Vera Jourova

EU unveils tougher industry Code to combat disinformation

The European Commission has just taken the wraps off a beefed up industry Code of Practice for tackling online disinformation across the EU. Signatories to the Code — who include tech giants lik

As EU says it’ll ban Russia’s ‘toxic media machine’, social media firms face pressure to act

Late yesterday the European Union announced an “unprecedented” step against Russian disinformation, saying it would ban Kremlin-based media outlets, Russia Today (aka RT) and Sputnik &#821

WhatsApp quizzed over consumer protection concerns in EU

Remember the backlash over that impossible-to-understand privacy policy update pushed out by WhatsApp last year? A consumer protection complaint over the messaging platform’s aggressive push to

France spanks Google $170M, Facebook $68M over cookie consent dark patterns

Chalk another one up for decentralized enforcement: France’s data protection watchdog has slapped headline-grabbing fines on Facebook and Google for failing to respect local (and pan-EU) cookie

EU warns adtech giants over ‘legal tricks’ as it moots changes to centralize privacy oversight

The European Commission has given its clearest signal yet that it’s prepared to intervene over weak enforcement of the EU’s data protection rules against big tech. Today the bloc’s e

Tech giants’ slowing progress on hate speech removals underscores need for law, says EC

Tech giants have gotten worse at removing illegal hate speech from their platforms under a voluntary arrangement in the European Union, according to the Commission’s latest assessment. The sixth

Clubhouse, Vimeo, DoubleVerify and others set to sign up to beefed-up disinformation code in the EU

Audio social network Clubhouse, video sharing platform Vimeo and anti-ad fraud startup DoubleVerify are among a clutch of tech companies and organzations preparing to sign up to a beefed-up version of

Tech giants still aren’t coming clean about COVID-19 disinformation, says EU

European Union lawmakers have asked tech giants to continue reporting on efforts to combat the spread of vaccine disinformation on their platforms for a further six months. “The continuation of

Europe to press the adtech industry to help fight online disinformation

The European Union plans to beef up its response to online disinformation, with the Commission saying today it will step up efforts to combat harmful but not illegal content — including by push

Europe urges e-commerce platforms to share data in fight against coronavirus scams

European lawmakers are pressing major e-commerce and media platforms to share more data with each other as a tool to fight rogue traders who are targeting consumers with coronavirus scams. After the p

EU websites’ use of Google Analytics and Facebook Connect targeted by post-Schrems II privacy complaints

A month after Europe’s top court struck down a flagship data transfer arrangement between the EU and the US as unsafe, European privacy campaign group, noyb, has filed complaints against 101 web

GDPR’s two-year review flags lack of ‘vigorous’ enforcement

It’s more than two years since a flagship update to the European Union’s data protection regime moved into the application phase. Yet the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been

TikTok joins the EU’s Code of Practice on disinformation

TikTok is the latest platform to sign up the European Union’s Code of Practice on disinformation, agreeing to a set of voluntary steps aimed at combating the spread of damaging fakes and falseho

Tech giants must open up about the coronavirus ‘infodemic’, say EU lawmakers

Platforms still aren’t doing enough to tackle disinformation related to the coronavirus crisis, the European Commission said today. In a Communication it is pressing tech platforms to produce mo

Facebook pushes EU for dilute and fuzzy internet content rules

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is in Europe this week — attending a security conference in Germany over the weekend, where he spoke about the kind of regulation he’d like applied to his

Tech giants still not doing enough to fight fakes, says European Commission

It’s a year since the European Commission got a bunch of adtech giants together to spill ink on a voluntary Code of Practice to do something — albeit, nothing very quantifiable — as

EU-US Privacy Shield passes third Commission ‘health check’ — but litigation looms

The third annual review of the EU-US Privacy Shield data transfer mechanism has once again been nodded through by Europe’s executive. This despite the EU parliament calling last year for the mec

Europe’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, set for expanded role in next Commission

As the antitrust investigations stack up on US tech giants’ home turf there’s no sign of pressure letting up across the pond. European Commission president-elect Ursula von der Leyen today

Privacy policies are still too horrible to read in full

A year on from Europe’s flagship update to the pan-EU data protection framework the Commission has warned that too many privacy policies are still too hard to read and has urged tech companies t

Facebook agrees to clearer T&Cs in Europe

Facebook has agreed to amend its terms and conditions under pressure from EU lawmakers. The new terms will make it plain that free access to its service is contingent on users’ data being used t
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