On Wednesday the S&D Group will hold a webinar on Social platforms, Disinformation and Democracy. Our members in the INGE committee*, Raphaël Glucksmann (the INGE chair), Pierfrancesco Majorino, Andreas Schieder and Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, as well as the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the Digital Services Act, Christel Schaldemose, will be joined by our president, Iratxe García, and a series of special guests, including former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Facebook Oversight Board), Sarah Andrew (AVAAZ), Aura Salla (Facebook Brussels), Yaël Eisenstat (Berggruen Institute) and European Commissioner Vera Jourova.

You can read the full programme and follow the event live from 15:00 on the S&D website.

Pierfrancesco Majorino, S&D co-ordinator in the special INGE committee, said:

“This will be a great opportunity to gather together specialists, Facebook representatives and decision-makers to talk about social platforms. Having become such an important source of information, they now have a very important responsibility. They must play their part in the fight against disinformation and attacks on our values, democracies and electoral process by third-state and non-state actors.

“For the Socialists and Democrats, self-regulation is not enough. We need laws, not guidelines, to increase platforms’ accountability, while safeguarding freedom of speech and avoiding censorship. We need more transparency and clear rules about taking down illegal content, including hate speech and incitement to violence. And we need to fix the algorithms that promote polarisation at the expense of constructive dialogue. We need to end the digital Wild West and protect our democracies.