SUMMARY
- The European Commission pressured Meta and TikTok to increase monitoring and cooperate with fact-checkers following the mass crossing of migrants into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.
- The platforms activated “crisis protocols” and established an ad hoc escalation mechanism involving the Commission, Europol and fact-checkers.
- Meta placed warnings above searches for “Ceuta,” directing users towards a migration guide developed with two government-funded international organisations.
- The intervention reportedly appeared outside the European Union, demonstrating how Brussels can influence what users around the world are allowed to see.
- The system builds upon years of cooperation between Washington and Brussels, which helped construct the EU’s censorship regime and supplied government funding to organisations participating in it.
After more than 70,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish territory of Ceuta, the European Commission moved quickly to take control of the online response.
EU officials summoned representatives of Meta and TikTok, demanded increased monitoring and called for closer cooperation with approved fact-checkers. Within days, the companies had activated crisis protocols and established an ad hoc escalation mechanism involving the Commission, Europol and fact-checking organizations. Meta also began placing a warning above searches for “Ceuta,” directing users towards a migration guide developed with government-funded international organizations.
The Ceuta crisis began after false claims about Spain’s border and asylum policies spread through social media. Messages circulating in Facebook and WhatsApp groups claimed that Spain was admitting migrants who possessed particular skills, that the European Commission was granting asylum to everyone entering Ceuta and Melilla, or that a Spanish Supreme Court ruling had effectively opened the border.
Some groups also contained maps, proposed routes and discussions about organizing further mass crossings. Nearly 100 people reportedly died during the resulting rush into Ceuta.
The existence of false claims and material apparently facilitating illegal crossings gave Brussels its justification to intervene. On August 7, European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen announced that the Commission had met Meta and TikTok and demanded that the platforms “act decisively” during the crisis. “Monitoring must increase, cooperation with fact-checkers to be strengthened,” Virkkunen said.
Following another meeting on August 10, Virkkunen announced that Meta and TikTok had activated crisis protocols and established “an ad-hoc escalation and cooperation mechanism with fact-checkers.” The Commission, Europol and the platforms were exchanging information daily.
A Commission spokesman subsequently explained how the arrangement worked. Fact-checkers would supply the platforms with information about purportedly harmful claims, including material connected to possible new border crossings. Meta and TikTok could then take action against the identified content.
The Commission insists that this system remains voluntary. It says Brussels does not directly order platforms to remove individual posts, but merely opens a dialogue so that companies can “act responsibly.”
That distinction is increasingly meaningless. Meta and TikTok operate under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which allows the Commission to impose penalties of up to six per cent of a company’s worldwide annual turnover. The EU’s supposedly voluntary Code of Conduct on Disinformation became an auditable benchmark for DSA compliance in July 2025.
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Meta’s intervention was more expansive than the removal of posts arranging illegal crossings. Users entering “Ceuta” into Facebook or Instagram were presented with a warning above their search results: “Be careful when searching for migration info.”
“Offering or helping move people illegally across international borders is not allowed on our platforms,” the warning stated. Users were then invited to select a large blue button marked “Get migration info.”
That button led to a Meta Help Center guide headlined: “Help is available if you want to move to a new country.” The guide discussed legal migration, asylum, resettlement, family reunification and the dangers of trafficking. It also directed users towards the United Nations refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration’s MigApp, advertised as a “one-stop-shop” providing information throughout the migration process.
Meta says the feature is intended to deter illegal migration and direct vulnerable people away from traffickers. But the intervention did not distinguish between someone planning to cross the border and someone looking for news about the consequences of the crossing. A search for the geographical name “Ceuta” was sufficient to trigger it.
This placed Meta in the position of determining which institutions users would encounter before viewing discussion of a major political crisis. Europeans seeking information about the consequences of mass migration and potential migrants seeking assistance were both routed through the same approved information gateway.
The guide was developed in consultation with the International Organization for Migration and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe—government-funded international bodies that were separate from the fact-checkers operating the Commission’s Ceuta escalation mechanism.
The United States was by far the largest contributor to IOM in 2024, providing approximately $1.52 billion of the organization’s $3.71 billion in total revenue. Washington also supplied the OSCE with approximately €17.8 million in assessed contributions and €7 million in additional pledges that year. Meta’s supposedly authoritative information was constructed with organizations sustained in substantial part by government money, including American taxpayer funding.
