Año To Meet Facebook Execs About Deleted Pro-Gov’t Pages
AÑO TO MEET FACEBOOK EXECS – Interior Secretary Eduardo Año has set up a meeting with Facebook executives next week regarding the deleted China-backed pro-government accounts on the platform.
Last month, Facebook deleted over 150 pages, accounts, and groups that were primarily pro-government or pro-Duterte. According to Facebook’s cybersecurity chief, the accounts were removed due to coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.
Upon Investigating the issue, Facebook also found that the pages were all linked back to a province from China. Among the pages deleted was also active on red-tagging activists and critics of the government, some of which were linked to the high-ranking military and police officials.
Since then, several government officials have condemned Facebook’s decisions and called it a breach of freedom of speech. In lieu of this, Año said he would meet with Facebook in order to come up with a solution to the issue.
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According to Año, the pages were taken down without prior consultation. Additionally, he emphasized that the admins of the pages were not given due process.
Furthermore, Año believes that Facebook was not transparent regarding the pages it tagged as having “coordinated inauthentic behavior”. Along with this, he lamented how Facebook deleted military accounts but not those of political and armed groups.
Based on an article from GMA, Año said:
[Facebook] failed to root out the bots, or automated accounts, that are being maintained by political and armed groups that are actively seeking to overthrow duly constituted authority in the country
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