Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė says that while she does not favour censoring social media platforms amid spreading fake news and disinformation, she would like them to remove misleading content faster.
“There are a lot of discussions going on, including with managers of social media platforms who always say in discussions that they are combating these negative phenomena, but of course we all have our own opinion about this,” Šimonytė said.
She noted that Facebook had been censoring posts about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, while “information that is clearly a fake and should be removed very quickly” sometimes stays online too long.
Šimonytė was commenting on reports by Debunk.org that an ongoing campaign by online scammers was targeting people in the Baltic states and Poland to steal their money. Fake posts make use of AI-generated images and videos of famous people and political leaders.
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“On the one hand, I don’t want there to be censorship, because some of us lived under censorship and know what it looks like when content is edited and people are not allowed to express their opinions, but on the other hand, lies are not opinions and misleading people is a crime, as is, for example, organising anti-Semitic, homophobic or other attacks via social media platforms,” she said.
Šimonytė believes that governments will have to find “some other ways of interacting” with major social media platforms, adding that some of the coordination should take place through EU institutions.
“I think this will be a very important issue in the European Parliament elections as well,” she said.
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