Among the most important fact-checking organizations monitoring Ceuta content was Maldita, a Spanish “counter-disinformation” nonprofit already identified in FFO’s investigation of American-funded organizations participating in the European censorship regime.
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On August 5th, Maldita published an investigation into Facebook groups discussing further crossings into Ceuta. It identified claims about universal asylum, government accommodation and the consequences of the Spanish Supreme Court ruling. Its work was cited in subsequent reporting explaining the case for the Commission’s intervention.
Maldita is deeply embedded in the relationship between platforms, fact-checkers and European regulators. Its own financial disclosures state that Meta has paid the organization since 2019 to verify material becoming viral on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Maldita is also a participant in IBERIFIER, part of the European Digital Media Observatory network established with European Commission support to monitor online narratives.
The organization receives funding for numerous EU projects concerning disinformation, platform regulation, hate speech and migration narratives. Its disclosures also acknowledge support from the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy for a project monitoring cross-border disinformation campaigns spreading through private messaging applications.
The Ceuta intervention did not emerge from a purely European censorship regime. It is the product of years of transatlantic cooperation in which the previous American administration helped Brussels develop the policies now being imposed upon US technology companies.
Beginning in 2021, the Biden administration participated in the US-EU Trade and Technology Council through the Office of the US Trade Representative and the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration.
One of the body’s ten working groups was dedicated to developing “shared approaches” towards technology platforms. Its inaugural statement identified “illegal and harmful content,” algorithmic amplification, platform transparency and researcher access to social-media data as common American and European concerns.
The Council repeatedly committed Washington and Brussels to improving access for “disinformation researchers.” In 2022 and 2023, the two sides expressed concern that researchers remained dependent upon voluntary access supplied by the platforms. By 2024, they had produced an entire report examining mechanisms for opening platform data to approved researchers.
Those priorities were then embedded in the Digital Services Act. Articles 39 and 40 require large platforms to maintain advertising repositories and provide data to vetted researchers.
The same provisions have now been used against X. In December 2025, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s company €120 million, citing its advertising repository and restrictions on researcher access among its alleged violations. The Commission also demanded that X permit researchers to scrape its public data, potentially reopening the platform to the mass surveillance operations that collapsed after Musk restricted free access to its API.
EU Aims to Force X to Accept Surveillance From ‘Disinformation’ Professionals
The Biden White House understood the value of shifting this activity overseas. A 2022 government censorship roadmap explicitly proposed establishing a partnership with the European Union to give American researchers access to social-media data made available under the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation.
American taxpayer funding also helped sustain the wider network needed to use that data. An FFO investigation identified 23 US-funded organizations involved in the EU’s censorship system, either as signatories to the Disinformation Code or participants in its digital-media observatories. Together, the organizations had received more than $15 million in relevant American government grants and awards.
The list included NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index, Bellingcat, EU DisinfoLab, Verificat and Maldita, alongside university research departments, analytics companies and international news agencies.
Internal platform documents released by the House Judiciary Committee later demonstrated how this apparently European regime affects Americans.
Between 2022 and 2024, the Commission held more than 90 meetings with technology companies about implementation of its speech requirements. One internal Google communication admitted that platforms did not “really have a choice” but to comply. TikTok stated that the “primary motivation” for an impending revision of its worldwide Community Guidelines was compliance with the Digital Services Act.
Rather than develop separate speech rules for each country, platforms frequently alter their global policies to satisfy their most aggressive regulator. Restrictions adopted under European pressure can consequently determine what Americans are permitted to post or view inside the United States.
The Ceuta episode brings the different components of that system together. The resulting intervention did not remain inside Europe. Effort News reported independently reproducing the migration warning in the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Whether Meta deliberately deployed the warning worldwide or activated a pre-existing system without geographical limits, the result was the same: European pressure altered what users far outside the EU were shown.
The Ceuta crisis was genuinely fueled by false claims, and some of the targeted content apparently facilitated dangerous and illegal activity. But the machinery established to address those claims is not limited to stopping smugglers. It determines who monitors political discussion, which organizations are treated as authoritative, what material becomes less visible and which sources users are encouraged to trust.
Washington helped create that machinery, while American funding sustained many of its participating organizations. Brussels may possess formal jurisdiction only within Europe, but the Ceuta intervention demonstrates that its censorship regime now reaches much further.
