By Brian Campued
The House of Representatives Tri-Committee—composed of the Committees on Public Order and Safety, on Public Information, and on Information and Communications Technology—issued contempt citations against social media personalities Lorraine Badoy, Jeffrey Celiz, Mark Anthony Lopez, and Sass Rogando Sasot in contempt during the panel’s fourth hearing on the proliferation of online disinformation on Tuesday.
Former National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) officials Badoy and Celiz and blogger Sasot will be detained indefinitely in the House premises for repeatedly snubbing the hearings.
Abang Lingkod Party-list Rep. Joseph Stephen Paduano stressed that the three personalities violated Section 11, Paragraph A of the House Rules of Procedure Governing Inquiries in Aid of Legislation for their “refusal without legal excuse to obey summons.”
Paduano also asked the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to inform the panel on the whereabouts and travel records of the said individuals.
Meanwhile, Lopez was cited for “undue interference in the conduct of proceedings” (Section 11, Paragraph F)—stemming from his Facebook post attacking the House panel after the previous hearing. The blogger will be detained in House premises for 10 days.
“I already warned all those resource persons that be cautious not to issue statements maligning, attacking the ongoing investigation,” Paduano said in his motion.
Measures vs. fake news in place, Meta assures
During the House probe, social media giant Meta assured that they have measures in place to combat misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and online scams.
Meta’s Director of Public Policy for Southeast Asia, Dr. Rafael Frankel, said a “three-pronged approach” is being implemented to treat misinformation being proliferated on their platforms.
“Number one, we remove the most harmful misinformation that can lead to offline physical violence. Number two, we reduce the distribution of misinformation if it is found to be false by one of our third-party fact-checkers and then we will reduce that misinformation on our platforms, so that people are less likely to engage with it; and number three is we seek to inform if people have engaged with misinformation on our platform—we want them to be informed,” Frankel explained. (with report from Mela Lesmoras / PTV News)
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