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With the announcement of its latest investigation of a global social media company this time, Meta the European Union is providing an illuminating lesson on how to regulate tech behemoths without threatening free speech. One would like to think that U.S. politicians and policymakers are taking notes. Unfortunately, thats probably a fanciful hope.

On April 30 the European Commission, the E.U.s executive arm, said in a press release that it has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Metas Facebook and Instagram platforms have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), a Europe-wide law that took full effect in February 2024 and is designed to deter online manipulation and force tech companies to take greater responsibility for their impact on elections and other aspects of civic life.

Specifically, the Commission said it is investigating suspected infringements related to deceptive advertising and political content on Metas platforms, as well as the companys diminishment of CrowdTangle a tool that formerly provided outsiders, including journalists and researchers with insight into how content spreads on those services. The Commission added that, based on preliminary assessments, it suspects that Metas external and internal mechanisms for flagging illegal content are not compliant with the requirements of the Digital Services Act and that there are shortcomings in Metas provision of access to publicly available data to [outside] researchers.

European regulators are clearly trying to pressure Meta to invigorate its self-policing of disinformation, including content generated by artificial intelligence. The timing is no accident. In early June, the E.U.s 27 member States will hold elections for representatives serving in the European Parliament. The Kremlin has been targeting many of those countries with political disinformation and is expected to step up its online propaganda efforts in an attempt to discourage support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russian President Vladimir Putins forces.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyens written statement about the investigation is worth quoting at length:

This Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act. This is true at all times, but especially in times of democratic elections. Big digital platforms must live up to their obligations to put enough resources into this and todays decision shows that we are serious about compliance.

The DSA has teeth. The Commission can fine companies up to 6 percent of their global revenue and has the authority to interview company officials and even raid corporate offices. E.U. regulators are already investigating the content policies and practices of TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter.

In its response to the Commissions announcement, Meta said in a statement that: We have a well established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms. It added: We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.

In contrast to their European counterparts, U.S. lawmakers, with one striking exception, have failed for over a half-dozen years to pass any of the myriad laws that have been proposed to rein in major tech companies in this country. The exception is the bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law on April 25 that requires ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, to sell the short-video platform within nine months under threat of a sweeping ban of the service in the United States.

The highly unusual TikTok sale-or-ban law reflects heightened geopolitical tension between Beijing and Washington, as well as the Chinese governments practice of exerting influence over tech companies operating in China. The U.S. State Department issued a reportlast year finding that China employs a variety of deceptive and coercive methods, including propaganda, disinformation and censorship, to influence the international information environment.

TikTok has vowed to challenge the new U.S. law as an unconstitutional government restraint on free speech under the First Amendment. That argument is at least plausible, if not necessarily one that the U.S. judiciary will embrace when it weighs the governments claim that China could use the platform to try to interfere in U.S. elections. Past attempts to ban TikTok by the Trump administration and the state of Montana have been blocked by federal courts.

But setting aside the rather unique dispute over TikTok, the striking thing about U.S. regulation of social media at the national level is its absence. This regulatory vacuum is typically ascribed to two conditions: the extreme political polarization that renders the U.S. Congress dysfunctional on so many fronts and the First Amendments instruction that Congress shall make no lawabridging the freedom of speech.

European nations do not operate under as rigid a prohibition of government regulation of speech, an important factor explaining how the E.U. managed to enact the DSA. But the newly unveiled investigation of Meta illustrates that, possibly with modest modification, European-style regulation could pass muster under the First Amendment.

Forming the foundation of the DSA are a range of provisions requiring that social media platforms disclose how they address problems like deceptive political advertising and other kinds of misleading or hateful content. The European Commission noted in its Meta investigation announcement that the opening of the probe was based on a risk assessment report that Meta (and all other large social media companies) were required to file in 2023, as well as on the companys responses to the Commissions follow-up requests for additional information.

First Amendment absolutists might be skeptical of this sort of mandatory disclosure, seeing it as a precursor to intrusive regulatory action. But theres a strong argument under existing free speech doctrine that requiring businesses to reveal factual information about how they operate does not constitute censorship or anything close to it. Companies in numerous regulated industries from airlines to chemicals are routinely subjected to disclosure requirements, so using this approach would not be novel.

