LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - The European Union is once again seeking more power to audit how tech companies harvest and use European consumers' data and readies to launch a consultation on its digital platform regulations.
According to the Financial Times, the EU is restarting work on the Digital Services Act after placing it on hold due to the unfolding oronavirus crisis.

Agreeing on the new rules and the related consultation process could be a long process and a final decision wasn't expected for at least a couple of years with a further lag likely until the new rules came into force.

Senior EU officials were considering plans to force companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook to be more transparent.

"We need to be able to look under the hood," one person told the FT. "Currently, we have no systematic way of finding out what's going on. In the areas of disinformation or illegal content we always have to take the company's word for it."

"People are tired of that," the person added. "It's not like we want their secrets but we need to make sure that areas of public interest are checked."

Companies are already taking matters into their own hands and earlier in April Google said it was requiring all advertisers using its platform to verify their identities and countries of origin.

Facebook last week said it will start alerting users if they have been exposed to disinformation on its platform.

Twitter has aggressively removed misleading or "potentially harmful" content since introducing new policies in March that broadened the company's definition of harm.

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