President Duterte criticized Facebook on Monday says they cannot stop him from promoting his government objectives in the country.
This happened after the removal of pages that belongs to the groups linked to the Philippine Military, promoting information violating the Facebook policy against foreign interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of foreign or government entities.
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The social media suspended hundreds of accounts and pages connected to the network widely followed accounts based in the Philippines.
But the military denies links to fake accounts taken down the last few days.
“What’s the purpose of you being here if government itself…”
“Facebook listen to me; we allow you operate here hoping that you could help us also. Now if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country?”
Facebook refuses to comment.
Is it really possible to block Facebook?
Technically speaking, Yes!
Some countries around the globe blocked Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms including the biggest search engine, Google. They have some extensive firewalls that blocked apps and websites, keyword filtering, and censoring of social media.
Any content coming from a website and apps to your devices has to travel through your Internet Service Providers (ISPs), where the filtering rules and censorship take place. Think of this, for example, the ISPs created a bridge connecting from one place to another, and they are charging you every time you pass by. Each car “or website” has a unique-id like your license plate. If the government tells the ISPs to filter out all or blocked the list of unique-ids not to pass through the bridge, then the ISPs will apply configurations on their servers.
This happened before when the government is ordering the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to child pornography pursuant to Republic Act (RA) 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009, RA 7925.
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In recent years, many social media sites have come under scrutiny for how they handle false information and hate speech across its platform. Since then, Facebook has deleted thousands of active false accounts and pages every year. (READ: Black Mirrored: A Surge of false Facebook identity)
The current administration also has previously accused of employing “bots” and paid “trolls” to take down commentary on Facebook.
