LONDON: Twitter Inc. will partner with the Associated Press and Reuters to more quickly provide credible information on the social networking site as part of an effort to fight the spread of misinformation, it said on Monday.
Like other social media companies, the San Francisco-based firm has been under pressure to remove misleading or false information on its site. Earlier this year Twitter launched a program called Birdwatch, asking its users to help identify and fact-check misleading tweets.
Twitter said it will collaborate with the newswires during breaking news events to add accurate context, which could appear in various places on Twitter, such as a label attached to tweets about the event or as a “Moment,” which curates information about trending topics on Twitter.
The partnerships mark the first time Twitter will formally collaborate with news organizations to elevate accurate information on its site, a Twitter spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added Twitter will work separately with both the AP and Reuters, a division of information services company Thomson Reuters Corp, and the newswires will not interact with each other.
“Trust, accuracy and impartiality are at the heart of what Reuters does every day ... those values also drive our commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation,” Hazel Baker, global head of UGC (user-generated content) newsgathering at Reuters, said in a statement.
Tom Januszewski, vice president of global business development at the AP, said: “We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts.”
Twitter partners with AP, Reuters to battle misinformation on its site
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Twitter partners with AP, Reuters to battle misinformation on its site
- Twitter will partner with AP and Reuters to provide credible information on the platform and combat the spread of misinformation
- Twitter said it will collaborate with the newswires during breaking news events to add accurate context
EU warns Meta it must open up WhatsApp to rival AI chatbots
- The EU executive on Monday told Meta to give rival chatbots access to WhatsApp after an antitrust probe found the US giant to be in breach of the bloc’s competition rules
BRUSSELS: The EU executive on Monday told Meta to give rival chatbots access to WhatsApp after an antitrust probe found the US giant to be in breach of the bloc’s competition rules.
The European Commission said a change in Meta’s terms had “effectively” barred third-party artificial intelligence assistants from connecting to customers via the messaging platform since January.
Competition chief Teresa Ribera said the EU was “considering quickly imposing interim measures on Meta, to preserve access for competitors to WhatsApp while the investigation is ongoing, and avoid Meta’s new policy irreparably harming competition in Europe.”
The EU executive, which is in charge of competition policy, sent Meta a warning known as a “statement of objections,” a formal step in antitrust probes.
Meta now has a chance to reply and defend itself. Monday’s step does not prejudge the outcome of the probe, the commission said.
The tech giant rejected the commission’s preliminary findings.
“The facts are that there is no reason for the EU to intervene,” a Meta spokesperson said.
“There are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites, and industry partnerships. The commission’s logic incorrectly assumes the WhatsApp Business API is a key distribution channel for these chatbots,” the spokesperson said.
Opened in December, the EU probe marks the latest attempt by the 27-nation bloc to rein in Big Tech, many of whom are based in the United States, in the face of strong pushback by the government of US President Donald Trump.
- Meta in the firing line -
The investigation covers the European Economic Area (EEA), made up of the bloc’s 27 states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — with the exception of Italy, which opened a separate investigation into Meta in July.
The commission said that Meta is “likely to be dominant” in the EEA for consumer messaging apps, notably through WhatsApp, and accused Meta of “abusing this dominant position by refusing access” to competitors.
“We cannot allow dominant tech companies to illegally leverage their dominance to give themselves an unfair advantage,” Ribera said in a statement.
There is no legal deadline for concluding an antitrust probe.
Meta is already under investigation under different laws in the European Union.
EU regulators are also investigating its platforms Facebook and Instagram over fears they are not doing enough to tackle the risk of social media addiction for children.
The company also appealed a 200-million-euro fine imposed last year by the commission under the online competition law, the Digital Markets Act.
That case focused on its policy asking users to choose between an ad-free subscription and a free, ad-supported service, and Brussels and Meta remain in discussions over finding an alternative that would address the EU’s concerns.