In fact, from what we know so far, nothing about the E.U. investigation of Meta would violate First Amendment strictures. The regional bodys regulators are not dictating that Meta or other social media companies adopt particular policies, let alone specific content practices or decisions. Instead, the E.U. appears to be interested in whether these companies, in general, are providing the kind of resources, personnel, and digital tools that are needed to mount a vigorous defense against manipulation by the likes of Russia or China.

It may be that one or another E.U. demand might turn out to stray over the First Amendment line if it were examined in a U.S. court. But in the main, the European authorities seem concerned about whether powerful social media companies are providing procedurally adequate protections against disinformation and other harmful content that the companies themselves profess not to want on their platforms.

In this sense, early efforts to enforce the DSA shed light on what is at least theoretically possible in the U.S. The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, where I work, has advocated for Congress to enhance the consumer protection authority and resources of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission so that the FTC could demand procedurally adequate safeguards by social media companies, based on a disclosure regime roughly similar to that imposed by the DSA. If the FTC were restrained from dictating substantive policies or content decisions, this approach ought to be able to survive First Amendment scrutiny. Full disclosure: Less ambitious versions of this idea have appeared in some proposed U.S. legislation, but havent made much progress toward passage.

Under our approach, the U.S. government would not tell platforms what content they could host. Instead, it would require them to institute procedures that follow through on promises they have made in their terms of service and community standards to protect users and society at large.

It is too soon to tell whether the DSA will prove to be a successful experiment in regulation. Meta, TikTok, and X doubtless will push back and appeal any adverse findings. Its not clear whether in this process the European Commission will demonstrate the courage of its convictions. Keeping 27 member States on board wont be easy. But the Commission seems to be trying to make the DSA meaningful, and that alone is something policymakers in Washington could learn from.

Congress, Democracy, Digital Services Act, Disinformation, elections, European Commission, European Union, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Misinformation, Russia, Social Media Platforms, Technology, TikTok, Twitter, United States

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What U.S. Policymakers Can Learn from the European Union's Probe of Meta - Just Security

The EU has achieved much in the last term and faces big challenges in the next. Its citizens can set the priorities in June.

Twenty twenty-four is being billed as the ultimate election year, with almost half the worlds population having the chance to vote. When it comes to the European Parliament elections this Junethe second largest democratic exercise in the worldwhat will motivate Europes citizens to take to the polls?

Some say the European Union should sell itselfbe proud of what it has managed to achieve in the face of numerous crises. Others say that lauding the key achievements of the EU over the last five years is not the way to go.

What should spur voters is a belief that a united Europe can achieve remarkable results, focused on a desire to tackle the very real challenges it faces. Policies at EU level have far greater potential than national measures to tackle common crises, in line with values we all share, making the union stronger.

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What follow are five social-policy successes of the past five-year EU term and five key challenges that only a strong Europe, supported by an active electorate, can hope to solve.

First, the SURE instrument(Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) kept employment rates high during the pandemic. With resources borrowed from the financial markets and channelled to the member states, some 31.5 million workers and self-employed and 2.5 million businesses received support during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Sustained employment served as a macro-economic anchor and economic recovery took less than two years.

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Compare the six years of austerity implemented after the financial crisis of 2007-08. Recovery then was slow and unstable, marked by declining EU gross domestic product in three out of the five years between 2009 and 2013, with a 4.3 per cent fall in 2009 alone. Yet the record 5.6 per cent fall in GDP in 2020 was compensated in just over a year, with rapid recovery in 2021 and 2022. The lesson is simple: preserving jobs pays offaccelerating recovery, reducing potential poverty and preventing deep negative economic and social consequences.

Secondly, the 2022 minimum-wages directive now safeguards workers with a wage floor. A few years back, it would have been unthinkable to address minimum wages and wage setting at EU level. The directive leaves sufficient room for adaptation to the national context during transposition while bringing union-wide benefits: it increases transparency, levels the playing field in a competitive cross-border labour market, stimulates a more prominent role for social partners and limits the precarious jobs that restrain EU competitiveness.

Thirdly, the new platform-work directive will protect workers in a context, particularly after the pandemic, of evolving digital tools and new forms of work, including platforms. Innovation and flexibility in labour markets should be welcomed but there are risks: of circumventing labour regulation, disadvantaging existing businesses, depriving a large number of workers of adequate social protection and decent working conditions, and challenging social systems and the integrity of societies. These motivated the EU legislature to forge a directive, striking a balance between digital development and preservation of basic rules, principles and rights in labour markets.

