Europe's digital future : the opportunities and pitfalls of platform self-regulation of harmful content and disinformation

Abstract

2022 was a year in which significant steps were taken towards establishing comprehensive European legislative and regulatory frameworks for media and technology. The European Media Freedom Act, the Digital Services Act and the Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation have mechanisms and a scope that are unique in the world. At the same time foreign interference, and disinformation in particular, have emerged as structural threats on media platforms. This panel us this framework of hostile interference to assess recent efforts within the EU to regulate harmful content online. The Acts provide for the creation of various coordinators, boards and monitoring bodies that can ensure compliance with their guidelines and regulations, but civil society and media platforms themselves have important roles to play too. The success of the Code of Practice in particular, will depend on actions taken by the media platforms that pledged to support it. How will these platforms empower users, researchers and the fact-checking community? Will (more) data be made available to researchers? Will platforms act strongly against those abuse these 5 platforms for their own gain, and will decisive action be taken to demonetize disinformation? The experts on the panel will debate these issues to gain a better understanding of what works in combatting harmful and disruptive (online) content, what can be improved in the EU’s battle against disinformation, and in what direction the EU is headed on these matters.