“Yeah [las redes sociales] They have five thousand variables for each of us, look. at what level can they control us“With this disturbing statement, J wanted to explainOsé Cepeda, PSOE MEPthe importance of the regulation of social networks induced by the European law on digital services.
He expressed it in the debate ‘Disinformation, AI and platforms, the EU’s big challenge‘, organized by laSexta and in which he was able to share his analysis with specialized journalists such as Desiree Garcia (EFE) or Daniel Puchol (laSexta) and Alexandre Matocorresponding to Brussels de laSexta.
“It’s about big companies,” said Cepeda, referring to the big social networks (Meta, Tiktok), “of being much more transparent, as was done with Tiktok.”
The MEP, who is part of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee responsible for regulating these issues, is referring to the user reward function that Tiktok tried to implement and which the EU managed to have removed. The platform took the decision after the European Commission threatened with economic sanctions for launching the new application without first publishing the risk analysis report.
“Most disinformation circulates through networks,” added Désirée García, referring to the importance of regulating their operation.
And precisely one of the forms of control could be sanctions, as expressed by the participants in the debate: “I would have liked sanctions measures not to be necessary” said Cepeda, who recognized that reality shows that this is the only way for those affected to comply.
A subject which was also addressed in this debate and which Mato criticized for its “voluntary” nature: “That they go further, that it is obligatory” and that “make the algorithm easier”, something very complicated in the eyes of MEP Cepeda, who emphasizes that these algorithms are continually updated. It is for this reason that the four experts agreed to reach a sanctions regime, because they do not trust the voluntary nature of companies.
Since February 2024, online platforms (Amazon, Booking), social networks and search engines (Google, Bing) have been required to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA), a set of European Union regulations that aims to regulate the digital space and includes measures related to transparency, content moderation and algorithms.
Education, regulation and transparency are the solution these experts propose to end the serious challenges society faces today, such as misinformation and control of artificial intelligence.
