Censorship not FB’s job

Patrons of Daily Tribune complained yesterday that a 28 July report headlined “De Lima arraigned on drug charges” written by senior reporter Mario J. Mallari was restricted for sharing by Facebook (FB) for about two hours, which was a move of the social media giant that baffled the editors of the newspaper.

The move of FB, despite its being temporary, was tantamount to censorship as it suppressed a Daily Tribune story from reaching its readers. Daily Tribune’s primary function as a daily broadsheet is the dissemination of news.

Readers who tried to share the De Lima story were surprised with the FB alert saying “Warning: This message contains blocked content. Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.”

A check on FB said “Temporary blocks from sharing posts on FB can happen if you’ve posted a lot in a short amount of time; shared posts were marked as unwelcome and if something is shared that goes against our Community Standards.”

Facebook said “though we can’t lift the block early, you can still view posts in your News Feed at any time.”

“We realize that most people who get temporary blocks just didn’t know about our sharing policies. To avoid blocks like this in the future, the best thing you can do is review our Community Standards,” FB said.

A check on the social media outfit’s Community Standards said FB can take action against reports of “hate speech, violence and graphic content, adult nudity and sexual activity and cruel and insensitive posts.” None of the stated criteria appears to apply to the De Lima story which was a straight recounting of the detained senator’s arraignment at the Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court last 27 July.

The Daily Tribune implements extensive vetting on the stories it publishes to assure fair reporting and prevent what is termed as fake news. The steps the newspaper takes are even far stricter than the unverified reporting that FB accepts from mostly anonymous sources that become the basis of suspending an account or blocking of posted messages.

It was also noted by editors that other newspapers carried the same De Lima story but was not subjected to the FB restriction.

It was apparent that reports submitted to FB that resulted in the temporary blocking of the article were triggered by an earlier story detailing a timeline on De Lima’s descent into a being protector of the drugs trade inside the National Bilibid Prison and her subsequent arrest.

That story was considered by the detained senator’s supporters as anticlimactic since it came out on the same day that Liberal International awarded De Lima with the “Prize for Freedom” for supposedly championing human rights, a citation that was well publicized by her Liberal Party.

FB has as fact-checkers Agence France Presse (AFP) Philippines, Rappler and Verafiles. Aside from AFP, the two other outfits have been questioned as harboring leanings hardly considered as objective.

Editors of the newspaper contacted AFP which asked that it be provided with a link on the blocked page as it promised to contact FB.

Daily Tribune has been a newspaper for the past 18 years that speaks of the credibility it has built over the years for it to contend with third-party censors and fact-checkers whose functions seem to conflict with the right to information that the Constitution guarantees.

The FB restriction, likely aided by the yellow supporters of De Lima, was temporary but the fact it did impede the Daily Tribune’s job of giving the public factual news, which is sacred in any democracy, makes the action worrisome.

The social media giant’s arbitrary role in stopping information, egged on by De Lima’s supporters, on the pretext of having a “content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive” reminds one of the Big Brother character in a George Orwell book warning about a totalitarian system brought about by technology.