Shots in the dark

Shots in the dark | Daily Tribune

The demand came amid growing concern over online grooming, radicalization, and what authorities call nihilistic violent extremism following a series of school shootings.

Let me say this upfront: Those concerns are legitimate. If there is credible evidence that bad actors are using online communities to groom children, recruit them into violent groups or encourage attacks, the government absolutely should act.

It should demand cooperation from platforms. It should insist on faster response mechanisms, better age safeguards and clear channels for law enforcement. But there is a fairly large gap between acting decisively and shooting blindly.

Discord is not just a gaming chatroom. Filipinos use it for freelance work, virtual-assistant communities, small businesses, school organizations, study groups and ordinary communication. Former DICT officials and users quickly pointed this out after the ban.

Then came the truly astonishing part. The CICC itself admitted that it had not fully understood how extensively Filipinos were using Discord for business and education.

Yes, you read that right. The government agency that had just blocked access to an entire digital platform admitted that it had not bothered to determine how Filipinos actually used that platform before pulling the plug. This was not some obscure service with a handful of local users. It was a platform embedded in the daily work and communication of thousands of Filipinos.

Discord was restored the following day after government officials met with company representatives and obtained commitments on child safety measures and cooperation with authorities. The CICC apologized for the inconvenience. None of this makes the episode less troubling.

Critics have called the move “performative,” and it is easy to see why. A blanket ban is highly visible. The government can point to it and say: Look, we are doing something.

The harder and more effective work is less dramatic. Identify the communities where recruitment is happening. Trace the people doing it. Work with platforms to remove them. Improve reporting systems. Build expertise inside the government that actually understands how these digital spaces operate. Then prosecute the people harming children. That takes knowledge, patience and competence.

The Discord fiasco instead suggests a regulator reaching for the biggest switch it could find before first understanding what that switch actually controlled. Bad actors can migrate to another platform, use VPNs, create new accounts or simply move underground.

Meanwhile, legitimate users who depend on the service for work or school bear the immediate cost.

And that raises a larger question that cannot simply disappear because Discord came back online: Are the people leading our digital regulators actually equipped to regulate the digital world?

The DICT is increasingly being asked to deal with artificial intelligence, social media, online communities, cybersecurity and digital commerce, all of which play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. These are complex fields moving at extraordinary speed. Policy mistakes can disrupt businesses, education, communication and even basic rights with the push of a button.

If the leadership of the agencies responsible for this work can impose a nationwide platform ban without first knowing how that platform is actually used, then the problem is no longer merely one bad decision. It is a competence problem.

Congress and the Executive should take a hard look at what happened, how the decision was made, who approved it and whether the present DICT leadership has the expertise and judgment necessary for the responsibilities it now carries.

Because the next mistake may not be one easily fixed by lifting an ill-advised ban and a sheepish “mea culpa.”

The country’s digital future must be entrusted to those with both clear eyes and a clearer vision, not to those seemingly taking shots in the dark.