{"id":150479,"date":"2018-02-01T03:43:45","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T08:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=150479"},"modified":"2018-02-01T03:43:45","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T08:43:45","slug":"poe-denies-banning-facebook-in-ph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/02\/01\/poe-denies-banning-facebook-in-ph\/","title":{"rendered":"Poe denies banning Facebook in PH"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: Sen. Grace Poe (Photo: Senate of the Philippines\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA, Philippines \u2014 Senator Grace Poe on Thursday denied rumors that she is pushing to ban Facebook in the country.<\/p>\n

In a television interview, Poe, chairperson ng Senate committee on public information and mass media, said that this news spreading on the internet is a form of \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is fake news. That is not true. First of all, that’s counterproductive\u2026wrong. That is really a disinformation,\u201d Poe said in mix Filipino and English.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are fighting for these products of fake news factories. Twisting the truth is one big industry in the Philippines,\u201d the office of Poe said in Filipino in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n

In the continuation of the Senate hearing on the supposed proliferation of \u201cfake news\u201d in the country, the lady senator asked a law expert about the extent of the government’s reach in blocking hate speech and expressions online that border on criminal liability.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot that we’re going to do this. I’ll be the first to disagree if they do. But let’s say, can you block a particular company like Facebook from being accessed in the Philippines? Of course, that would spark a revolution and we know that,\u201d Poe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what I’m saying is this: They’re banking on their popularity but we should also assert their accountability to us,” Poe had said, in reference to the accountability of the social media giant for its failure to address offensive speech,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The senator said the \u201ctrending\u201d Facebook video which had been linked to the plan of the senator to ban Facebook use was made to discredit her and the ongoing hearings on the spread of fake news.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t control what will appear on social media. I am on Facebook, even my children are on Facebook, a lot of our countrymen are using news from Facebook,\u201d Poe said.<\/p>\n

Poe urged the public to examine the information they receive and to \u201ccross-check\u201d facts from lies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be able to inform the citizens that they should be able to cross-check information that they get online. We’ve come up also with our own video of the proceedings because it was spliced,\u201d the senator said.<\/p>\n

If you’re conscientious enough and you really want to find the truth,…because if you don\u2019t want to know the truth then it\u2019s easy to forget that,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

She also vowed to oblige Facebook executives to attend the next hearing to discuss the “algorithms” that it uses to control what information appears in a user’s news feed.<\/p>\n

“What we’re trying to do is how we can encourage Facebook to be able to cooperate with us,” Poe emphasized, adding that governments in the European Union have initiated a crackdown to fight fake news and compelled social media sites to flag illegal, hateful, defamatory and racist expressions within 24 hours,\u201d Poe said.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Poe underlined media and information literacy as the solution to the spread of fake news and false information.<\/p>\n

Despite saying that the public wouldn\u2019t be able to distinguish \u201ctrue news\u201d if there\u2019s no \u201cfake news,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque on Wednesday defended that he is not encouraging the spread of fake news in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA, Philippines \u2014 Senator Grace Poe on Thursday denied rumors that she is pushing to ban Facebook in the country. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":146586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[444,12568,31449,12146],"class_list":["post-150479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-facebook","tag-fake-news","tag-presidential-spokesperson-harry-roque","tag-senator-grace-poe","mauthors-carlo-jacob-molina","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}