The EU Commission told Facebook, Google, and Twitter to increased their efforts to fight fake news. Reuters reported that the EU’s executive has said that if the companies do not to more, it will take regulatory action.

The Commission is now drawing up regulations known as the Digital Services Act. This will set out liability and safety rules for digital platforms, services and products, a move which has already triggered fears in the tech industry of heavy-handed intervention. The latest monthly report from the companies showed a wide divergence between them and provided few details on the impact of the measures taken by the companies, EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, EU security chief Julian King and EU digital commissioner Mariya Gabriel said in a joint statement. “Large-scale automated propaganda and disinformation persist and there is more work to be done under all areas of the Code. We cannot accept this as a new normal,” they said.

On October 29th, 1969, the first packet was sent, laying the foundation for what we know as the internet. Fifty years on, Google VP and web evangelist Vint Cerf reflected on some of his favorite internet moments.

1. October 29, 1969: The first packet was sent. This pioneered our understanding of operational packet switching technology, which prepared us for the subsequent development of the Internet.  2. 1971: Networked electronic mail was created using file transfers as a mechanism to distribute messages to users on the Arpanet.   3. 1974: The design of the Internet was released. Robert Kahn and I published “A protocol for packet network intercommunication.” In this paper we presented not only a protocol, but an architecture and philosophy that supported an open design for the sharing of resources that existed on different packet-switching networks.  4. November 22, 1977: A major demonstration of the Internet took place, linking three networks: Packet Radio, Packet Satellite and ARPANET.  5. January 1, 1983: The Internet was operationally born, and I’ve used an “electronic postcard” analogy to explain how it works.