Meta hit with major EU probe into disinformation handling ahead of European elections

Meta on Tuesday was hit by the European Commission — the executive body of the European Union — with a major investigation into its compliance with the EU's strict internet content rules.

The commission said it is investigating Meta over concerns the company hasn't done enough to ensure effective combating of disinformation ahead of upcoming European Parliament elections.

The European Parliament elections are due to take place on June 6-9.

In the commission's statement Tuesday, it said it suspects Meta is incompliant with DSA (Digital Services Act) obligations regarding tackling deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behavior in the EU.

The commission also said Meta may have infringed the DSA by demoting political content in the recommendation systems of Instagram and Facebook, which it said may have violated transparency requirements.

"We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms," a Meta spokesperson told CNBC via email.

"We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work."

The bloc also took issue with the lack of availability of an effective third-party, real-time civil discourse and election-monitoring tool ahead of the European Parliament elections, plus other votes in various individual member states.

It said Meta is in the process of depreciating its CrowdTangle tool, which is a public insights tool enabling real-time election monitoring by researchers, journalists and civil society through visual dashboards.

For its part, Meta maintains that CrowdTangle is an inefficient election-monitoring tool as it lacks enough publicly available data. The company is building