Lawmakers in the EU agree tighten rules to stop misinformation through targeted advertisements during elections
After a draft rule proposed by the European Commission last year, EU lawmakers on Thursday, February 2, agreed to make rules tougher to stop political advertisements aimed at spreading misinformation during elections.
According to a report by Reuters, the lawmakers aim also aim at drawing support from civil rights groups, tech lobbying groups and YouTube
The draft rule proposed was aimed by the EU to curb the power of Google, Meta platforms as well as other social media companies, and force them to be more ‘accountable and transparent’.
“Only personal data explicitly provided for online political advertising can be used by advert providers,” said the European Parliament, as cited in the report.
It added, “Micro-targeting, a strategy that uses consumer data and demographics to identify the interests of specific individuals, will therefore not be possible.”
Through the rules tech giants from the U.S. could face fines of up to 4 percent of their global turnover, if there are breaches of misinformation through political ads on their platforms. Platforms would also be required to provide more data to the EU about the targeted political advertisements.
On Thursday, the EU lawmakers made changes and toughened up a few of the provisions in the draft prepared by the Commission.
They will now have to discuss further details with the government of EU countries before the proposed draft can become legislation.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article, do remember to come back and check out the EuroNews247 website for all your up-to-date European news stories.
