The Commission is seeking more information from Meta following its decision to deprecate its CrowdTangle transparency tool. The latest EU request for information (RFI) on Meta has been made under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) — an online governance framework which empowers enforcers to punish non-compliance with fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover.
Back in April the Commission opened formal DSA infringement proceedings against Meta, citing a range of election security concerns — including its plan to depreciate CrowdTangle. The social media monitoring and analytics tool has been used by researchers and journalists to track disinformation on Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram.
At the time, the commissioners said it was particularly worried about the timing of the CrowdTangle depreciation — coming just a few weeks ahead of the European Elections.
That intervention appears to have led to a brief reprieve for CrowdTangle in the EU. Per the Commission, Meta responded by deploying new functionalities in CrowdTangle at the end of May. These took the form of 27 new public real-time visual dashboards, one per EU Member State, which the EU said was done to “allow third party real-time civic discourse and election monitoring during the EU elections”.
However, Meta subsequently discontinued the dashboards when it shuttered access to CrowdTangle itself on August 14.
Meta’s replacement tools have been criticized by researchers as having a fraction of the utility of CrowdTangle.
The EU’s new RFI to Meta asks the company to “provide information on measures it has taken to comply with its obligations to give researchers access to data that is publicly accessible on the online interface of Facebook and Instagram, as required by the DSA, and on its plans to update its election and civic discourse monitoring functionalities”.
Specifically, the Commission said it wants details from Meta about its content library and application programming interface (API) — including eligibility criteria for access; the application process; the data that can be accessed; and functionalities — as the bloc looks to assess whether Meta’s alternative meets DSA transparency obligations.
Both Facebook and Instagram are designated as very large online platforms (VLOPs) under the DSA, and regulation requires VLOPs to provide external researchers with access to platform data so they can study systemic risks to the EU.
The bloc has given Meta until September 6 to provide the requested info. “Based on the assessment of the replies, the Commission will determine the next steps, which could include interim measures, and non-compliance decisions,” it adds, noting it can also choose to accept commitments made by Meta to remedy concerns.
The Commission’s wider investigation into Meta’s election security strategy remains ongoing.
The back-and-forth around CrowdTangle is a reminder that the impact of the DSA shouldn’t only be measured in headline fines. EU enforcers are applying operational pressure on major platforms through strategic use of a range of enforcement tools — including opening formal proceedings but also following up with asks for more info, allowing them to respond to new developments.
However it is also notable that Meta went ahead and discontinued CrowdTangle in the EU in spite of the tool’s demise already being on the radar of DSA enforcers.
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