Seznam

Report March 2026

Submitted
Seznam.cz is a leading Czech internet company that provides various online services, such as search, news, email, maps, and e-commerce. Seznam.cz is proud to be a signatory of the EU Code of Conduct on Disinformation and to contribute to its mission of enhancing transparency, accountability, and trustworthiness of online platforms and information. We believe that our actions and achievements in 2025 demonstrate our commitment and our progress in this regard.

We are aware that the fight against disinformation and misinformation is an ongoing and evolving challenge that requires constant vigilance, adaptation, and cooperation. We are determined to continue our efforts and cooperation with other signatories, stakeholders, and authorities to uphold the Code's principles and objectives.

This report covers the following aspects of our approach to misinformation and disinformation on our services: Seznam Search, Seznam Newsfeed, and Lide.cz (formerly Seznam Discussions).

Our Commitment to Fight Falsehoods

  • We take the issue of disinformation and misinformation very seriously. Since 2023, we have a fulltime role of anti-disinformation officer/head of content moderation who coordinates all projects across services that we aim to keep trustworthy, clean of falsehoods and manipulations.
  • We have strict policies tackling impermissible manipulative behaviours and practices on our services, including the policies countering manipulative practices for AI. Our long-term goal is to promote transparency and accountability to our users and partners regarding these policies and actions.
  • We combine human editors and technologies to implement and enforce these policies, elevate authoritative information and high-quality content, promote good journalism and moderate discussions.
  • We educate users of our services by explanatory labels, fact-checks, links to credible sources, promotion of quality journalism and prioritization of quality content in our ranking systems.
  • We also provide features to easily report problematic content and personalize user experience, thus empowering them to get trustworthy information and act upon them.
  • We develop projects that increase media literacy and critical thinking skills among people of all ages.

Our Achievements and Improvements

  • We have continued to improve our detection of AI-generated content, clickbait articles, and other forms of misleading or harmful content, and we have increased our human oversight and moderation.
  • We continuously trained our AI system to detect misinformation narratives in comments and suggest relevant fact-checks to editors.
  • We have measured the impact of our fact-checking, proving that it increases perceived trustworthiness and objectivity among the public, as well as it decreases stress and negative emotions.
  • We have made all our fact-checks public for anyone to double-check it or use it.
  • We have continued to blacklist and demote misinformative and poor-quality sources on our services, while using independent external ratings. Our steadfast partnership with impartial civic and academic institutions ensures a fair and objective rating of the media outlets we aggregate, rank, and display within our services and sites.
  • We have continued to flag misinformation websites and display warnings in Seznam Search.
  • On our blogging service, Seznam Medium, we have continued to keep the same editorial standards and commitments to prevent the spread of misinformation.

Key Developments in 2025

  • The 2025 Czech parliamentary elections represented a critical event for democracy and a key systemic risk requiring active mitigation. Seznam.cz participated in the Rapid Response System and received no reports, reflecting the effectiveness of our automated and editorial measures in preventing the spread of electoral disinformation.
  • We partnered with Demagog.cz, a fellow Code signatory, to fact-check political advertisements. Ads rated as false or misleading were stopped from running on our platforms.
  • On election day, our teams identified fake political ads and took them down swiftly, protecting the integrity of the electoral information environment.
  • We presented our achievements and plans in the fight against disinformation at the Code plenary meeting in Brussels in June 2025.
  • In August 2025, we launched a cooperation with three renowned academic institutions — Anglo-American University, the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, and the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University — who provide an additional independent layer of review of our fact-checks to maximise impartiality and objectivity.
  • In November 2025, Seznam Discussions transitioned into Lide.cz, a fully-fledged social platform. We have maintained the same moderation standards, AI-assisted detection, human checks, and fact-checking processes throughout this transition.

We hope that this executive summary provides a clear and comprehensive overview of our actions and achievements in 2025 to fight against disinformation and misinformation on our services. We are proud of our progress, and we are determined to continue our efforts and cooperation with other signatories, stakeholders, and authorities to uphold the Code's principles and objectives.

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Commitment 14
In order to limit impermissible manipulative behaviours and practices across their services, Relevant Signatories commit to put in place or further bolster policies to address both misinformation and disinformation across their services, and to agree on a cross-service understanding of manipulative behaviours, actors and practices not permitted on their services. Such behaviours and practices include: The creation and use of fake accounts, account takeovers and bot-driven amplification, Hack-and-leak operations, Impersonation, Malicious deep fakes, The purchase of fake engagements, Non-transparent paid messages or promotion by influencers, The creation and use of accounts that participate in coordinated inauthentic behaviour, User conduct aimed at artificially amplifying the reach or perceived public support for disinformation.
We signed up to the following measures of this commitment
Measure 14.1 Measure 14.2
In line with this commitment, did you deploy new implementation measures (e.g. changes to your terms of service, new tools, new policies, etc)?
If yes, list these implementation measures here
Do you plan to put further implementation measures in place in the next 6 months to substantially improve the maturity of the implementation of this commitment?
If yes, which further implementation measures do you plan to put in place in the next 6 months?
Measure 14.1
Relevant Signatories will adopt, reinforce and implement clear policies regarding impermissible manipulative behaviours and practices on their services, based on the latest evidence on the conducts and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by malicious actors, such as the AMITT Disinformation Tactics, Techniques and Procedures Framework.
QRE 14.1.1
Relevant Signatories will list relevant policies and clarify how they relate to the threats mentioned above as well as to other Disinformation threats.
Relevant Signatories will list relevant policies and clarify how they relate to the threats mentioned above as well as to other Disinformation threats.
Seznam Search 
  • Our search systems prioritise high-quality and authentic sources to deliver the most relevant content to users, while reducing the reach of low-quality content spread through deceptive or manipulative behaviour as outlined in Commitment 14, using spam detection tools.
  • These measures address TTPs relevant to search engines at scale — such as inauthentic domains or coordinated inauthentic amplification. We also warn users directly against known misinformation websites: warnings appear in organic search results beneath links to such sites, and images and videos from these domains are not displayed.

