The European Commission sent a request for information under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to the companies, also including Microsoft and Booking, "on how they make sure that their services are not being misused by scammers", an EU spokesman said.
The DSA is the EU's landmark law demanding Big Tech firms do more to tackle illegal content, but it has faced retaliation threats from US President Donald Trump and censorship claims from the US tech sector.
The EU has vowed it will not back down from enforcing its rules to protect Europeans online.
Tuesday's request could lead to a probe under the DSA and even fines, but does not itself suggest the law has been broken, nor is it a move towards punishment.
"This is an essential step also to protect users across the EU from certain of these practices, and to make sure that platforms in the EU also play their role," EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels.
The request relates to Apple's App Store, Google Play, online travel agent Booking and Microsoft's Bing search engine.
The EU fears app stores could be used by scammers to create fake apps posing as legitimate banking services, or fraudsters could publish links to fake websites on search engines.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company was "committed to creating safe experiences online and will continue to engage with the European Commission".
Google said it blocked hundreds of millions of "scammy results in search every day", while Booking said it would "engage constructively" with Brussels.
"Between 2023 and 2024, we have seen a drop from 1.5 million phishing-related fake reservations detected and blocked down to 250,000," Booking added.
- Trump threats -
The EU has a bolstered legal armoury with the DSA and its sister law, the Digital Markets Act, which seeks to ensure fair competition online.
Brussels has already launched multiple investigations under the DSA into Meta's Facebook and Instagram as well as TikTok and X.
But its rules have faced the wrath of Trump -- who has shaken up global trade by hitting America's trading partners with higher tariffs and threatened more levies on those he accuses of targeting US tech companies.
The US State Department, Trump allies and critics including Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk have called European rules censorship.
The EU rejects such claims, stressing that whatever is illegal in the real world is also illegal in the online realm.
It has also pushed back at accusations it is targeting American titans, pointing to investigations into major Chinese players that face DSA scrutiny including shopping platform AliExpress.
Defenders of the bloc's tech rules have meanwhile attacked the EU for failing to complete its probe into Musk's X, which opened in December 2023. X is expected to be hit with a fine, but Brussels says technical work in the investigation continues.
EU digital chief Henna Virkkunen told AFP last week that probes into online platforms including X will be completed in the "coming weeks and months".
She warned more investigations could also be on the way.
YouTube to reinstate creators banned over misinformation
Washington (AFP) Sept 23, 2025 -
YouTube is set to reinstate creators previously banned for promoting Covid-19 misinformation and false election-related content, according to a letter sent Tuesday by parent company Alphabet to a Republican lawmaker.
The policy reversal marks a victory for the conservative allies of US President Donald Trump, who have long accused tech platforms and professional fact-checkers of a liberal bias and of using anti-misinformation policies as a pretext for censorship.
"Reflecting the company's commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of Covid-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect," Alphabet's legal counsel said in the five-page letter to Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
"YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse."
The full impact of the policy reversal was yet to be determined, and it was not immediately clear which creators would be reinstated and when.
In recent years, figures such as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka and podcast host Steve Bannon were among those previously banned from the platform, according to US media.
Alphabet accused former president Joe Biden's administration of pressuring the company to impose the bans.
"Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies," the letter said.
"While the company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative user-generated content," it added.
- Policy rollback -
After Biden took office in 2021, his administration urged platforms to purge what it identified as harmful misinformation -- including content that encouraged people to inject bleach and other disinfectants to cure Covid-19, a suggestion once echoed by Trump.
Jordan, who has spent years probing what Republicans have blasted as a coordinated effort by Biden's administration to suppress conservative voices online, celebrated Alphabet's announcement as a "victory in the fight against censorship" and a "massive win" for the American people.
"To make amends to the American people, and because of our work, YouTube is rolling back its censorship policies on political speech, including topics such as Covid and elections," Jordan wrote on X.
"No more telling Americans what to believe and not believe," he added.
Alphabet's letter stressed that "YouTube has not and will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content across the company's services."
Instead, it allows users to add notes of context to user content, adopting a community-driven approach to combating online misinformation that was popularized by Elon Musk's platform, X.
The decision to reinstate previously banned users also mirrors Musk's move to welcome back prominent purveyors of misinformation on Twitter, which he rebranded as X after acquiring it in 2022.
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