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2023 Digital Rights Update: Eastern Partnership CSO Meter
Countries of the Eastern Partnership region continue digitalisation efforts and some implemented promising data protection legislation. However, the expansion of surveillance and spread of disinformation put digital rights under constant pressure in 2023.
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New Romanian cybersecurity law in force despite heavy criticism
The Constitutional Court of Romania declared the new cybersecurity law constitutional despite criticism from civil society about the repercussions for investigative journalists,security companies, and for regular citizens.
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European perspectives: Fight against disinformation by improving standards in journalism and empowering citizens
Disinformation cannot be suppressed by only regulation and laws, it is necessary to empower the media and journalists, invest in quality and independent journalism, as well as in democratic political culture, media literacy and digital literacy of the EU citizens, concluded the Gong conference “European Perspectives: Impact of Disinformation on Health” Democracy and the Digital Environment”.
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Putting the brakes on Big Tech’s uncontrolled power
Will 2022 go down as the year the EU tamed Big Tech? In the very early morning hours of Saturday, 23 April, after 16 hours of final negotiations, EU lawmakers reached an agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is certainly a watershed moment for our digital future. As the deal reached is a top-level political agreement, the final text of the law is yet to be released.
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Not everything is allowed in politics: Upcoming political advertising legislation must introduce limits
In November 2021, the European Commission launched a proposal for a regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising. The document will place harmonised rules for more transparency of political advertising to facilitate the sector’s internal market. Now, it is the European Parliament’s turn, specifically the IMCO (Internal Market and Consumer Protection) Committee to lead the legislative process.
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Informing the Disinfo Debate: A Policy Guide for Protecting Human Rights
Today, 20 December 2021, EDRi, Access Now and Civil Liberties Union for Europe publish a joint report as a continuation of its 2018 predecessor, Informing the “Disinformation” Debate. The main outcome of this report is a set of policy recommendations addressed to the EU co-legislators focusing on: how to effectively mitigate fundamental rights risks that result from the manipulative methods deployed by large online platforms that exploit people’s vulnerabilities and their sensitive data; and how to combat disinformation in a manner that is fully compliant with fundamental rights standards.
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What you need to know about the Facebook Papers
Facebook is now undergoing what may be the tech giant’s biggest crisis in its 17-year history. In October, The Washington Post reported that a second Facebook whistleblower came forward to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that the company prioritises growth over combating hate speech, disinformation, and other threats to the public. The whistleblower’s testimony follows that of former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, whose legal counsel released what’s known as the Facebook Papers — a 10,000-page collection of internal reports, memos, and chat logs leaked to more than a dozen major news outlets.
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Disinformation and propaganda: It’s all political!
The disinformation and propaganda campaigns in the European Union (EU) are inexplicably tied to the political parties that misuse the tools of mass media communications to spread fear and deceit (Euractiv, 2021). The media exemption currently debated within the scope of the Digital Services Act (DSA) that would prevent digital intermediaries from interfering with content posted by media outlets is an early Christmas present to the disinformation agents, as it would enable them to continue with their propaganda production, fueled by algorithmic distribution.
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Towards a digital Europe we want: the European Democracy Action Plan
On 14 September, EDRi submitted its response to the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP) consultation. The EDAP, echoing the existing EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy, focuses on preserving European democracies. The EDAP intends to address numerous challenges such as shrinking civic space, electoral interference, disinformation and the difficulties faced by journalists.
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Cryptocurrency scammers flood Facebook users with manipulative ads
Scammers using fake Forbes articles and anti-EU disinformation as bait continue to target Facebook users across Europe, the EDRi member Metamorphosis Foundation has warned.
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Twitter banning political ads – the tip of the iceberg
Twitter seems to have learnt the lessons of the 2016 US elections. After the revelation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the link between the use of social media targeted political advertisement and the voting behaviour of specific groups of people has been explored and explained again and again. We now understand how social media platforms […]
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E-Commerce review: Safeguarding human rights when moderating online content
This is the fourth and last blog post in our series on Europe’s future rules for intermediary liability and content moderation. You can read the introduction here. In our previous blog posts on the upcoming E-Commerce review, we discussed examples of what can go wrong with online content regulation. But let’s imagine for a moment […]
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