Former Palace communications assistant secretary Esther Margaux “Mocha” Uson on Tuesday decried as unfair Facebook’s move to take down pages run by supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Uson, a staunch Duterte supporter, said Facebook should also target the pages of the “dilawan” (yellows) to be fair, referring to the political colour of the Liberal Party-led opposition.
“I hope it’s fair and it should not just be Duterte supporters. I hope (Facebook) targeted the other side because that is where the trolls started,” Uson told reporters.
In an October 22 statement, Facebook said it removed a network of 95 pages and 39 accounts, for violating its “spam and authenticity policies” by encouraging people to visit “low-quality” web content full of disruptive ads.
Pages removed included those known to support President Duterte such as “Duterte Media,” “Duterte sa Pagbabago BUKAS,” “DDS,” “Duterte Phenomenon” and “DU30 Trending News.”
Other pages removed were “Hot Babes,” “News Media Trends,” “Bossing Vic,” “Pilipinas Daily News,” “Like and Win,” “Manang Imee,” and “Karlo ang Probinsiyano.”
Uson admitted that there were indeed some Duterte-leaning Facebook pages that had published spam content, but said there were also “yellow” Facebook pages that did the same.
Uson’s Facebook page, which has more than 5,000,000 followers, is accused by critics as a purveyor of fake news and propaganda for the benefit of the Duterte administration.
Facebook has over 66mn active Filipino users every month. Its crackdown on the “spam network” in the Philippines came more than five months before the midterm elections in May next year.
Facebook said it has more than 20,000 people monitoring content posted on its platform and has invested in advanced technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to hasten detection of bad behaviour online.
In a news conference, Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said Facebook’s removal of spammy accounts of some administration supporters did “not necessarily” reflect the kind of supporters that the president have.
“Facebook has had its own rules and regulations. If they’re implementing that, then that’s their own rule,” Panelo told reporters. “Now if the concern is that there will be no more avenues, there are so many avenues, we have Twitter, Instagram and many others where advocates can express themselves in support of this administration,” he added.
Facebook said 4.8mn followed at least one of the spammy pages, which used politics and entertainment to generate traffic.
“We don’t want this kind of behaviour on Facebook — and we’re investing heavily in both people and technology to keep bad content off our services,” Facebook said.
Last week, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) reported that personal data of 755,973 Filipino Facebook users may have been compromised during a recent data breach.
The NPC ordered Facebook to provide identity theft and phishing insurance for affected Filipino users or establish a help desk centre for Filipino data subjects on privacy related matters concerning Facebook within six months.