‘Disinformation led by political leaders’: Slovak DSA enforcement challenged

The EU’s regulation of disinformation and illegal content is being put to the test in Slovakia ahead of general elections at a time when some consider political leaders are using disinformation to boost their popularity with the electorate.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the EU flagship regulation on the moderation of illegal content and disinformation online. It has been enforced EU-wide on so-called “very-large online platforms”, which have more than 45 million monthly users in the EU, from 25 August.

“It is the domestic political actors who are the main perpetrators and the main spreaders of disinformation [in Slovakia],” said Katarína Klingová, senior research fellow at GLOBSEC, a global think tank based in Bratislava at an event held online by DisinfoCon earlier this month.

“I do not have a big expectation for the Digital Services Act [regarding its impact on Slovakian election campaigns],” she added.

Alberto Rabbachin, deputy head of media convergence and social media unit at the EU Commission, described the DSA as “a huge milestone and unprecedented regulation worldwide that aims to create a safe digital space and protect fundamental rights” at the same event.

Yet Klingová said the Slovak political campaign has been “flooded with disinformation”.

Indeed, a video circulated online in which Robert Fico, leader of the Smer-SD, a left-wing national-conservative party leading in the polls, said that “the war in Ukraine originated in 2014 when Ukrainian fascists were killing civilian victims of Russian nationality”.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, three different sources told Euractiv that many Slovak political parties and religious organisations were responsible for spreading hate speech.

Some are allegedly accusing the European Union of “liberal fascism” and spreading the “LGBTQIA ideology”, which is considered to pose existential threats to Slovak society.

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Big Tech responsibility

DigiQ, a Slovak association for online safety and prevention focusing on illegal content, which works with the European Commission on matters related to DSA enforcement and digital literacy in Slovakia, conducted research with 21 other European organisations on how platforms reacted to the reporting of hate speech.

After six months of monitoring, the consortium reported 3,885 illegal hate speech incidents, of which 316 were in Slovak language. DigiQ stated in its report that “TikTok and Twitter removed roughly 50% of reported speech. Facebook removed 36% of reported content, Instagram only 22% and YouTube 8%”.

When presented with the data by Euractiv, none of the platforms shared any granular data to counter or confirm the findings.

TikTok quoted from the same report that it was the best assessor of reported content within 24 hours of reporting, while YouTube said it had contacted DigiQ and reiterated its strict hate speech policy.

Facebook referred to the 7th “EU Hate Speech Test” report, a mandatory exercise conducted by all platforms with supervision from the European Commission.

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Slovak will vote on 30 September, the first to take place since the EU’s DSA enforcement which obliges social media platforms to combat electoral manipulation.

Commission’s responsibility

“The DSA provides tools to assess and mitigate risks related to the protection of electoral processes,” a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv, explaining that the Commission will carefully monitor the platform’s measures “to prevent negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes”, including the Slovak parliamentary election campaign.

Euractiv asked platforms about the indicators they were using in their algorithmic systems to prevent disinformation in Slovakia and asked for detailed information on the human resources they committed to content moderation in Slovakia and the qualification and expertise of their content moderation staff.

No platforms were forthcoming with this information at this stage, yet all reiterated that they diligently addressed harmful content online across dozens of languages, including Slovak.

The Commission mandates that data on platforms’ risk mitigation measures, differentiated by member state, will have to be published by 30 October in platforms’ first “transparency reports”.

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Disinformation mechanisms

There are two types of disinformation, Pedro Ramaciotti, researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), explained at an event hosted by thinktank Confrontations Europe on Tuesday (19 September).

The first, ‘functional disinformation’, refers to disinformation created by organisations motivated by a clear political objective, while the other relates to individuals sharing disinformation because of perception biases created through a lack of knowledge, lack of thoughtfulness, or partisanship.

Although the first type of disinformation is mostly covered by the DSA, complex issues of bias, education, and data literacy remain more challenging to address.

Ramaciotti considers that simple tools could be used to hamper citizens from spreading disinformation. For example, he suggested a tool that “compels cognition by enforcing a short delay before information sharing” online.

In the Slovak context, Klingová shared a similar position, concluding that “if you have informed citizens, they are the best fact checkers”.

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[Edited by Alice Taylor]