On 27 February 2018, the European Commission held the second multi-stakeholder meeting on the problem of fake news. The meeting is part of a series of events, and of a comprehensive initiative the EC is taking to address the issue. During the event, it was clear that the EC’s position is still far from being defined. On the other hand, the advertising industry is advocating for light-touch regulation and is defending its own ability to enforce self-regulation.
The EC’s orientation will be clearer in April 2018 after the publication of a Communication
The second colloquium on “fake news and disinformation online” organised by the European Commission not only showed the complexity and breadth of the issue, but also highlighted that the Commission is yet to reach a position. It will take some time before the EC assesses the input of the public consultation which closed on 23 February, and had about 3,000 responses, 200 of which were from business. It will also wait for the results of a Eurobarometer survey it is carrying out, with the participation of about 27,000 EU citizens.
In her remarks, Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, noted that the EC aims to issue a Communication on the topic by April 2018. This will happen once the works of the Expert Group appointed in January 2018 are complete, and result in a report being produced in March 2018. She also admitted that, at the moment, “we do not have a good definition of what is fake news”, which demonstrates the inherent challenges to regulate the matter. While the EC gathers evidence, there is little indication of the measures it aims to adopt in the future.
Google defended the model of its ads business and its importance for traditional media publishers
Google’s Public Policy Manager Jon Steinberg delivered a presentation on the topic “De-incentivising the proliferation of fake news”. He took the chance to highlight the benefits brought about by Google’s advertising model for media publishers. He noted that, during 2017, the company shared 70% of its advertising revenue with publishers, and argued that it is an important way to fund quality journalism.
Steinberg did not engage extensively in Google’s initiatives to tackle fake accounts and hate speech, though he reminded that there are more than 10,000 people working on it for YouTube – a remark which was already made by his colleague during the hearing carried out by the UK Parliament’s DCMS committee in Washington earlier in February. He also noted that Google disabled 1.7bn “bad ads” during 2016, and removed 100,000 publishers from its AdSense program, for which the acceptance rate is now only 12%.
Steinberg’s remarks were challenged by some of the attendees, who argued that a “follow-the-money” approach is exactly the opposite of what is needed, since it leads to incentives for advertisers to maximise revenue.
The advertising industry pushes for self-regulation, though it may be insufficient to tackle the problem
Oliver Gray of Graywise presented on the role of self-regulation in the advertising sector. Unsurprisingly, he highlighted the need to avoid overly prescriptive regulation, and stressed the need to pursue a self-regulatory approach, noting it is likely to deliver benefits. Gray referred to past cases in which the advertising industry understood enforcing certain standards through self-regulation was in its own interest, and argued that self-regulation “lends itself well to tech”.
However, some attendees stressed that more transparency is needed, and it is unlikely that self-regulation will succeed in delivering it. In fact, respondents to the live poll carried out during the event showed little belief that self-regulation could be effective; however, this did not imply that regulation was the preferred option. Instead, respondents pointed toward the need to achieve better education standards, and to support high-quality journalism. After all, these two factors heavily affect people’s ability to identify reliable information, and publishers’ ability to differentiate themselves from those spreading misleading and deceptive content
