The European Union on Friday welcomed efforts by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to comply with new European rules in place since late August. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg “was very involved and knew exactly what our positions are,” European commissioner Thierry Breton told reporters after talks at the group’s California headquarters.
More than 1,000 people work at Meta to comply with the new European requirements, the European commissioner said, adding that the Californian company will carry out a “stress test” in July to check that it is ready for the new regulation. These simulations would take place at Meta’s European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. TikTok has also agreed to conduct these “stress tests”, together with European officials.
Meta and its subsidiary Instagram under fire from critics
Thierry Breton paid a two-day visit to San Francisco, eight weeks before the Digital Services Act (DSA) goes into effect. This text is one of the most ambitious regulations in terms of online content control since the appearance of social networks. It imposes a long list of rules on platforms, marketplaces, and search engines, including an obligation to act “promptly” to remove any illegal or harmful content as soon as the platform becomes aware of it.
Meta, which reaches billions of people around the world, is still under fire for not removing problematic content enough. Instagram, a subsidiary of Meta, is the main platform used by pedophile rings to promote and sell content depicting sexual assaults on minors, according to a report by Stanford University and the Wall Street Journal published in early June.
Before Mark Zuckerberg, Thierry Breton met Twitter boss Elon Musk. The European commissioner welcomed the efforts of the social network but asked that Twitter strengthen its means before August 25 to comply with the DSA.
Source: BFM TV
