SENATOR Grace Poe on Thursday described as “fake news“ the talk that she is proposing to ban Facebook in the country.
“That’s fake news. That’s not true,” Poe said in a television interview.
“First of all, that’s counterproductive. It’s wrong. That’s disinformation.”
While the “trending” Facebook video”•which had been spliced to make it appear that the senator wanted to ban Facebook”•was made to discredit her and the ongoing hearings on the proliferation of fake news, Poe said they could not stop what was being spread online.
“Those that came out [in the social media], of course, we will not prevent them. I am also on Facebook, even my children. Many of our countrymen get their news from Facebook,” Poe said.
During the hearing on Jan. 30, Poe was asking a law expert about the extent of the government’s reach in blocking hate speech and expressions online that bordered on criminal liability.
“Not that we’re going to do this. I’ll be the first to disagree if they do,” said Poe, head of the Senate committee on mass media and public information, which has been conducting a Senate inquiry on fake news.
“But let’s say, can you block a particular company like Facebook from being accessed in the Philippines?” she said.
“Of course, that would spark a revolution and we know that. But 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.
She appealed to netizens to make a critical examination of the information they receive and “cross-check” facts from lies.
“We should be able to inform the citizens that they should be able to cross-check information that they get online,” Poe said.
Poe wants to compel the the attendance of Facebook executives in the next hearing to discuss the “algorithms” that they use to control what information appears in a user’s news feed.
“What we’re trying to do is how we can encourage Facebook to be able to cooperate with us,” Poe said.
She added the governments in the European Union had initiated a crackdown to fight fake news and compel social media sites to flag illegal, hateful, defamatory and racist expressions within 24 hours.