Controlling social media
There were two rather disturbing pieces of news last week. DICT urged Congress to require social media platforms to secure a congressional franchise. The other is that the government imposed an outright ban on a popular platform, only to have it lifted within hours.
DICT, through its Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), banned the messaging platform Discord through an order issued by NTC last Thursday. The CICC issued the directive after claiming that online platforms are being used to spread violent extremist ideologies and exploit minors.
Within hours, DICT and CICC apologized for the haphazard ban. A CICC official claimed they thought Discord was only a gaming platform and didn’t realize it was being used by businesses and schools. Sorry na lang daw, kasi hindi sila techy… law enforcement lang daw.
Also under serious threat of government action is Meta, with top officials warning that they are considering legal action and a possible nationwide ban on Facebook.
CICC Undersecretary Renato Paraiso has warned that because the government lacks the technical ability to surgically block individual pieces of content, a total nationwide geo-block of Facebook is on the table if compliance fails.
Are cavemen running the DICT? They are expected to have a better understanding of digital technology.
You get a nagging fear that this may just be the beginning. Eventually, they will try to establish something like the Great Firewall of China.
There is no doubt that we must protect children and national security. But outright bans without careful investigation are very disturbing to personal freedom as well as to the right of people to do legitimate business.
Dr. Jose Ramon Albert, a respected academic at PIDS, had this very insightful reaction to what happened:
“You begin to understand why cybercrime thrives and innovation does not when the DICT and the CICC ban Discord, only to lift the ban a few hours later. A ban imposed and reversed within the same day is not policy; it is improvisation.
“It tells us that no one bothered to do their homework, ask basic questions beforehand: how many legitimate users would be cut off, whether a block could even be enforced when any teenager can bypass it with a VPN and whether the criminals being targeted would simply move to Telegram or another app by nightfall.”
As for the threat against Meta, we are lucky Meta has sought to de-escalate a confrontation with DICT. But what if Meta decided to ignore DICT? To save face, DICT shuts it down. All hell will break loose.
Meta is Facebook. Facebook is so deeply entrenched in the Philippines that for a vast majority of Filipinos (especially OFW families), it effectively is the internet. Our country’s social, commercial and political infrastructures are completely built around this platform.
Out of roughly 98 million internet users in the Philippines, an astounding 94.9 percent use Facebook. Our top two most-used digital platforms are Facebook and its companion app, Messenger.
I guess it is scary that Meta controls the primary communication system of the nation. Filipinos use Facebook to look up news, businesses and government announcements. If information does not exist on Facebook, for many users, it virtually does not exist.
It is also unlikely that Meta will agree to get a congressional franchise. Will our government block Meta? That would effectively paralyze daily communication and micro-commerce across the entire archipelago. Banning Meta would hurt us more than it would hurt them.
It is estimated that Meta earns between P80 billion and P90 billion (roughly $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion) annually from the Philippine market. But financially, we are a drop in the bucket for a conglomerate that brought in $201 billion globally in 2025.
Meta has resisted other governments. Recall that Meta dropped and blocked news content in Australia during a massive standoff, and they did the exact same thing in Canada. These incidents show how Meta handles governments that try to force them into financial or regulatory corners.
Because the Philippines represents less than one percent of its global earnings, Meta can threaten market withdrawal rather than agree to a heavily restricted or politicized congressional franchise.
Requiring social media platforms to secure a congressional franchise is also worrisome for Filipinos in terms of its impact on our freedom of expression. We all know what happened to ABS-CBN.
Forcing social media companies to secure political approval from Congress opens the door to heavy-handed censorship, weaponized content moderation and infringement on free expression, not to mention extortion. We know that the granting of franchises is a very potent corruption source in Congress.
Social media has democratized freedom of the press and requiring a politicized franchise destroys that.
Besides, social media operates on global cloud infrastructure. Enforcing penalties on borderless internet entities will be challenging.
We don’t want to be like India, which frequently uses geo-blocking to force X (Twitter), Facebook and YouTube to remove content or suspend accounts critical of Prime Minister Modi and his government.
But it isn’t as if our government isn’t trying. Reddit, another socmed platform, reported that they have rejected NBI and PNP requests to take down posts supposedly defaming politicians. Reddit said they saw no rule violation and the contents complained “involved criticism of public figures, claims of their involvement in corruption and general commentary on newsworthy events.”
It is a fact that many social media users are spreading fake news. But that seems to be a tolerable price to pay to preserve our right to speak out. We just have to constantly teach our people how to discern fake news.
Actually, DICT needs more competence with digital technology. Even the e-Travel app required for incoming and outgoing international passengers is cumbersome, difficult to use compared to the ones of Singapore and Malaysia.
They made us register our phone SIMs to catch scams but the scammers are busier than ever. Now DICT wants to mess up social media?
Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco
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