FB urged to exercise restraint in purging accounts ahead of polls

MANILA – A party-list lawmaker on Wednesday urged social media giant Facebook to exercise “greater restraint” in disabling the accounts of individuals actively involved in the political campaign activities of candidates for the upcoming May 9 polls.

Anakalusugan Rep. Mike Defensor made the statement after the Facebook account of lawyer Vic Rodriguez, the spokesperson of presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., was temporarily suspended, then later restored, for allegedly violating community standards.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said Rodriguez’s account had been “incorrectly flagged as an imposter account.”

Defensor said a foreign company like Facebook may be accused of “meddling” in the elections, which is a sovereign exercise, in favor of a candidate.

He also said Facebook could be accused “of suppressing free speech, and of imposing its own political values on others.”

He is convinced that rivals of Marcos caused the account suspension of his spokesperson.

“Groups working for Marcos Jr.’s opponents instigated a barrage of bogus complaints against Rodriguez’s FB account, which was suspended because of the arbitrariness of the social media platform’s content moderators,” he said.

He said Facebook’s admission that Rodriguez’s account was flagged by mistake has also betrayed the vulnerability of the social media platform’s moderators to “undue influence by partisan political activities”.

“Considering that FB’s moderators are not even employees of the social media giant – but work for outsourcing companies contracted to perform the job – they may be susceptible to political manipulation one way or the other,” he said.

In a Viber message on Tuesday, Rodriguez claimed his Facebook account was suspended because he was “for Bongbong Marcos”.

“FB (Facebook)/Meta suspended my account because I am for Bongbong Marcos. This is censorship of the highest degree and interference on a sovereign act,” he said.

The National Press Club of the Philippines (NPC) president Paul Gutierrez, meanwhile, described Facebook’s move as a “curtailment” of the right to freedom of expression.

“We condemn the deplorable act of FB/Meta in suspending the Facebook account of BBM’s chief of staff and spokesperson where he posts/publishes official statements for the consumption of the media and the public at large,” Gutierrez said.

He noted that the suspension of Gutierrez’ account is “completely senseless censorship, a violation of the bill of our Bill of Rights and a gross interference in our domestic affairs”.

Gutierrez said Rodriguez’s Facebook account suspension is just the latest in the series of “neo-fascist method of large-scale censorship” being used by the US-based company to influence the upcoming May 9 polls.

Gutierrez said since last week, Facebook started flagging and blocking many public platform accounts, including those of National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon and the Philippine News Agency, among others.