Bulgaria’s Finance Minister in a meeting with META: Let's stop Russian propaganda in social networks ahead of European Elections

The fight against disinformation and manipulated and misleading content was discussed at a meeting in Washington yesterday (February 8) by Finance Minister Asen Vassilev, Minister of Economy and Industry Bogdan Bogdanov and executives of the global company META, which owns the social networks Facebook, Instagram, Watson, etc.

"Stop Russian propaganda and do it before the European elections. Then you will see a significant change in the attitude of both Facebook users and EU regulators," the Bulgarian finance minister urged at the meeting.

Assen Vassilev gave examples of how pro-European content is being removed from the social network based on signals from f trolls, while disinformation continues to spread.

"Bulgaria expresses deep concern about the Russian disinformation campaign aimed at undermining the trust in European institutions, the US and NATO," Minister Vassilev summarised.

META briefed the Minister of Finance on the new artificial intelligence AI models designed to detect and remove manipulated images and misleading information.

META, welcomed the Bulgarian ministers with traditional Bulgarian meals, including princesses sandwitches (made of grilled minced meat on top of bread slices.), pastry with spinach and sarmi (cabbage leaves stuffed with combination of rice and minced meat).

In Washington, Finance Minister Assen Vassilev also met with SpaceX management. He invited them to visit Bulgaria in the autumn.

The company's Vice President Tim Hughes has shown great interest in Bulgaria, especially in the light of context of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s confirmed visit to Bulgaria in October 2024. SpaceX and NASA are working together on the space programme aimed at advancing human exploration with missions to the Moon to Mars.