A group of tech giants including Google, Facebook and Mozilla have agreed to abide by landmark new standards set out by the European Commission in the battle against the dissemination of fake news across the EU...

“This is the first time that the industry has agreed on a set of self-regulatory standards to fight disinformation worldwide, on a voluntary basis,” Digital Commissioner Mariya Gabriel said...

The code of practice covers five areas of competence, with the commitment to disrupt advertising revenues from companies that spread disinformation, tackle fake accounts and online bots, make political advertising more transparent, allow users to report instances of disinformation more easily, and provide better frameworks to monitor the spread of disinformation.

The move follows an action plan put forward by the Commission in April, which introduced the idea of platforms to implement self-regulatory tools to tackle the spread and impact of online disinformation in Europe...

However, ... representatives of the media and civil society... [have] observe[d] that the code includes “no common approach, no meaningful commitments, no measurable objectives or KPIs, no compliance or enforcement tools and hence no possibility to monitor the implementation process”.