The EU, Meta and TikTok on Monday agreed to create a dedicated channel with fact-checkers to flag disinformation linked to a surge of migrants arriving in Spanish territory, three people told POLITICO.

Thousands of migrants arrived in late July in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Morocco and the EU’s only land border with Africa. The influx was triggered by false narratives spreading online that told migrants they would be welcomed, according to fact-checking site Maldita.es.

The Commission met with representatives from TikTok and Meta on Friday and Monday to coordinate a response to disinformation online. They agreed to set up an “enhanced information exchange and cooperation mechanism for reducing the impact of disinformation on the Ceuta crisis,” said the three people with direct knowledge of the talks, who were granted anonymity to speak freely.

That will serve as a point of contact for platforms, fact-checkers and the Commission to quickly flag content so that it can be reviewed and taken down if necessary. The effort comes amid concerns that disinformation is promoting further crossings into the territory on Aug. 15, according to Maldita.es. Maldita.es and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network attended Monday’s meeting.

The Commission operates a rapid response system under its code of conduct on disinformation, often triggered around elections. The new mechanism on Ceuta would bring a closer group of stakeholders together, two of the people said.

Another meeting has been set for later this week, one of those people and the third person confirmed.

Meta and TikTok said they were already actively monitoring the situation in line with their policies and had set up dedicated teams to monitor and respond to content in real time.

The crisis has divided EU countries and has reignited Europe’s long-running debate on illegal migration. Italy has since been one of the harshest critics of Spain’s left-wing government and its migration policies, and has implemented border controls for travelers arriving from Spain.

Former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who was a force behind the EU’s online content rules, on Monday said the bloc should launch a disinformation inquiry into the Ceuta crisis in an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday passionately defended the use of artificial intelligence, as the rapid advancement of the technology faces increased scrutiny — and calls for regulation — in the U.S. and globally.

In a 6,500 word post timed to the announcement of his company’s new open source version of its own model, Muse Spark, Zuckerberg detailed his vision for AI, arguing the technology is not to be feared and pushing back on concerns that superintelligence could strip people of jobs.

“The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Historically, hoping that an absolute power will benevolently provide for humanity if sufficiently enlightened has not led to safe or positive outcomes.”

Zuckerberg’s vision is a direct contrast to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s, who has previously warned how AI could cause job disruption. Meta lags behind Anthropic and OpenAI, which have the most advanced AI models.

While Zuckerberg’s essay did not name Amodei or OpenAI directly, he called to broadly distribute superintelligent AI for economic opportunity. Doing so, Zuckerberg said, would provide a safety net to prevent just a handful of governments, businesses and other institutions holding too much power.

Still, Zuckerberg emphasized that the U.S. must address restrictions on AI companies in order to create the best models in the world.

“It is also important that the US and its allies lead the open source AI ecosystem that will make up a large percent of global AI use,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Foreign labs currently hold several advantages here since American labs have to comply with many additional restrictions on training data.”

Zuckerberg’s essay comes amid growing concerns around AI safety. Last month, Anthropic revealed that several of its advanced models gained access to three organizations in three separate incidents dating back to April. That hack came shortly after OpenAI said that two of its most powerful models escaped a testing environment and breached multiple companies.

Lawmakers last month introduced a bill that would give the government power to restrict the use of models that could lead to catastrophic risks. While it is the latest bipartisan effort to address concerns around AI models, Congress has ultimately failed to advance broad legislation.

Zuckerberg urged the federal government to work with companies to test new models as he laid out his strategies for protecting against cybersecurity and bioterrorism.

“First, we should focus on limiting the physical production and distribution of harmful materials,” he wrote. “I expect it will be easier to regulate and control physical components than the spread of knowledge, so this is an important area of policy focus. Second, we should accelerate society’s ability to develop new cures and inoculate against new issues as they arise. This includes streamlining how the FDA and other regulators test and approve new treatments.”

Zuckerberg also defended the spread of data centers, arguing that the centers represent investment into communities as he touted his company’s goal of being “water-positive, meaning that we’ll restore more water than we use in the watersheds where we operate by 2030.”

1999 A.D. is a short film the appliance maker Philco-Ford made in 1967 to show what family life would look like at the end of the century. It opens with a boy named Jamie, who builds a sandcastle version of his family's house on a Southern California beach. — Read the rest

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