The European Commission has issued a new Code of Practice on Disinformation, which comnprises voluntary self-regulations on a host of things, from transparency and political advertising to closing fake accounts, to try and head off online election meddling ahead of the spring 2019 European elections.

The EC billed it as "first time worldwide that industry agrees, on a voluntary basis, to self-regulatory standards to fight disinformation."

The code was the product of "online platforms, leading social networks, advertisers and agencies," according to the commission, which released the code Wednesday (Sept. 26).

The code is meant to achieve the objectives of an April communication from the commission.

The basic commitments are pretty general, as could be expected of a self-regulatory code, with language like "could include" and "reasonable efforts." The commitments do include:

1) Use commercially reasonable efforts not to promote accounts or Web sites that consistently misrepresents information about themselves, including taking compensation from them.

2) Commit to "enabling public disclosure of political advertising (defined as for or against election of a candidate or passage of referenda in national and European elections), which could include actual sponsor identity and amounts spent.

3) Use "reasonable efforts towards devising approaches to publicly disclose "issue-based advertising."

The signatories to the code commit to producing an annual report of their efforts to counter disinformation, and make it public, so it is a "reviewable by a third party."

In the case of advertisers, the World Federation of Advertisers will provide aggregated reporting to identify "barnd safety activities" by brands. In the case of ad agencies, the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) will do the same thing for ad agencies.

Signatories will review the code every 12 months.

Consumer Watchdog has asked the Federal Trade Commission to file suit against Google on antitrust grounds over its Android operating system.

The call came after the European Union initially concluded this week that Google had abused its dominant position in search by putting restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile broadband ISPs in violation of EU antitrust rules.

Consumer Watchdog says Google has the same power and employs the same practices in the U.S. "“Our antitrust enforcers need to step up and do their job instead of letting the Europeans do it for them,” said John Simpson, privacy project director for Consumer Watchdog.

The FTC investigated Google's search practices but closed that investigation in 2013. There was talk earlier this year on Capitol Hill about asking the FTC to reopen that investigation given new concerns about Google favoring its own content in local search.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association—whose members include Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!—sent up a "be careful what you wish for" warning flare following the EU decision. “The [European] Commission needs to be careful, as challenging the contractual provisions that allow open source operating systems to compete against proprietary software can backfire. If not careful, the Commission could harm competition, not foster it.

“While we can appreciate the European Commission’s desire to be vigilant about investigating competition issues, the market for apps and services is extremely competitive," CCIA said. "At first blush, it is difficult to see the contracts identified by the Commission as being competition problems. In fact, they have clear procompetitive motivations."

There was optimism on both sides Monday that the U.S. and European Commission will come up with a new safe harbor ("safe harbor 2.0") for protecting European data flows to the U.S. as the deadline nears, but a European Commission representative warned that would likely not be the end of the story.

That came at the Internet Education Foundation State of the Net conference in Washington, where snow rearranged the program.

The U.S. and EC have a Jan. 31 deadline for coming up with a new framework before data protection actions can be brought after a European Union court in October invalidated the current safe harbor in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about U.S. government surveillance.

Before flying out for more negotiations, Justin Antonipillai, deputy general counsel of the Department of Commerce and a leading figure in the negotiations, suggested the deadline was actually going to be Feb. 2 given that Jan. 31 was a Sunday and there were working party meetings set for Feb. 2.

Antonipillai agreed that time was not on their side as the clock ticked down, but that they had been having productive dialogue.

He said that the court decision annulling the safe harbor framework did not say that U.S. companies were not protecting European's data. That was seconded by Bijan Madhani of the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

Andrea Glorioso, representing the European Commission, warned that when--he said he was going to say "when," not "if"--a new safe harbor agreement was struck, that was not the end of the process. He said that it still had to be voted on by members countries and run by the EU Parliament for its input, and he had already heard from civil liberty groups that they were preparing a challenge to whatever the final product is.

He said the bottom line is that the EC wanted to make sure it was a solid framework that could resist those challenges, which is why he said it was not in anyone's interest to rush the agreement only to have it struck down in a few months.

Glorioso would not characterize the negotiations beyond saying the were happening daily. He suggested that the new harbor would need a trust but verify approach. He said the EC takes at face value what the U.S. says, but that it also needs more clarity, "if at all possible," about how the U.S. will protect information going forward.

The U.S. and EC have been working on a new framework for two years, prompted by the Snowden revelations, but the EC court decision in October has put them on the clock to get a deal done.

Madhani said he was optimistic that there would be an agreement by Feb. 2.