Deputy President of the European Commission Vera Jourova called on Google and Meta corporations to help independent media from Russia and Belarus promote materials in news aggregators above the publications of pro-government media. The Financial Times writes about this.
According to the newspaper, Belarusian journalists who left the country because of criticism of the regime of Alexander Lukashenko made such a request to the European Commission. According to them, the algorithms of news aggregators Google and Meta take into account censorship restrictions and do not allow the audience to see content critical of the authorities. In addition, as independent journalists note, Google News does not index materials in the Belarusian language.
“Combating disinformation and promoting media freedom are two sides of the same coin. We want big tech companies to do both,” Vera Jourova told the Financial Times. “That means ensuring that reliable information is visible online, not propaganda from Minsk or the Kremlin.”
Lithuanian MEP Juozas Olekas, who deals with EU relations with Belarus, told the newspaper that so far “large technology companies have not shown any readiness or interest in solving this problem.” According to him, materials from media outlets blocked in Belarus are considered by Google algorithms as “broken links” and are demoted in search results.
“After a while, all independent media channels find themselves at the very bottom of the news feeds, and the main news is dominated by Lukashenko’s media and Russian media channels,” Olekas said.
The newspaper's sources said Jourova also discussed with Google CEO Sundar Pichai the inability of independent media outlets in Russia to monetize content on YouTube. According to the Financial Times, the corporation noted that it “makes every effort” to create products whose work will not “take into account the political views” of content authors.
In a comment to the Financial Times, Google employees also noted that search queries “can always be better” and there are “hundreds of factors that determine what results are shown.” Meta did not answer the newspaper's questions.
In March last year, the publication “Important Stories” wrote that, despite the declared “fight against Kremlin propaganda”, after the start of the war in Ukraine, materials from pro-Kremlin media — “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, Ura.ru, “Tsargrad” «and others — remained in the top search results of Google Discover.
In the fall, according to the Agency, the publications Tsargrad and Komsomolskaya Pravda stopped receiving millions of views from the Google Discover recommendations feed.