Fourthly, the 2023 pay-transparency directive addresses the fact that, still, women in the EU are paid on average 13 per cent less than men. There are of course countries where the gap is much smallerincluding most of the central- and eastern-European member states, where women and men have worked and been paid equally for decades. But there are also countries where this flagrantly unjust differentiation is even greater. After years of consultations and negotiations, the directive provides much stronger instruments to defend the rights of all workers.

Fifthly, a new, enhanced mechanism to boost social partners participation at national and EU level is unfolding. Social dialogue ensures accountability in decision-making: any key decisions for the future of the economy are sustainable as long as the social partners are involved. Amid deep transformation in the world of workcaused by digitalisation, demographic trends, geopolitical developments and the green transitionemployers and workers have to be part of the decision-making process at corporate, sectoral, national and EU levels.

Social partners can however only participate as far as legislation allows. Over the last few years, the European Commission and the Council of the EU have made substantial efforts to promote social dialogue, to increase the capacity of the social partners and to involve them in important discussions, such as over the National Recovery and Resilience Plans and achieving the collective-bargaining coverage required to uphold minimum wages.

These are not the only success stories of the EU over the last five years but they are landmark achievements. Social policies are mainly the competence of the member states, yet in many cases the European public looks to Brussels for solutions: the EU has far greater potential to generate resources quickly and to apply measures, avoiding the disastrous race to the bottom where labour-market regulation is lax. This is beneficial for businesses, for workers and for economies and societies across Europe.

Of course, there are also challenges where the EU is expected to do more. But these expectations are often not matched by adequate budgetary resources or decision-making powers. If the EU is to do more, it needs to be equipped with more than todays budgetthe sum of member states budgets is about 40 times as big. But these challenges represent another five reasons for voters to make their voice heard at EU level.

First, the future of work is very much to the fore. While the EU is an attractive place to work and live, which helps in the global competition for talent, these advantages should be enhanced. Job quality is critical. Not just wages but the balance between demands (work intensity, physical and psychological risks, job insecurity, irregular working hours and so on) and resources (including autonomy, possibilities for training and promotion, work-life balance and support from managers and colleagues) is what makes a job attractive. Focusing on job quality can provide tools to address labour shortages, promote mobility, improve productivity and make the EU labour market even more competitive, as well as boosting quality of life more generally.

Of course, the new world of work must also address the challenges associated withhuman-machine interaction, including the role of algorithms and artificial intelligence. The rapid development of digital technologies does not only necessitate rapid and large-scale upskilling and reskilling but also clear rules in terms of ethics, data protection and individual and collective rights. To reap the benefits from these technologies requires human-centric regulation.

Secondly, unaffordable and inadequate housing is a hot political issue in almost all member states, while careformal and informalis an issue in almost every family. On the former, at this point there is not much that can be done at EU level beyond sharing experience and best practices. But as the negative impacts on demography, labour mobility and work-life balance emerge, a common EU approach will almost certainly be foreseen. On the latter, today in Europe we have about six million official and 60 million unofficial domestic carers. Addressing their conditions is of wide European interest and could also affect demography, labour supply and quality of life.

Thirdly, ensuring access to these and other public services will be a critical element in trying to address the variousinequalities in our societies. These encompass those between rich and poor, young and old, men and women, and urban and rural.

This will in turn be fundamental, fourthly, to a truly just transition. The ambitious climate goals of the EU are timely and relevant. Still, a constant analysis and swift response should guarantee that the public benefits it brings are balanced by affordable efforts on the part of different social groups, in terms of age, income, location and so on. The green transition is a top-down policy that will be realised only if society consciously supports the political decisions. It should not lead to widening gaps in society.

All of these, not least the last, will be best addressed in a context, finally, of improvedtrust in institutions across the EU: between people, in their legal systems, the police, the media, their governments and the EU itself. Without trust social cohesion crumbles and efforts, at EU or national level, to implement the goals set out above are severely hampered. (Re)building trust is a crucial challenge in its own right.

The European Union has created one of the worlds largest economiesa leader in areas such as the environment and attractive working and living conditions. These achievements cannot be ignored. But of course, we all want more, and better. That is why the elections for the European Parliament are so critical. This is one of these pivotal moments, where EU citizens can have a direct say on the priorities to be addressed and the solutions to be expected. The union can and does add value, above and beyond national specificities, and works for the benefit of all European citizens.

