Large technology companies such as Microsoft, Google and Meta will soon have to comply with additional rules when it comes to political advertising.
The EU reached one today agreement, in which it was decided that additional rules will be introduced. What exactly those rules will be has not yet been set in stone: it is currently a provisional agreement. The precise regulations will be determined in the coming weeks.
In any case, the new regulations should prevent abuse of political advertisements. The legislation will make it easier to recognize political advertising. The intention is that internet users are also informed of who is behind the advertisements and why exactly they are seeing the advertisement. The two main goals of the EU decision are, in other words, privacy and transparency.
Explicit permission required
The EU decision follows a ban on Meta displaying targeted advertisements. Meta uses sensitive data such as religion, orientation and gender to determine who sees which advertisements. The Facebook parent is convinced that users give their consent for this when they accept the user agreement, but the EU disagrees.
The EU decision responds to this: it may be decided that internet users must give permission to use their data for political purposes. Some data, the EU will determine, may not be used at all: this includes data such as ethnicity and your political views.
Foreign interference
Political advertising legislation should not only protect the privacy of Europeans, but should also protect against foreign interference. Perhaps the EU will completely ban political advertising from abroad when elections approach. A period of three months is being discussed. In addition, it should become easier to find out who paid for certain advertisements. However, how that would happen is still uncertain: Europe is talking about a public database with all online advertisements. The body does not yet seem to know whether you have to look up information yourself, or whether it is immediately included in advertisements.
18 months
The fact that an agreement has been concluded does not mean that new rules will immediately come into effect. The technical aspects of the proposal will be further refined in the coming weeks. The agreement will then have to be ratified again. If all goes well, it will take another year and a half before the new legislation comes into effect. The new legislation will therefore not yet be in force at the next Belgian federal elections, in June 2024.
