Facebook denies ‘online-mob’

MANILA, Philippines – Social media giant Facebook said it has not monitored high volumes of reporting to suppress political content among users in the Philippines.

“Our investigation into recent reports of account or content restrictions in the Philippines has revealed no evidence of high volumes of reporting to suppress political content,” Facebook said in a statement.

“We have clarified that one piece of content was mistakenly removed and has since been restored. When we have millions of reports to review each week, mistakes do happen. Once we’re alerted to errors we quickly act to resolve them, and conduct regular audits and quality assessments to help prevent them from happening again,” it added.

Facebook also noted that multiple reports will not matter on the decision to take down or retain a post or account.

“In order to maintain an open and safe environment on Facebook, we have global community standards that describe what is and is not allowed on our service. Anyone can report content to us if they think it goes against our standards,” the company said.

“It doesn’t matter how many times a piece of content is reported, it will be treated the same. One report is enough to take down content if it violates our policies, and multiple reports will not lead to the removal of content if it meets our standards,” the firm added.

The social media giant issued the statement following reports that some posts critical of president-elect Rodrigo Duterte and the family of defeated vice presidential candidate Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have been taken down.

It also detailed what happened to the accounts that experienced service interruptions, including that of journalists Ed Lingao and Inday Espina-Varona.

On the takedown of the post of Lingao, which criticized the proposal of Duterte to bury the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, Facebook said the post was incorrectly removed and has since been restored.

The restriction imposed on Espina-Varona, meanwhile, was triggered by an automated security feature and not a community report. 

Various critics of Duterte and Marcos have claimed to be subject of an “online mob” of supporters who report their posts or accounts.

Juan Nationalist, a Facebook page that has posted numerous criticisms against Duterte, was shut down last weekend supposedly due to such reports.