Facebook Takes Down PNA, PDP-Laban Posts, Flags NTF-ELCAC Stories
Government officials and even a media association questioned Facebook’s mechanism in flagging posts on its platform, saying it is a form of censorship.
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has slammed the multiple flagging of social media giant Facebook (Meta) of its official posts and shared stories of government media agencies.
The Partido Demokratiko Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) faction composed of President Duterte’s allies also denounced Facebook on Monday, April 25, after some of its posts were flagged and taken down.
In a statement, the NTF-ELCAC described Facebook’s move as “pathetic, cowardly, desperate, and lutang (scatterbrained).”
NTF-ELCAC said even the government’s good governance posts and articles highlighting economic recovery programs and delivery of basic social services as well as “infrastructure projects to our communities, Indigenous Peoples areas, and the hinterland barangays” were also flagged as violative of Facebook community standards.
“These describe the entities composed of a bunch of self-anointed, presumptuous, tyrannical, and abusive fact-checkers that set faulty, erroneous, biased, oppressive, and repressive community standards for the social media platform Facebook,” it said.
“These so-called fact-checkers flagged posts and articles by the NTF-ELCAC and by government media entities, including official press releases of the Philippine government,” the statement read.
Last week, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr., also the NTF-ELCAC vice chairperson, called out Facebook for flagging his post where he claimed the communist insurgency had infiltrated Congress.
Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya has likewise criticized the platform saying its move “is alarming, if not dangerous, as it has appointed itself as an omnipotent force that can censure at their discretion – based on standards that they themselves created – the legitimate posts of highly respected officials of the country.”
PDP-Laban Cusi faction hits Facebook
PDP-Laban president and Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi expressed alarm that Facebook, a foreign media company, “is blatantly controlling and censoring in violation of our freedom of speech and the right to information and expression of not only our citizens, but as well as many of our government institutions.”
“This is a direct attack on the rights and sovereignty of Filipinos,” Cusi said in a statement.
He said posts and photographs of the party’s official Facebook page, and various pages of its national and local candidates across the country, were taken down.
“We have received reports from many of our candidates that their posts and shared news stories, especially those that highlight the achievements of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s administration, were flagged and taken down as violative of Facebook community standards,” he said in a statement.
Some of the posts include Duterte’s endorsement of Deputy Speaker and Sagip party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta and former anti-corruption czar Greco Belgica.
Cusi dared Facebook to stay neutral in the last days of the election campaign and during the proceedings of the national and local elections on May 9.
“Let the people speak and express their opinions on this very important matter. Let the Filipino people decide,” he said.
Cabinet Secretary Melvin Matibag, the party’s secretary general, described Facebook’s censorship through their so-called community standards as unethical and against public safety and national security, especially this election season.
“This flagging, blocking and censorships affect the Filipinos’ freedom to choose and vote in favor of the candidates they truly believe in,” he said.
According to Matibag, many of the reports they received were about numerous posts not only by PDP-Laban but also by government institutions, including the Philippine News Agency (PNA), flagged and blocked by Facebook for violating its community standards.
Matibag said they received information that Facebook employs third-party fact-checkers to monitor and censor posts that are allegedly against community standards.
“Who are these fact-checkers that even official government press statements and legitimate news stories are being censored?” he said.
An act of ‘harassment and intimidation’
The National Press Club of the Philippines (NPC), one of the country’s oldest and biggest organizations of active members of the press, has issued a statement against Facebook’s fact-checking drive.
In a statement, the NPC said the fact-checking drive of Facebook constituted “acts of harassment and intimidation and a brazen curtailment of civil liberties, particularly the right to freedom of information and expression, but more importantly, an assault on the country’s sovereignty.”
NPC president Paul Gutierrez, a columnist and reporter for daily tabloid newspaper People’s Journal, noted that Facebook has shown to all Filipinos that it is the ‘Lord of the Realm of Social Media’ by flagging down and warning official public platforms such as the PNA.
People’s Journal is owned by Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, the president of Lakas-NUCD and cousin of presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Journal News Online itself figured in a recent fact-check when Communist Party of the Philippines president Jose Maria Sison, based in The Hague, Netherlands, denied or branded as fake news a report that quoted him as saying that he was an adviser of opposition presidential candidate, Vice President Leni Robredo.
Sison denied talking to the reporter who filed the story, Lee Ann P. Ducusin. – With Emmanuel Tupas, Rainier Allan Ronda
