EU, Meta and TikTok unite to combat disinformation on Ceuta

Dand according to three anonymous sources cited by the american press agency, the new mechanism, agreed on monday, allows the sharing of information and cooperation with factual verification organizations.

The mechanism will enable the European Commission, together with platforms and fact-checkers, to signal potentially false content for review and, where appropriate, removal in a more agile and efficient procedure than usual misinformation response systems.

The Executive Vice President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, had already met with the Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) and TikTok to deal with the situation in Ceuta.

Some 72,000 people entered the autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta, located in North Africa, in 24 hours by the end of July and 70,000 have already returned to Morocco, indicating data from the Spanish authorities.

At least 82 people died trying to swim to Ceuta.

According to the organization of verification of facts Damn.es, the situation was fueled by false messages disseminated online, claiming that migrants would be welcomed in Spain.

Ceuta, a small territory of 80,000 inhabitants that is located in the far north of Morocco, bathed by the Strait of Gibraltar, is one of the two land borders between Africa and Europe, along with the other Spanish enclave of Melilla.

Messages to be circulated on social networks in Morocco have prompted a new mass invasion of the territory on 15 August and Brussels has warned of the amplification of the crisis through channels linked to Russia.

The European Commission had already asked the platforms last week to increase monitoring and strengthen cooperation with fact-checkers in response to the crisis in Ceuta.

However, the Commission spokesperson, Arianna Podestà, warned that much of the content circulating on social media is not there and that the situation in Ceuta remains uncertain.

On Monday, former European Commissioner Thierry Breton considered that the situation in Ceuta was not a migration crisis, but the “first large-scale hybrid attack” against the EU and should be investigated.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Thierry Breton argued that the situation in Ceuta highlighted a “government crisis in the European Union, revealed by a migratory phenomenon”.

“This was the first large-scale algorithmic hybrid attack on an EU external border,” the European Commissioner for the Internal Market defended between 2019 and 2024.