Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with a top European Union official on Friday as social media platforms in the United States rush to prepare for new European rules on content moderation.
EU commissioner Thierry Breton is visiting Silicon Valley this week to remind social media companies like Twitter and Facebook parent company Meta about their content moderation obligations to combat disinformation, cyberbullying, and threats to public safety.
Europe's Digital Services Act, which imposes several requirements on tech firms, will take effect in late August, and Breton said Europe would bar companies that do not follow its rules.
Meta Preparing for New Moderation Restrictions
After talks at Meta's California headquarters, Thierry Breton told reporters that Mark Zuckerberg was "very involved and knew exactly where we stand," AFP reported.
According to Bloomberg, Meta appears well-prepared to meet Europe's latest strict content moderation rules. During the meeting, the company presented a lot of information about its work to comply with Europe's Digital Services Act.
It was also reported that Meta agreed to a stress test in July to gauge whether the platform was ready to meet these new rules. Breton noted that over 1,000 people at Meta were working on the implementation of the Digital Services Act of the European Union.
Productive discussion with @Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Menlo Park 🇺🇸 on EU digital rules: DSA, DMA & AI Act.
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) June 23, 2023
Preparedness on its way with 1000 Meta employees working on #DSA
We agreed to do a ‘stress test’ in July.
EU’s motto: “Move fast to fix things” 🇪🇺 pic.twitter.com/8LoJpD7c7O
Breton also said that he and Zuckerberg were "aligned" on the EU's regulation of artificial intelligence (AI). Last week, the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved the AI Act that aims to regulate the use of AI in Europe.
Other Discussions
Thierry Breton also urged Meta to increase its resources to fight disinformation, given that Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe. Both parties also discussed child predators targeting minors on Instagram.
As for AI efforts, the commissioner further noted that both parties agreed on the bloc's risk-based approach and watermarking measures. Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg revealed the company's plan to incorporate generative AI into every Meta product.
This will include AI Agents as Meta plans to add chatbots on Messenger and WhatsApp with different personas, AI Media Editing that will be a tool for Instagram stories that can be used when editing is needed, and an internal AI chatbot called Metamate, a productivity assistant for employees that could answer queries and perform tasks based on information derived from internal company systems.
According to Breton, Twitter was the first platform to undergo a stress test in preparation for the Digital Services Act. On Thursday, Breton and some of his staff went to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco to perform a "stress test" of the tech company's ability to moderate online content.
Breton said the company took this exercise "very seriously." After his dialogue with Twitter owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino, Breton believed that the tech firm has a "strong willingness" to comply with the new rules.
Yaccarino, who just took the position as CEO earlier this month, said Europe was "very important" to Twitter, so the company was focused on continuing their "partnership."
UPI reported that the meeting is part of Breton's two-day visit to California to remind tech companies to comply with the new EU laws that will apply to large social media platforms.
Aside from Meta and Twitter officials, the digital commissioner also met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and NVIDIA president Jensen Huang.
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