop trying”, the deputy president of the EU Commission for Transparency, Vera Jourova, said. “We need sustainable solutions that meet fundamental rights. I rely on the signing parties to quickly finalise the revision of the Code, which will take effective and transparent measures”, Jourova added. As requested by the EU Commission, now Meta has issued reports about the measures separately taken by Facebook and Instagram, and the figures show that the visits to online news websites about Covid-19 decreased to one half in January and February. On the contrary, Microsoft developed a tracker that finds websites that post fake news about Covid-19 across the world. In Europe, such service is operative in France, Germany and Italy. In partnership with Newsguard, “the tracker has identified 547 websites of fake news worldwide since February”. TikTok reports that videos that have a tag about Covid and vaccines have decreased to one half in January and February, to coincide with the lifting of restrictions in the EU. Lastly, in January Twitter extended its fake news reporting service to Spain as well. Now, such service is available in six countries.
Valentina Bombelli