COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 23/05/2019
Mathew Ingram
In January 2018, alarmed by the spread of misinformation around Britain’s “Brexit” referendum and the aftermath of Russian trolling on Facebook during the 2016 US election, the European Union convened a “high-level” working group filled with experts from media and academia—as well as representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter—to look at the scope of the problem and recommend solutions. This past fall, that group came out with an agreed upon “code of practice,” including a commitment to make political advertising more transparent. But, according to a new report from Investigate Europe, the proposals were watered down after both Facebook and Google put pressure on participants behind the scenes (neither company had responded to a request for comment from CJR by press time).