FB move vs inauthentic online behavior justified

MANILA, Philippines — The coordinated, inauthentic behavior (CIB) among Filipino account users can be considered a cybercrime and justifies their takedown by social network Facebook, a cybercrime law expert said.

In a discussion with “The Chiefs” on One News / TV5 Thursday night, lawyer JJ Disini said the falsity of information being spread or posted by a group engaging in CIB puts them on the wrong side of the Cybercrime Prevention Law.

“Coordinated... is OK. If it’s inauthen­tic, then you could theoretically be vio­lating the Cybercrime Prevention Act,” Disini said. “In the law, we have these two things, computer-related fraud and computer-related forgery.”

The two basically entail putting up false information with the intention of having people act on that information.

“So if I’m putting up false informa­tion, such as that 50 people, or a hun­dred people, are genuinely agreeing on this particular topic, right? (But) that activity’s untrue. so that’s false infor­mation, that’s false computer data,” Disini said. “I’m putting it up there in order to have somebody rely on that information.

“Arguably, I would have violated the Cybercrime Prevention Act, and that would be a cybercrime,” Disini said.

Facebook must be using AI (artificial intelligence) to detect these fake accounts created to engage in CIB, he said. – Romina Cabrera