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Until 2016, social media technology companies were defined as neutral communication channels. In other words, their objective was to put people in contact, without intervening in the type of messages that allowed this connection. The 2016 U.S. presidential election, which brought victory to Donald Trump, warned about the extent of political disinformation campaigns on social media.

In fact, Trump won the 2016 election auspicious of information manipulation campaigns orchestrated in Macedonia that, among other lies, spread the falsehood that Pope Francis supported his candidacy. Months later, the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out, a consultancy firm specializing in mining and data analysis.

The Zuckerberg company was accused of sharing data from more than 87 million users illegally with this British consultancy firm in order to manipulate its voting intention. With this data, Cambridge Analytica would have generated targeted political ads to favor both Trump’s presidential campaign and the departure of the UK from the European Union.

Questioned by public opinion and immersed in a global reputational crisis, Facebook assumed its responsibility for content for the first time in history and acted as an editor.

Donald Trump’s term ended with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, where five people died and dozens were injured, after the president used his social media accounts to spread lies. The parliamentary committee that investigated the assault considered that Trump spread conspiracy theories that claimed that there had been electoral fraud and stirred up the insurrection at the time that the result of the elections was being confirmed in a session at the Capitol. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch or Youtube suspended the president’s profiles and took various measures to combat disinformation:

• They moderated the contents through artificial intelligence and the hiring of workers,
• They labeled publications that lied or misinformed,
• They removed profiles of extremist or false accounts,
• They restricted political advertising in election periods and
• They restricted sharing (Whatsapp) and like (Instagram) buttons

These measures had to be reinforced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which the World Health Organization (OMS) baptized as infodemic in reference to the large number of news about the disease that spread globally, immediately and virally through the internet, regardless of its veracity.

The OMS worked with Facebook and Google, among other technology companies, to create tools to help the population to find out truthfully. For example, when users search for concepts related to the coronavirus on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, they are encouraged to consult WHO or local government information on the disease.

“There is progress in the fight against disinformation by technology companies, but the resources to see if these global measures are met in different countries are insufficient,” explains the journalist and professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Raúl Magallón. “For example, Meta’s political ad library is a measure that pursues transparency in political messages so as not to interfere in electoral processes. It is a good initiative, but then Meta does not deploy the necessary measures to see if the electoral law of each country is met. Achieving the day of reflection on social networks is still impossible”, Magallón explains.

As disinformation has gained in sophistication and the spread actors also increase, the European Union (EU) has been forced to accelerate a regulatory process that began to emerge in 2015, when the European Council first invited the European Commission to act against what they considered a threat to democratic processes in the EU and its member states.

In 2016, the Brexit referendum showed that decisions of the utmost importance for the future of the European Union, such as the separation of one of its member states (UK), could be conditioned by disinformation campaigns supported by technology.

In 2018, the European Union presented the Code of Good Practices on Disinformation, a document that set 21 commitments in different areas, from transparency in political advertising to the demonetization of disinformation providers. For the first time in history, technology voluntarily accepted standards of self-regulation to fight against disinformation. The code was signed by companies such as Meta, Google, Twitter, Mozilla, Microsoft and TikTok, as well as by advertisers and other actors in the advertising sector.

In 2022, the Code was strengthened with the aim of being more effective. The European Union understands that in order to combat disinformation, it cannot focus only on content, but on strategies for distributing it. For this reason, the new Code brings together a more diverse range of actors involved than ever and is committed to cooperation between technology and verification platforms, as well as to facilitate the access of researchers to data. At the same time, it is committed to the demonetisation of the dissemination of disinformation and the transparency of political advertising.

In addition to the Code of Good Practices on Disinformation, which remains voluntary and from which Twitter, led by Elon Musk, has withdrawn, on August 25, 2023 the Digital Services Directive (DSA) enters into force, which establishes transparency and access obligations on the algorithms of large digital platforms (those with more than 45 million users, 10% of the European potential market). This regulation proposes, among others, the rapid withdrawal of illegal content, the protection of fundamental rights (restrictions on the use of race or religion data) or fines that, in the case of technological giants, can reach up to 6% of global income.

“What all this acceleration of standards indicates is that combating disinformation only by attending to content can put the European Union against the ropes, because it can be a serious attack on freedom of expression”, explains the journalist and researcher Carme Colomina. “In order to protect other fundamental rights, Europe places less emphasis on the lie and more on the distribution of that lie. Therefore, for example, one of the main requirements of the DSA is algorithmic transparency. We want to know how technology companies viralize content with the aim of curbing disinformation before it spreads, because one thing is clear that disinformation is a phenomenon that coexists and will coexist with us and we are learning to fight it”, he concludes.