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 17
In light of the European Commission's initiatives in the area of media literacy, including the new Digital Education Action Plan, Relevant Signatories commit to continue and strengthen their efforts in the area of media literacy and critical thinking, also with the aim to include vulnerable groups.
We signed up to the following measures of this commitment
Measure 17.1 Measure 17.2 Measure 17.3
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 17.1
Relevant Signatories will design and implement or continue to maintain tools to improve media literacy and critical thinking, for instance by empowering users with context on the content visible on services or with guidance on how to evaluate online content.
QRE 17.1.1 

Alongside the platform-wide measures described under Commitment 14 — including fact-checking in Seznam Discussions/Lide.cz, educational warnings in Seznam Search, and the promotion of quality journalism in Seznam Newsfeed — Seznam.cz continues to strengthen targeted media literacy initiatives for specific audience groups.
  • To build media literacy among younger generations, we run the “Get to Know Media” programme for elementary and high school teachers, and organise our annual Media Education Festival, which brings together key media educators from across Czechia. We also provide teachers with access to our up-to-date fact-checks in searchable form.
  • To support older adults — who are particularly vulnerable in the online environment — we run the “Sherlock Senior” programme for people of retirement age. In 2025, the programme continued to operate online through regular newsletters.
SLI 17.1.1
Relevant Signatories will report, at the Member State level, on metrics pertinent to assessing the effects of the tools described in the qualitative reporting element for Measure 17.1, which will include: the total count of impressions of the tool; and information on the interactions/engagement with the tool.
  • Data on displayed warnings with educational explanation in Seznam Search, data on the way we promote quality journalism in Seznam Newsfeed and Seznam Medium can be found in the SLI 14.2.1 – SLI 14.2.4
  • Data on fact-checking on Seznam Discussions can be found in the SLI 21.1.2.