In October, the European observatory highlighted a public petition in Portugal calling on Israel not to return a Portuguese deputy who joined a humanitarian fleet to Gaza.
The petition, which gathered over 62,000 signatures, requested that Israel “not return” Bloco de Esquerda (BE) deputy Mariana Mortágua. The petition lacked the legal basis to be forwarded to the parliament.
According to the Portuguese Constitution, exercising the right to petition requires each signatory to be identified with their name and citizen card number or a valid ID document, but this petition did not request any of these numbers.
Deputy Mariana Mortágua returned to Portugal on October 5.
In Spain, EDMO recalls the floods in Valencia, where hundreds of misleading videos continue to circulate on TikTok and YouTube, even a year later.
“Some have more than two million views, but none of the platforms warn users about this content, despite the claims being debunked months ago,” states the observatory.
A fact-checking investigation by Spanish platform Maldita estimates that these misleading climate-related videos amassed at least 21 million views.
This month, France’s disinformation landscape was marked by the theft at the Louvre Museum, with particular attention to a supposed video showing the crime in the art gallery. The video, shared online in various languages, was created using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In Germany, videos circulated from a press conference held by U.S. President Donald Trump, in which he falsely linked the use of paracetamol with autism, advising pregnant women to stop using the analgesic.
Trump’s claim is factually incorrect, as numerous studies indicate there is no evidence supporting any connection between the medication and autism.
False news about this alleged link had already reached Portugal in September.
Meanwhile, in Italy, the European observatory highlights a study by anti-disinformation organization NewsGuard on OpenAI’s new text-to-video conversion tool, Sora 2, which can generate hyper-realistic videos containing misinformation 80% of the time.
