EU institutions are working on legislation to crack down on online political advertising and its effects on elections ahead of the European Parliament elections in 2024.
Political advertising is accused of being used to influence political debates and ultimately to win voters. While Member States have laws that govern political advertising offline, these vary from country to country. Online there are few restrictions, and this has given political actors carte blanche to invest in political ads on social media platforms.
Now, the European Parliament is working on a draft that aims "to combat disinformation, information manipulation as well as interference in our elections," the Parliament's lead negotiator Sandro Gozi (from the liberal Renew Europe group) told The Brussels Times. At stake is how elections are run and the democratic process in the EU.
Within the European area, the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the United Kingdom is perhaps the most notorious, as user data collected from Facebook in 2016 was sold to third parties without user consent. These third parties allegedly use the data to target voters with political advertising, which is partly responsible for Brexit.
Belgium has not been able to avoid the effects of political advertising either, as far-right political parties largely relied on social media platforms in the country's 2019 elections. In Flanders, far-right Vlaams Belang won 18.5% of votes – a 12.6 point increase from its record in 2014, after focusing a huge part of its campaign budget on targetting mostly young, male voters on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Damage control
The European Parliament's bill to combat political ads wants transnational rules across the EU because legislation is currently fragmented, as each Member State has its own rules.
Gozi's draft proposal includes broadening the scope of what constitutes political ads. Political parties are the main beneficiaries. However, non-political actors can also create political ads that sway the public.
"If an influencer wants to take a position on the legalisation of drugs, but it is done before a decision in the Belgian Parliament, that influencer must follow the rules of political advertising. So everybody will know that they want to influence the public in not just buying a product, but in voting in a certain way," Gozi explained.
Profit over public good
Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen has accused Meta/Facebook of prioritising growth over the public good, including boosting divisive content through its algorithms as a way to keep people on its site.
Moreover, The Guardian's Carole Cadwalladr, who uncovered the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the UK, told the European Parliament's IMCO committee that Facebook does not help journalists in accessing information about how the company employs user data.
For EU lawmakers, transparency is therefore crucial to help the public understand when they are seeing a political ad as well as who financed it, so there can be no doubt about what they are seeing.
Further to this, users will get a choice as to whether they wish to receive political ads, and if they do, it will be clearly marked. In addition, the bill aims for new regulations on how tech companies process personal data in relation to targeting and amplification techniques.
The move comes as lawmakers are taming a 'wild west' on social media platforms through tech legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA will implement stricter rules on tech platforms to protect users and is expected to come into force on 1 January 2024.
More needed to combat disinformation
Yet digital rights campaigner Asha Allen of the Center for Democracy and Technology warned that more must be done to address the rule of law issues and disinformation that challenge the EU.
"The issue this regulation aims to address: disinformation, foreign and domestic electoral interference, and a loss of democratic transparency and accountability, simply cannot be solved by this regulation alone. It can only go so far," Allen said, adding that harmonisation between the bill with other legislative tools is key.
Getting the industry to cooperate may not be easy, but Gozi believes the EU has a strong case to defend its position, despite how the tech giants responded to the DSA. Gozi explained that they would agree in principle, but then later come back and say that a proposal was not feasible.
EU lawmakers are aiming for the bill to come into force in the spring of 2023 ahead of the European Parliament elections in 2024. Hopes for the success of the bill are sky-high on continents that have experienced the impact of political advertising on their elections. But how far the proposal can reign in disinformation remains to be seen.
"We are not naive," said Gozi. "It is not a silver bullet, but it will help because it will create more transparency in our democracy which means more legitimacy."
