MANILA, Philippines — The Presidential Communications Office (PCO) acknowledged the need for a regulatory body to combat abuse and disinformation on social media platforms.
In a press conference held on Monday, March 3, PCO Undersecretary and Palace press officer Claire Castro stressed the “timely” need for a separate agency tasked with regulating social media. She cited the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board and Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas as examples of regulatory bodies in the country.
“Kapag po naabuso [ang social media], mayroon po itong effect sa taong maaaring siraan, maaaring ang mga organisasyon, ahensiya na maaaring siraan na walang basehan, malaki pong impact ito lalo na kung paniniwalaan ng mga tao,” she said.
(When social media is abused, it has an effect on people, organizations, and agencies whose reputations can be destroyed without basis, and this can have severe impacts if people believe such lies and attacks.)
Castro also discussed the possibility of working with Congress to pass relevant legislation. Earlier in February, a tricommittee of the House of Representatives held public hearings to identify gaps in legislation aimed to counter disinformation. These hearings were snubbed by various pro-Duterte personalities, who have since been issued subpoenas.
Because crafting new legislation can take time, Castro was asked about the PCO’s immediate plans to counter social media abuse in the meantime. She highlighted the need for sufficient evidence and verification before content online is considered “fake news,” and before users are tagged as trolls or dummy accounts.
She also called on Filipinos to exercise due diligence when consuming information online, and advised them to consult reputable sources such as mainstream media organizations.
“Hangga’t maaari, bago po maniwala sa mga sinasabi, lalo na iyong sa mga YouTube channel natin, sa Facebook, mas maganda po sana, ini-encourage namin, nating lahat na bago po maniwala…ay i-research po muna ninyo. Mas maganda po na ang bawat napapakinggan ninyo ay i-research ninyo through mainstream media,” she said.
(As much as possible, before you believe in whatever you see online, especially if it comes from a YouTube channel or Facebook, we encourage you to do your research first. It’s better that you get your information from mainstream media when doing your research.)
How can social media be regulated?
During Monday’s press briefing, Castro said that social media regulation should only focus on combatting “troll armies” and “fake news.”
“Kapag…binabayaran lang ang mga tao para magsalita ng paninira na walang basehan, hindi po iyon freedom of expression, kasi binubulungan lang sila noong taong nagpapasuweldo o nagbabayad sa kanila,” she explained.
(When social media users are being paid to spread attacks online without legitimate basis, that’s not freedom of expression, because they’re being directed by their employers or whoever’s paying them.)
Castro also clarified that opinions based on facts as well as valid criticism will not be censored and should be respected.
However, regulation by governments can also be open to abuse. For instance, a previous Rappler investigation also found that the verified accounts of presidential agencies shared posts from the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that red-tagged the media.
So how can disinformation on social media be regulated without stifling freedom of speech?
In a January 2022 Senate hearing, Rappler CEO and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa urged Filipino senators to craft laws that would hold tech companies accountable for disinformation spread on their platforms.
She emphasized that countering information operations on social media is not a matter of freedom of speech, but a matter of distribution. Previous studies have shown that social media platforms have seen lies spreading faster than facts and have begun choking traffic to news sites.
“Don’t intervene in the content because then, you can actually be accused of censorship. But if you go to the algorithms of amplification… Because everyone can say what they think, but what your neighbor said never reaches broadcast scale until today, because there have been no guardrails on the distribution of lies,” said Ressa.
Since the 2022 hearing, tech giants have introduced policies and company changes that made social media platforms even more dangerous and susceptible to abuse. In December 2022, Twitter (now X) announced that it was dissolving its Trust and Safety Council shortly after Elon Musk bought the platform.
In January 2025, Meta announced it was ending its fact-check program in the United States, less than two weeks before Donald Trump began his second term as president. This move was widely denounced by fact-checkers, who pushed back against CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that the fact-check program has become “a tool to censor.”
The Philippines has long been dubbed “patient zero” for disinformation on social media. A number of politicians, including President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., have benefitted from sophisticated disinformation and propaganda campaigns online. — Rappler.com