WhatsApp are increasingly the favored platforms to spread false information, making it harder to monitor and fight.
There were worries that the bloc's May 23-26 vote for the EU parliament would be a ripe target for foreign meddling, given Russian interference in the 2016 ballot that brought U.S. President Donald Trump to power and allegations of disinformation—plus a lack of solid facts—surrounding Britain's Brexit referendum that same year.
So far, no spike has appeared on the 28-nation bloc's disinformation radars and tech companies say they haven't found signs of a coordinated operation by foreign actors. There is, though, a constant buzz of false information that mainly seeks to erode the EU's image and that has ground on since the last Europe-wide elections in 2014.
"Previous, it was broadly about Russia, fakery and looking for bots. Now what we see is the transnational Far Right deploying that digital toolkit, less fake news, more hate-speech, and a more complex set of tactics to amplify populist narratives," said Sasha Havlicek, CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based left leaning think tank. "That isn't to say that is there is no Russian activity but that it's harder to identify definitively."
The trend now is for populist and far right groups in Europe to "manipulate information" through more nuanced messages, to promote anti-migration, anti-gay and climate denial themes. This "narrative warfare" is much harder for governments and tech companies to react to, she said. Adding to the confusion, some world leaders have themselves been guilty of spreading false or misleading information on social media.
Online campaign group Avaaz said Wednesday it found 500 suspect Facebook pages and groups in Germany, Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Poland spreading fake news seen 533 million times in the past three months. Facebook has taken down 77 of the pages, some of which Avaaz had previously announced.
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