EU's Rapid Response System Activated in Hungary
Don’t repeat the Romanian scenario. Hungarians deserve transparency.
I’m going to repeat this again and again till somebody hears it: we need full disclosure, real-time disclosure, of what is happening under EU’s Rapid Response System triggered during national elections.
Let’s leave aside the sheer hypocrisy of the European Commission announcing the Rapid Response System as a decision of the 44 signatories of the Code of Conduct on Disinformation. This Code of Conduct has a task force, this task force is chaired by the European Commission. End of the joke. This is the European Commission trying to hide behind 44 organizations, of which many are receiving European Union’s money.
Moreover, the Romanian experience shows that there are clearly bad actors among those organizations. One is Expert Forum - they don’t even publish the reports they committed to publish as a signatory of the Code.
Another one, and it’s very interesting, is Funky Citizen, a fact-checker with a contract with Meta that is lying and targeting narratives in fact checks. It’s very interesting because they participated in the Rapid Response System in Romania, a few times, they even flagged political opposition, but they are not directly a signatory. EDMO, the organization under which they activate, is the signatory. This means that any sort of loosely affiliated organization can be granted temporary, discretionary, uncontrolled flagging powers during elections.
It’s been a year since the wave of censorship happened in Romania, and we still don’t know who took down important journalist accounts or who targeted them on TikTok and Meta.
It could be members of the Rapid Response System, it could be the executive power—we don’t know, and this is unacceptable.
Transparency, Now!
We need transparency. The Hungarians need transparency. We need to know the Who, What, When, Why and How.
The signatories of the Code must provide it. Any flagging decision must be made public, the targeted account must know who flagged them and why. And we must know how this is happening, from flagging to platform reaction, to appeal, to review of the appeal, till the final decision.
If you are an NGO participating in the Rapid Response System or a signatory of the Code of Conduct on Disinformation, don't be like Expert Forum in Romania, don't be like Funky Citizen in Romania. Be honest, be transparent, be fair. Don't work like a proxy for some executive power. And also, if you are honest, you need to call out those among the signatories that are proxies. Don't cover for them.
If you are a platform participating in the Rapid Response System, receiving the flagging from various actors, you can very simply break the spell of censorship that is spreading inside the European Union. You don’t have to do anything illegal. You just have to provide the transparency that a democratic society deserves: publish in real time every single flagging request that you receive. In the context of the Hungarian elections, that means especially you, Facebook (Meta), Google, and TikTok (ByteDance).
Don’t be evil. Don’t hide. Be transparent.
Here, more about my work on the DSA:
