Following Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement that Meta will no longer fact check, Google has also made a decision regarding a new EU law that mandates fact checks.
Unlike other tech companies, Google has never implemented fact-checking in its search products or YouTube videos, which it owns. Therefore, Google is not reversing any existing policies; it is simply choosing not to make further commitments.
A letter from Google’s global affairs president Kent Walker to Renate Nikolay, the European Commission’s content and technology czar, obtained by Axios, outlines Google’s rejection of the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation.
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The code would require Google to integrate fact-checking capabilities into its search engine ranking and YouTube algorithms.
While signing on to these rules was voluntary as the code is not legally binding, many social media platforms, including Google, Meta, and Twitter (before Elon Musk’s acquisition), had previously agreed to the code. As The Verge points out, prior to Meta’s policy changes, the European Fact-Checking Standards Network found that many platforms were not upholding their commitments.
The code was established before the EU’s official content moderation law, the Digital Services Act or DSA, was enforced in 2022. Since the DSA is legally binding, it remains to be seen if any elements of the disinformation code will be implemented within the DSA, and how major tech companies will respond.
In Google’s letter to the European Commission, the company indicated that it would “withdraw from all fact-checking commitments in the Code before it becomes a DSA Code of Conduct.”
