Bruxelles, 18 janvier 2022
Dossiers interinstitutionels:
2020/0361 (COD)
WK 650/2022 INIT
LIMITE
COMPET
PI
MI
AUDIO
JAI
CONSOM
TELECOM
CODEC
CT
IA
JUSTCIV
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NOTE
De:
PL Delegation
A:
Groupe "Compétitivité et croissance" (Marché intérieur - Attachés)
Groupe "Compétitivité et croissance" (Marché intérieur)
Sujet:
Digital Services Act: Poland's non-paper on social media
WK 650/2022 INIT
LIMITE
FR
Poland’s non-paper:
Facebook abuses its dominant market position in removing a political party’s profile. DSA
measures should be considered to limit the corresponding systemic risk and protect political
pluralism in the EU.
Facebook removed the official profile of one of the Polish political parties last week on
violating community standards on COVID-19 disinformation. As much as we condemn any
COVID-19 fake news activity, Poland disagrees with the decision as it deprives a legitimate
political party with over a million voters in the country of on-line access to its constituents.
Poland is conducting a number of activities aimed at combating the exceptionally harmful
COVID disinformation. Nevertheless, we think that Meta’s latest decision can hardly be
justified by simply applying disinformation measures that Facebook has adopted.
There are
many anti-COVID profiles that Facebook still keeps on and the platform’s response to
government’s efforts undertaken in 2021 to remove particular posts that included
misinformation was lacklustre. Meta obviously had an option to take down posts that it found
misleading rather than going after the whole profile whose banning, has become a political
instead of a technical measure that it should be.
Removal of parliamentary group profiles from social media by administrators of private
international platforms goes against fundamental civil liberties and cannot be accepted. Any
legal political party in Europe should be able to use social media platforms on equal terms
regardless of how much their views differ from the mainstream, as long as they are legal.
Poland believes that this decision sets a dangerous precedent in which any legally operating
political party, which enjoys public support is suddenly deprived of an important platform
where they can reach out to its voters. By this decision, a major political discourse opportunity
is taken away from both sides of the democratic process which is the essence of the modern
European society. This year there will be several parliamentary elections in various EU
countries which makes the Meta’s decision particularly sensitive for voters in those countries.
Facebook is a monopolist and because of its dominant position it should be subject to
particular scrutiny with regard to possible abuse of its position in relation to other entities and
users who are often helpless even trying to file a complaint in their own language where there
is no legal grounds for such a complaint to be refused by Facebook. It is precisely supervision
of monopolies, and not their out-of-control functioning, that is the foundation of the market.
Blocking access to Facebook for organisations of different types is a threat to freedom of
speech in public debate. The position of technology companies in a democratic system should
not give them the possibility to control content arbitrarily and beyond any control. This was
reflected in Poland's position during work on the Digital Services Act, the aim of which should
be to ensure the possibility of supervising moderation policies applied by large digital
platforms.
Poland calls on the EU Member States, the European Parliament and the French Presidency
to reflect on this problem during DSA negotiations so that any systemic risk associated with
social platforms abusing their power against political pluralism is recognized and mitigated.
Document Outline