Covid-19: Brussels publishes fact-checking tools against disinformation

“When the crisis began, the Commission launched a website dedicated to the response to the new coronavirus outbreak. Today, it launches a section to combat misinformation related to the pandemic, providing materials for detecting myths and checking facts [‘fact-checking’]”, informs the community executive in a statement.

On the page that has been online since today, the European Commission notes that “deliberately false and misleading information in the field of health is proliferating” and advises citizens to trust “only information coming from reliable sources” about the covid outbreak -19, such as the World Health Organization or the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

In an attempt to “separate fact from fiction”, Brussels also clarifies on this page that “the coronavirus crisis is not a harbinger of the collapse of the Schengen area”, that is, of the concept of free movement of people and goods, currently on hold due to to restrictive measures, also explaining that “migrants are not bringing covid-19 to Europe”, in an allusion to two of the ‘fake news’ propagated in recent days.

The page can be accessed at https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/health/coronavirus-response/fighting-disinformation_pt.

Last Friday, the vice-president of the European Commission for Values ​​and Transparency, Vera Jourová, held a video conference on disinformation during the pandemic with those responsible for the digital platforms Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla and the association commercial EDiMA, representative of the technology sector in the EU.

“The platforms confirmed that they have observed a constant increase in false and harmful information, mainly related to health, which is now being removed in large quantities”, highlights the community executive in the press release released today.

At the end of the meeting, Vera Jourová welcomed the “strong measures” already adopted, particularly regarding the removal of false advertisements related to protective equipment, such as masks, but urged the platforms to “intensify these efforts”.

At the end of 2018, these online platforms committed to Brussels to combat disinformation on their pages, through a code of conduct signed at the time against ‘fake news’ which translated into a self-regulatory mechanism to put an end to fake news. on the Internet.

Given the evolution of this problem, Brussels must, in the meantime, launch a new action plan.

The new coronavirus, responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, has already infected more than 727,000 people worldwide, of whom nearly 35,000 have died.

Of the cases of infection, at least 142,300 are considered cured.

After emerging in China in December, the outbreak spread across the world, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic situation.

The European continent, with more than 396,000 infected people and close to 25,000 deaths, is the one where the highest number of cases is currently recorded.

ANE // MSF