Seznam Newsfeed operates under clear policies designed to promote quality journalism and trustworthy news.
  • All news websites displayed in Seznam Newsfeed are required to hold an Independent Media Rating issued by the Foundation for Independent Journalism (NFNZ).
  • Websites that disseminate or promote misinformation or conspiracy theories are excluded from the feed.
  • We enforce a policy limiting clickbait headlines and other deceptive or manipulative editorial practices.
  • All partner websites must comply with our sourcing standards and editorial guidelines, ensuring readers can trace the origin of information and assess its credibility. Furthermore, we provide guidelines for our partners and require compliance with standards for information sourcing.
  • Stricter rules apply to health and science content, where accuracy and source transparency are held to a higher standard.

Seznam Discussions/Lide.cz
  • To counter inauthentic and deceptive behaviour as outlined in Commitment 14, our policies require users to operate under their real identity. Fake accounts are prohibited, and we apply proportional verification across multiple levels based on account behaviour and reach. We further prohibit impersonation of individuals or organisations and any form of coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
  • Any unlawful content is forbidden. We pay particular attention to content inciting hatred based on racial or religious affiliation or nationality, and additionally prohibit vulgar or obscene language, slander, and threats of violence.
  • We limit the spread of spam and other TTPs listed in Commitment 14 by targeting content with suspicious characteristics (e.g. sensitive keywords, unusually high output of comments), reposted content, and content spreading misinformation or linking to misinformation websites.
  • We fact-check manipulative comments, label them, and add context boxes to provide users with accurate information.
  • To prevent abuse of our services for commercial or other gain, we remove content containing personally identifiable or private information obtained from illegal sources or published without consent.
  • All the above is enforced through a combination of AI tools and human editors.

QRE 14.1.2
Signatories will report on their proactive efforts to detect impermissible content, behaviours, TTPs and practices relevant to this commitment.
Seznam Search
  • We use a combination of machine learning and human oversight to prioritise high-quality, authentic content and reduce the reach of low-quality content spread through deceptive or manipulative behaviour as outlined in Commitment 14. Further details on how Seznam Search operates are available here.
  • To identify and flag disinformation websites, Seznam Search draws on a range of external sources, including EU Guidelines, the National Centre for Cybernetic Operations, the Foundation for Independent Journalism (NFNZ), the Atlas of Conspiracies project, and the Slovak initiative Konspiratori.sk. Appropriate warnings are displayed to users in search results accordingly.

Seznam Newsfeed uses a combination of human editors and AI tools to evaluate content quality:
  • Each day, approximately 3,000 articles are submitted by partner websites. Around 2,000 are published after automated checks and pre-categorisation — including clickbait headline detection and topic specificity classification — while nearly half of all submitted texts also undergo manual review by trained editors.
  • Editorial decisions are guided by detailed internal guidelines and the independent Media Rating published by the Foundation for Independent Journalism (NFNZ). Websites rated B- or C are excluded from the Newsfeed, as are websites listed by NFNZ or Konspiratori.sk as misinformative.
  • Only content meeting the standards of quality journalism is published automatically, and all such content remains subject to editorial oversight. We apply strict sourcing requirements to all submitted texts — including blog posts — regardless of whether they qualify as news.
  • News outlets with the highest quality ratings may publish content directly to the Newsfeed; however, their articles remain subject to retroactive checks by both automated tools and human editors.

Seznam Medium, our blogging service, upholds editorial principles consistent with those applied in Seznam Newsfeed:
  • Under our terms of service, bloggers are prohibited from disseminating or promoting misinformation or conspiracy theories, linking to misinformation websites, or using content sourced from such websites. Blacklisted domains are identified based on lists maintained by NFNZ, Nelež, and Konšpirátori.sk.
  • All blogs are reviewed by human editors, who have the authority to unpublish content or ban users in breach of the terms of service. Editorial decisions are further guided by detailed internal guidelines.

Seznam Discussions/Lide.cz, combats misinformation through a combination of AI tools, human editors, and dedicated fact-checkers moderating discussions:
  • Our editors and fact-checkers operate according to comprehensive internal guidelines. Fact-checkers add context to manipulative or misinformative comments drawing on independent third-party sources, including EUvsDisinfo, AFP, and other trusted international and national outlets.
  • Since August 2025, our fact-checking is subject to an additional independent review layer provided by three academic institutions — Anglo-American University, the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, and the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University — further strengthening the impartiality and objectivity of our assessments.
  • Editors verify and ban fake accounts, as well as accounts deploying TTPs or otherwise violating our policies.
  • Our moderation approach focuses on behavioural evaluation rather than content removal alone. We identify specific patterns of behaviour exhibited by malicious actors and, wherever possible, prefer to correct misinformation and direct users to credible sources. Stricter sanctions are applied to accounts consistently deploying the most harmful narratives and TTPs.
  • While the war in Ukraine remains the most prevalent source of misinformation we address, we also tackle hoaxes and false narratives related to global security, vaccines, Czech politics, LGBTQI+ issues, and others.