Malaya Movement USA calls on Facebook and Meta Platforms to take immediate action in light of the upcoming elections in the Philippines and the red-tagging. Concrete and swift steps must be taken in order to mitigate the spread of disinformation and misinformation during the election season in the Philippines, and to prevent further endangerment of individuals through the use of terror-tagging via Facebook.

In Meta’s own investigations as outlined in the Human Rights Impacts Assessment [HRIA], they have acknowledged the spread of disinformation across their platform to influence elections. “It is widely believed that disinformation campaigns were organized and funded by Duterte and his political supporters.” The platform played a key role in the rise of Duterte in the 2016 elections, and with less than 100 days until the elections, it is imperative that Facebook take action.

The platform has been used and abused by the Duterte regime through its widespread disinformation campaign. Members of Malaya Movement USA and members of the Filipino community at large in the US have experienced targeted attacks from the Duterte regime via official Facebook pages and through Duterte’s most rabid supporters. The history of terror-tagging leading to the extrajudicial killings of human rights defenders, like in the case of Zara Alvarez​​, is undeniable.

The latest example of this is through the Filipino-Americans against Crime and Terrorism Facebook page that has, since its inception, turned their online terror-tagging to on-the-ground smear campaigns in the Northeast attacking US-based organizations. This group has seen support from the Philippine Government, which posted a blog on their website about their protest.

Mere recognition of these incidents as reported in the HRIA is not enough. We urge Meta to take the following actions:

• Ramp up efforts to enforce policies against disinformation, especially during the 2022 Philippine Elections season, and hire more content moderators and fact checkers fluent in the Filipino language. Ensure transparency on how Meta handles issues on disinformation on its platforms.

• Commit to uphold community standards and shut down pages with a history of terror-tagging and spreading of disinformation permanently; immediately take down posts that mislabels and terror-tags individuals and organizations

• Support third party efforts for fact-checking and bolster Meta’s NEQ (news ecosystem quality) to favor news publishers with established track records for fact checking.

• Empower stakeholders. Facebook should inform users and give them more context whenever they see political or issue-based content. Officials from Facebook should meet, publicly and transparently, with stakeholders (media, civil society, and academe) to disclose how they plan to tackle election-related disinformation.