Civic group urges transparency in use of campaign materials on social media

A group of lawyers and volunteers involved in electoral concerns sought for Congress to implement legislative measures that would compel pages on social media to become more transparent when it comes to the campaign materials they post during elections.

During a hearing of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) Executive Director Atty. Ona Caritos said that any laws meant to employ fair use of the internet during elections had to look past merely restricting content.

Caritos argued that it would be better if such provisions were focused solely on transparency, given the fact that content regulation could become a tool to suppress critics rather than being an instrument to combat organized operations against a particular candidate.

“LENTE urges caution on this and calls for transparency approaches over content regulation, the provisions most likely to work are the transparency provisions,” she stated.

The lawyer said that transparency entailed the need to disclose whether a particular content was AI-generated, a paid advertisement and the individual that commissioned thereof, the public database, and the right of reply.

“Transparency initiatives are less draconian and effective in addressing the problem of disinformation by increasing the perception of accountability in so far as suppliers of political content are concerned,” Caritos explained.

Caritos expressed that openness when it came to electoral material allowed for elections to be competitive as it granted the constitutional guarantee of “equal access opportunities” for public service as it lessened disinformation.

“Regulation of the digital campaign is not a matter of policing speech but a matter of preserving the conditions under which candidates compete on comparable terms,” she stated.

Aside from prioritizing transparency, the lawyer also noted that it was important for accounts that would be utilized for digital campaigns to be registered, including those that are not officially linked to a particular official.

The proposal reportedly stemmed from their finding during the 2022 national elections that most of the disinformation that was published came from unofficial pages.

She argued that posts on such profiles garnered low enough engagement that it escaped fact-checking sites but still reached its targeted audiences.

“Transparency initiative should be enabled by systematic and constant monitoring of social media accounts registered and unregistered developing and defining monetary methodologies and processes,” Caritos said.

In line with her position, the LENTE official said that it was important for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to form a team solely dedicated to permanently monitoring campaign material that was being posted online.

With the help of Comelec, Caritos also expressed the need for candidates to have the equal opportunity to address election disinformation that was directly pitted against them.

Caritos likewise pushed for an additional budget to be allocated for the electoral body to ensure that individuals placed in the team were compensated for their work.

If such provisions were passed, the lawyer said that accountability had to be primarily lodged on social media platforms where the posts were publicized, in order for such organizations to be more active in acting against negative campaigning and other forms of disinformation.