Malacañang unfazed by removal of pro-Duterte pages from Facebook

FILE: Presidential Spokesperson and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Secretary Salvador S. Panelo holds a press briefing for the Malacañang Press Corps (MPC) at the New Executive Building (NEB) in Malacañang. (Photo: Office of the Presidential Spokesperson/Facebook)

Malacañang was unfazed by Facebook’s decision to remove online pages and accounts from the Philippines, including those that supports President Rodrigo Duterte or pro-Duterte pages, from its platform for violating its spam and authenticity policies.

Commenting on the social media platform’s move, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo acknowledged that as a private company, Facebook has the right to impose their own terms and policies that users should comply with.

“Facebook must have its rules and regulations. If they are implementing that, then that’s their own rule,” Panelo said in a press briefing on Tuesday, October 23.

“If the concern is there will be no more avenues, there are so many. We have Twitter, Instagram, and so many others where the advocates can express themselves in support of this administration,” he continued.

Facebook, on Monday, announced that it has shutdown a total of 95 pages and 39 accounts in the Philippines, saying that these were “encouraging people to visit low quality websites that contain little substantive content and are full of disruptive ads.”

Among those pages removed were Duterte Media, Duterte sa Pagbabago BUKAS, DDS, Duterte Phenomenon, and DU30 Trending News. A page named Manang Imee which supports Ilocos Norte Governor Maria Imelda Josefa “Imee” Marcos was also deleted from Facebook.

Other pages which also “sharing links to the same advertising click farms off Facebook” were as follows: Hot Babes, News Media Trends, Bossing Vic, Pilipinas Daily News, Like and Win, and Karlo ang Probinsiyano.

“We use reports from our community and technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect bad behavior and take action more quickly,” Facebook said.

“We don’t want this kind of behavior on Facebook — and we’re investing heavily in both people and technology to keep bad content off our services,” it added.

Calling this takedown as a small step to the “right direction,” Facebook stressed that it will continue hunting down more bad content on their site.