Over the past few years, the European Commission has made significant steps to reduce disinformation in cyberspace. One of those steps has been the introduction of the 2022 "Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation". Signed by leading online platforms, this Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation is an attempt to combat disinformation on the Web. The Code of Practice includes a variety of measures including the demonetization of disinformation, urging, for example, advertisers "to avoid the placement of advertising next to Disinformation content". In this work, we set out to explore what was the impact of the Code of Practice and especially to explore to what extent ad networks continue to advertise on dis-/mis-information sites. We perform a historical analysis and find that, although at a hasty glance things may seem to be improving, there is really no significant reduction in the amount of advertising relationships among popular misinformation websites and major ad networks. In fact, we show that ad networks have withdrawn mostly from unpopular misinformation websites with very few visitors, but still form relationships with highly unreliable websites that account for the majority of misinformation traffic. To make matters worse, we show that ad networks continue to place advertisements of legitimate companies next to misinformation content. In fact, major ad networks place ads in almost 400 misinformation websites of our dataset.

翻译：过去几年中，欧洲委员会为减少网络空间的虚假信息采取了重要举措。其中一项关键措施是推出了2022年《强化版虚假信息行为准则》。该准则由主要在线平台签署，旨在打击网络虚假信息。准则包含多项措施，包括对虚假信息进行去货币化处理，例如敦促广告商"避免将广告投放在虚假信息内容旁边"。本研究旨在探讨该行为准则的实际影响，特别关注广告网络在虚假/错误信息网站上持续投放广告的程度。通过历史分析发现，尽管粗略看来情况似乎有所改善，但主流虚假信息网站与主要广告网络之间的广告合作关系并未出现显著减少。实际上，数据显示广告网络主要从不受欢迎、访问量极低的虚假信息网站撤出，却仍与流量占虚假信息主体、可信度极低的网站保持合作关系。更严重的是，广告网络持续将合法企业的广告投放在虚假信息内容旁边。事实上，主要广告网络在我们数据集中近400个虚假信息网站上都投放了广告。