Facebook Testimony Hands EU Big-Tech Weapon

Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is making the rounds in Europe. After stops in London, Lisbon and Berlin, the former product manager is in Brussels today testifying to European parliamentarians working to regulate Big Tech companies like Facebook parent Meta with new rules called the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. The latter, which targets illegal content, will be today’s focus. A key question will be to what extent the EU should regulate Facebook’s algorithm, which Haugen — backed by a trove of documents shared with media — claims helps disseminate misinformation, clickbait and hate speech. EU institutions are still debating how to best tackle such content, but will have to make decisions soon if they want to have the new rules in place sometime next year.