On April 30, 2024, the European Commission announced that it opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta Platforms Inc., a provider of Facebook and Instagram, designated as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), may have breached the DSA.

The opening of proceedings follows a preliminary analysis of the risk assessment report sent by Meta in September 2023, Meta's replies to the Commission's formal Requests for Information, publicly available reports, and the Commission's own analysis.

What is the focus of the proceedings?

The Commission outlined that the investigation will focus on the following areas:

• deceptive advertisements and disinformation;
• visibility of political content - in particular, the compatibility of Meta's policy, demoting political content in the recommender systems of Instagram and Facebook, transparency, and user redress obligations;
• the non-availability of an effective third-party real-time civic discourse and election-monitoring tool ahead of the upcoming elections to the European Parliament and other elections in various Member States - in particular, the suspicion that Meta's deprecation and planned discontinuation of CrowdTangle, a public insights tool enabling real-time election-monitoring by researchers, journalists, and civil society, shows failure by Meta to diligently assess and adequately mitigate risks related to Facebook's and Instagram's effects on civic discourse and electoral processes; and
• the mechanism to flag illegal content - in particular, the suspicion that Meta's notice and action mechanism to allow users to notify illegal content is not easy to access and user-friendly, as well as the possible absence of an effective internal complaint-handling system.

What are the next steps?

The Commission will now gather further evidence and is empowered to take further enforcement steps, such as interim measures and non-compliance decisions, and accept commitments to remedy the situation.

The Commission highlighted that the end date of formal proceedings is not foreseen under the DSA and depends on factors such as the complexity of the case, the extent of the company's cooperation, and the exercise of the rights of defense.

Finally, the Commission confirmed that the opening of formal proceedings is without prejudice to enforcement actions by other authorities under other regulatory frameworks.

You can read the press release here.