Government Tech Officials To Meet With Meta Regional Officers

Government tech officials, congressional staffers and digital advocates will meet with regional executives from Meta – the parent company of social media giants like Facebook and Instagram – to discuss mitigating child violence in the wake of the deadly shooting incident at Ateneo de Zamboanga University on Tuesday, Aug. 18.

Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Aguda and Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) executive director Renato Paraiso will fly to Meta’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore on Aug. 27.

The Philippine government still has limited jurisdiction over Meta as shown by the time it took to take down the livestream of Tuesday’s shooting incident.

Paraiso said the CICC detected the video five minutes into the livestream and it took Meta seven to nine minutes to take it down.

“Meta’s office here isn’t a proper branch office (where we have) jurisdiction. They took down the video only after they coursed it through their proper channels,” Paraiso told One News’s “Storycon” on Thursday, Aug. 20.

“To be fair, when we reached out, we understood their internal processes,” he stressed.

The Philippines, so far, cannot subject Meta to litigation, unlike in the United States, where it is founded.

The government’s meeting with Meta will also touch on the integrity of the elections, given the onslaught of disinformation and trolling on social media. A former Facebook executive called the Philippines “patient zero” of disinformation worldwide.

Roblox cooperating

Online gaming platform Roblox is actively cooperating with government investigators as they try to gather critical information following Tuesday’s incident.

The DICT chief confirmed that the popular gaming firm has joined the effort after being notified of the ongoing probe led by the CICC.

“We’ve been in touch with Roblox and they are also gathering information related to the incident that will help in the ongoing investigation,” Aguda told The Philippine STAR.

The DICT chief noted that while authorities have not yet fully established the extent to which the gaming platform may be tied to the case, Roblox was alerted early so its teams could assist in digital information gathering.

“The CICC is still conducting its investigation in the matter. We have not fully identified the extent to which Roblox may have been involved,” Aguda said.

“But we have notified Roblox of the potential issue so that they may help in information gathering as well,” he added.

The investigation comes after initial reports revealed that the suspect, a student who was among the fatalities, was a “fanatic” user of the platform. – With Rainier Allan Ronda