It is for these ten reasons (though there are many more) that everyone should use their vote come June.

Additional resources related to this article are available ateurofound.europa.eu

Ivailo Kalfin is executive director of Eurofound. A qualified economist, he has served twice as deputy prime minister of Bulgaria and is a former MEP.

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Ten reasons to vote in the European elections - Social Europe

Over the past 20 years, the EU has invested substantially in infrastructure to make Europe a better place to live and work - from highways to pipelines, public transport, connectivity, data centres and cross-border infrastructure.

Our integrated energy market has helped us to weather crises, for instance when Russia cut gas deliveries. EU countries have worked together to source more secure and sustainable energy supplies, driving the clean energy transition and reducing our dependence on Russian fossil fuels.With substantial EU investments, coverage of high-speed broadband networks and internet access have surged across the EU. Digital leaders such as Estonia, are helping to pioneer e-government services. In all parts of Europe, millions of people have gained access to the 5G network.

Today, we are taking things further with NextGenerationEU. Worth 800 billion, it is funding hundreds of projects, from offshore wind farms to electric trains, from top-notch digital services to world-class medical centres, creating quality jobs in all 27 Member States.

As the strategic environment around us continues to change and Europe needs to step up on defence, all Member States are taking part in the effort - from Estonian defence research to Swedish aircraft development and Polish ammunition production.

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20 years together: Facts and figures about the benefits of the enlargement for the EU - European Union

This column was originally going to be a recap of some of the technology I saw on display at NAB Show 2024 earlier this month. But as Ive been spending much of my free time since returning helping to care for my mother as she recovers from surgery, Ive also been thinking a bit more about the over-arching concept driving much of the technological innovation in the radio space right now.

For those that have never been to NAB, it is multiple events in one. There is the show floor, theres the engineering conferences, the sales conferences, the executive meetings, plus other events piggybacking on it such as Broadcast Education Association. Really it has something for every facet of the broadcast community, except for audio content creators, but even there was an attempt at improving those events this year.

What did generate much of my attention was a number of new or recently emerging players into the radio broadcast tech sphere especially on the end-user side. New cloud based playout systems, embedding of AI tech, and the moving of the playout tech from the studio to the transmitter site were seen across the floor of the show.

We are headed towards one do-all application/appliance for broadcasting. Super Hi-Fis partnership with Orban to place programming, processing, PPM encoding, stream encoding, and metadata in one box is just the start. Soon all of those features could be included in a transmitter along with access to cloud based music scheduling and voicetracking allowing one device to power nearly all of a radio stations necessary functions.

Other companies are doing the same. From Radio.cloud to internal systems like iHeartMedias Sound+, the shift to an all-in one combination of application and appliance is only going to continue. It will lead to an improved product as workflows are simplified to allow access to all relevant content in one place. AI generated auto-segueing of songs is already happening. Over time these platforms and others will include your board/faders, allow for any audio clip or song needed to be dropped in on the fly, auto-produce podcasts and on-demand audio clips and publish them to the station website, and allow for customization on the fly in ways that would still take hours of production time today.

These are the AI capabilities that radio can and should get behind as it will enable talent to better utilize their time and resources. While still being used as a novelty more than anything at this point, it is the continued growth of AI voices in on-air shifts that still is worrisome, but the fact it has not caught on in a major use is still a good sign for human voices.

But it will also enable simplicity.

One of the other major topics of discussion at and around NAB was in regards to how stations are going to solve the looming engineering crisis. Many operators, including those in larger markets such as Las Vegas, are down to relying on over-worked contract engineers at or nearing retirement age. A CEO asked us point-blank, What do I have to do to train and retain a single engineer? Having less technology to have to maintain will be a great start, especially since training will become easier. There will always be a demand for RF engineers, but radio needs to find IT capable people for studios and a combined infrastructure will make that much easier in helping to teach and learn broadcast IT.

The ability for future innovation built around a broadcast architecture that encompasses everything will only accelerate. Were already at the point where talent can broadcast from anywhere in the world just by clicking an icon in an app. Soon it may also provide web and social media content on the fly, podcasts published within seconds of content airing live, and dynamic customized broadcasts specifically for each listener truly making radio a one to one service in addition to the one to many offering it has always provided. A singular hardware/software solution creating a truly singular proposition.

