DICT to Meta: Act vs fake news, disinformation

With Filipinos among the top users of Facebook and Instagram, their parent firm Meta should strictly enforce its community standards in the Philippines to stop the proliferation of fake news and malicious content, Information and Communications Secretary Rhoel Aguda said yesterday.

- By RAINIER ALLAN RONDA

At the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum, Aguda said he has asked the global tech giant to apply its community standards strictly in the country, as it does in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore, and get it to implement geographical blocking of fake news content in social media accounts in the Philippines.

Aguda, who was among the department secretaries reappointed by President Marcos in the recent Cabinet reorganization, said that as head of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), he is calling the attention of Meta to its inadequate action on fake news being carried by its social media platforms.

He said his department is engaged in serious efforts to clean up the internet of fake news and online disinformation and misinformation as well as harmful online activities like illegal gambling.

"I'm very confident, when I talk to the social media platform owners, we can get them to comply," Aguda said at the forum. "We don't want special treatment, we just want fair treatment." The DICT chief said Meta should not apply its own supposed community standards selectively, pointing out that the tech giant is proactively geo-blocking or geo-locking harmful content on the pages of their social media account holders in the two developed countries.