EU probes Meta for killing tool that enables real-time election monitoring

The European Commission today accused Meta of violating rules related to deceptive advertising, political content, and election monitoring. The owner of Facebook and Instagram "may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA)," the EU government body said in a press release.

"The Commission suspects that Meta does not comply with DSA obligations related to addressing the dissemination of deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns, and coordinated inauthentic behavior in the EU," the EC said. "The proliferation of such content may present a risk to civic discourse, electoral processes and fundamental rights, as well as consumer protection."

The EC alleged "that the mechanism for flagging illegal content on the services ('Notice-and-Action') as well as the user redress and internal complaint-mechanisms are not compliant with the requirements of the Digital Services Act and that there are shortcomings in Meta's provision of access to publicly available data to researchers."