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Converging Towards The Radio Singularity - RadioInsight - RadioInsight

Metas Open Source Llama 3 Is Already Nipping at OpenAIs Heels Will Knight | Wired OpenAI changed the world with ChatGPT, setting off a wave of AI investment and drawing more than 2 million developers to its cloud APIs. But if open source models prove competitive, developers and entrepreneurs may decide to stop paying to access the latest model from OpenAI or Google and use Llama 3 or one of the other increasingly powerful open source models that are popping up.

Real Hope for Cancer Cure as Personal mRNA Vaccine for Melanoma Trialed Andrew Gregory | The Guardian Experts are testing new jabs that are custom-built for each patient and tell their body to hunt down cancer cells to prevent the disease ever coming back. A phase 2 trial found the vaccines dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients. Now a final, phase 3, trial has been launched and is being led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH). Dr Heather Shaw, the national coordinating investigator for the trial, said the jabs had the potential to cure people with melanoma and are being tested in other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney.

An AI Startup Made a Hyperrealistic Deepfake of Me Thats So Good Its Scary Melissa Heikkil | MIT Technology Review Until now, all AI-generated videos of people have tended to have some stiffness, glitchiness, or other unnatural elements that make them pretty easy to differentiate from reality. Because theyre so close to the real thing butnot quiteit, these videos can make people feel annoyed or uneasy or ickya phenomenon commonly known as the uncanny valley. Synthesia claims its new technology will finally lead us out of the valley.

Nuclear Fusion Experiment Overcomes Two Key Operating Hurdles Matthew Sparkes | New Scientist A nuclear fusion reaction has overcome two key barriers to operating in a sweet spot needed for optimal power production: boosting the plasma density and keeping that denser plasma contained. The milestone is yet another stepping stone towards fusion power, although a commercial reactor is still probably years away.

Daniel Dennett: Why Civilization Is More Fragile Than We Realized Tom Chatfield | BBC [Dennetts]warning was not of a takeover by some superintelligence, but of a threat he believed that nonetheless could be existential for civilization, rooted in the vulnerabilities of human nature. If we turn this wonderful technology we have for knowledge into a weapon for disinformation, he told me, we are in deep trouble. Why? Because we wont know what we know, and we wont know who to trust, and we wont know whether were informed or misinformed. We may become either paranoid and hyper-skeptical, or just apathetic and unmoved. Both of those are very dangerous avenues. And theyre upon us.'

California Just Went 9.25 Hours Using Only Renewable Energy Adele Peters | Fast Company Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily livestaking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric carsthe whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours. The same thing happened on Sunday, as the state was powered without fossil fuels for more than eight hours. It was the ninth straight day that solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and battery storage fully powered the electric grid for at least some portion of the time. Over the last six and a half weeks, thats happened nearly every day. In some cases, its just for 15 minutes. But often its for hours at a time.

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AI Hype Is Deflating. Can AI Companies Find a Way to Turn a Profit? Gerrit De Vynck | The Washington Post Some once-promising start-ups have cratered, and the suite of flashy products launched by the biggest players in the AI raceOpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Metahave yet to upend the way people work and communicate with one another. While money keeps pouring into AI, very few companies are turning a profit on the tech, which remains hugely expensive to build and run. The road to widespread adoption and business success is still looking long, twisty and full of roadblocks, say tech executives, technologists and financial analysts.

Apple Releases Eight Small AI Language Models Aimed at On-Device Use Benj Edwards | Ars Technica In the world of AI, what might be called small language models have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Appleintroduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are small enough to run directly on a smartphone. Theyre mostly proof-of-concept research models for now, but they could form the basis of future on-device AI offerings from Apple.

If Starship Is Real, Were Going to Need Big Cargo Movers on the Moon and Mars Eric Berger | Ars Technica Unloading tons of cargo on the Moon may seem like a preposterous notion. During Apollo, mass restrictions were so draconian that the Lunar Module could carry two astronauts, their spacesuits, some food, and just 300 pounds (136 kg) of scientific payload down to the lunar surface. By contrast, Starship is designed to carry 100 tons, or more, to the lunar surface in a single mission. This is an insane amount of cargo relative to anything in spaceflight history, but thats the future that [Jaret] Matthews is aiming toward.

Image Credit:CARTIST / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 27) - Singularity Hub