Meta's Brussels bark may be worse than its bite
Technology
Meta’s Brussels bark may be worse than its bite
LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Mark Zuckerberg is, among other things, resetting his relations with Europe. Towards the end of Tuesday’s five-minute video relaxing content moderation rules, the Meta Platforms chief executive criticised European technology regulations and pledged to work with President-elect Donald Trump to “push back on governments going after American companies and pushing to censor more”. That sounds bad for the EU’s agenda to moderate content on social media – but Meta doesn’t hold all the cards.
On the face of it, Zuckerberg’s gambit is an artful way to kill a number of birds with one stone. Cosying up to a MAGA free speech agenda improves his relationship with Trump, who is already close to the Meta boss’s rival, Elon Musk. Rowing back on fact-checking also saves Meta an expense that along with platform safety and security spending has cost it $20 billion since 2016. And it allows Zuckerberg to have a pop at the Digital Services Act – Brussels’ flagship piece of legislation that means the EU can fine platforms 6% of their global turnover if they allow harmful content to linger.
It’s a good time to push back. European commissioners with strong views on tech regulation, like Thierry Breton and Margrethe Vestager, have left. European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen has paused existing U.S. Big Tech probes, according to Le Monde, perhaps to avoid antagonising the incoming president. And European political leaders fear inciting the far-right by being seen to limit free speech.
Zuckerberg and other U.S. Big Tech leaders could exploit the vacuum. The EU has been criticised for going harder on AI regulation than other jurisdictions. Needling Brussels may help them push for looser rules.
Yet Zuckerberg doesn’t have it all his own way. For now, Meta has “no immediate plans” to end fact-checking in the EU. That suggests it is still wary of falling foul of the DSA. And there could be a commercial cost too if, for example, a social media free-for-all undermined a future EU election - as happened in Romania with TikTok. Meta’s advertisers might not want to be associated with any platform that becomes a firehose of misinformation.
It’s also not clear how Trump would respond if the EU toughened up and meted out big DSA fines. Zuckerberg might hope the president would threaten tariffs on EU exports like luxury goods and cars. Yet Trump may not go out on a limb for a man he previously threatened, with life imprisonment. His Vice President-elect JD Vance, meanwhile, has praised U.S. trustbuster Lina Khan and talked of the need to break up technology groups in a way that seems similar to the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s other key piece of sector legislation.
Meta’s stance leaves Europe’s stand against harmful tech content looking increasingly lonely. That doesn’t make Brussels’ overall approach substantially less potent.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Jan. 7 that the company “would work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
“The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there”.
However, for now, Meta is planning the changes only for the US market, with no immediate plans to end its fact-checking programme in places like the European Union which take a more active approach to regulation of tech companies, Reuters reported citing a Meta spokesperson.
