When it comes to tech regulation, what happens in Europe doesn’t usually stay in Europe. Legislation cooked up in Brussels has a way of becoming a de facto standard for governments around the world looking for off-the-shelf solutions to the challenges of the digital age.
With the European Union’s landmark proposal on fighting misinformation — the Digital Services Act (DSA) and its accompanying Code of Practice on disinformation — that’s bad news. The approach embraced by Brussels simply doesn’t work, in Europe or anywhere else. Not only does it fail to address the harm from misinformation, our research suggests it risks doing real damage of its own.
The poster child of the EU’s tech heft is its data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation. “Since the adoption of the GDPR, we have seen the beginning of a race to the top for the adoption or upgrade of data protection laws around the world,” according to Estelle Massé, a policy analyst with digital rights campaigners Access Now.
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Source: Europe’s latest export: A bad disinformation strategy – POLITICO