Hi, I am Jörg Stroisch, a german journalist. And I am specialised on economic and digital consumer topics. And German Vote is my podcast about these topics, a really challenging and inspiring project.
And, maybe you have remark it, it’s not me speaking here, but an AI-generated Voice-Clone. It’s a test: Nearby the whole work for this episode have been done by AI – in a further blog article I am informing soon, what I have done exactly.
The DSA is a very important act from the last legislative. The DSA was implemented on 17 February 2024. And on thuesday, 11th of february, there was a special discussion – round table – about it from the EU parliament.
New episodes are always published in the middle of the month, on the 2nd Monday of the month in German (indicated by a [de]). One week later, on the 3rd Monday of the month, there is the same episode in English (indicated by the [en] in the title). It is not exactly identical to the de-episode, but almost.
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Transcription:
Brussels, a high profile panel discusses one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Disinformation and foreign interference in our democracies. At the center of the discussion is the enforcement of the Digital Services Act called DSA, which has been in effect for a year now. But is it enough?
„There is in my mind no doubt that we are facing a lot of challenges when it comes to foreign interference, but also disinformation and misinformation online in these years. And we have to tackle it and we have different tools in place and therefore we found out that we wanted to make sure that they would have to be responsible for the effect of the algorithms.“
Christel Schaldemose from the Social Democratic Group (S&D). And vice president of the European Parliament’s Committee on Digital Transformation, was instrumental in the DSA. She praises the law as a clever compromise between regulation and freedom of speech. But the question remains, is it enough to prevent manipulation?
„We still don’t know whether the EU Commission will find any of the big platforms, but we know that they are looking into several of them, X, Tiktok, etc. And hopefully we will soon know more. We will, from the European Parliament’s side, keep on pushing the EU Commission to be strong on this, to enforce it. I believe that it’s a very important tool. But on the other hand, the way we do it in the EU is also that it is rule based. So we have also decided that the platforms have a right to know and a right to answer when the commission is looking into it, and therefor, it is a very lengthy process.“
Mika Aaltola, a member of the new special committee Democracy Shield, and a member of the European Parliament for the Conservative EPP group, also warns it’s not just about platforms but also about the targeted strategies of foreign actors:
„We can talk about Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, different actors who are there strategically trying to undermine our democracies, I think it is a valuable way of looking at it and identifying the toolkits that they are using because they are also path dependent. So focus on that. And I personally think that we should pay attention to the actors who are there who are meddling in our elections, Moldova, Romania, the latest cases, and clearly then Russia is identified as the foreign actor who is influencing through different means our critical election infrastructure.“
Just especially critical the spread of manipulative content just before elections. This hack and leak tactic, which involves publishing stolen sensitive information, is just one method. Mika Aaltola:
„That very special time when everybody is focused on what is going to be the election result and nobody is looking 360 degrees. People are very focused on this tunnel vision results in vulnerabilities that otherwise might not be there. We would be better in detecting what is going on in other times.“
Aude Maio-Coliche colleague agrees. She heads the strategic communications department at the European External Action Service and emphasizes the security political dimension of the problem:
„We are facing really a security threat. I think you really mentioned it. It’s not a question of disinformation. It’s really a question of fighting our societies by spreading wrong narrative but also attacking our values, attacking us. So we consider it as a security threat, and they are very crucial moment when it happens.“
To counter this, the EU relies on a comprehensive set of measures from analyzing manipulative campaigns to international cooperation in sanctions against actors who deliberately spread disinformation:
„And we have developed a response mechanism. We call it the FEMI toolbox. The FEMI toolbox has the following component. First, situational awareness. You need to know what’s going on. So we have developed a methodology to look at those manipulation. Meaning, for example, we have uncovered what we call the doppelganger campaign, the fast facade campaign. It is about creating bots, creating social digital platforms in multiple digital platforms that are not genuine but replicate the same kind of narrative. It is those kind of manipulation we are looking at and we can identify.“
But despite all the measures, one challenge remains enforcement. The European Parliament is pushing for the European Commission to take a stricter approach, if necessary with additional legislation. Christel Schaldemose:
„DSA is not enough if the rules in the DSA is not strong enough to go up against foreign interference, disinformation, misinformation, or if it’s not enough to protect our democracy, we will have to be open to see if we should do more or do things in a different way.“
A balancing act between regulation and freedom of speech, but it’s clear the EU does not want to stand idly by when its democracies are under attack.
Transparency Note
This episode includes statements and information from the EU Parliament. Statements from the EU Parliament were recorded in this case directly from a stream. There were now further support for this concrete episode. Of course, the various institutions have had now influence on the content and direction of this podcast.