AFP and PNP reject pro-Duterte accounts closed by Facebook

MANILA, Philippines – Facebook has removed more than 100 bogus national accounts and pages linked to the Philippine military and police that target activists and dissidents, and more than 150 people based in China supporting President Rodrigo Duterte and the possible presidential candidacy of his daughter. The mayor of the city of Davao, Sara Duterte.

In separate statements on Wednesday, the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines repudiated the alleged fake social media accounts linked to them.

Malacañang said the social media giant should be prudent when deleting accounts to make sure it is not biased.

At an online press conference Tuesday night, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said the fake accounts had engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB), which violated its community standards.

Facebook said the first batch of fake accounts, which it traced to southeast China’s coastal province of Fujian, focused more on Southeast Asia, with posts written in Chinese, Filipino and English.

He said he removed 155 accounts, 11 pages, nine groups and six Instagram accounts related to criticism of the Rappler news site, support for the president and his daughter’s possible run in the 2022 presidential election, and Beijing’s interests in the Western Philippine Sea and Hong. Kong.

Gleicher said these people in Fujian had evidently been active since at least 2018 and recently “became less focused and gained almost no followers” when they posted content both in support of and against US presidential candidate Joe Biden and President Donald Trump.

Facebook was unable to identify links from this China-based group to specific groups or individuals.

Such CIB actors engage or claim to participate in “foreign or government interference, which is coordinated inauthentic behavior carried out on behalf of a foreign or government actor,” Gleicher said.

Gleicher said groups in the Philippines and China also used “deceptive methods.”

“For this reason, we see that these networks use pages that do not completely reveal who is behind them. The interaction patterns they can have with these accounts are not only the fact that they are false, but the way they use the accounts to improve their content, “he added.

‘Great Firewall’

The account holders would have had to circumvent the “Great Firewall” of China, which prohibits the US social network. Gleicher said the people managing the pages posed as locals at the locations they pointed to and tried to hide their locations using virtual private network software.

He said the fake Philippine accounts consisted of 57 Facebook accounts, 31 pages, and 20 Instagram accounts. The sites had more than 276,000 followers on Facebook and 55,000 on Instagram. About $ 1,100 has been spent on Facebook ads, he said.

Terrorism Act, ABS-CBN

The Philippine accounts appear to have been part of the systematic propaganda against “communism, youth activists and the opposition, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military wing, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines,” Facebook said.

The operation appears to have escalated between 2019 and 2020, coinciding with the debate over, among other things, a pending counter-terrorism law at the time, increased Chinese aggression in the Western Philippine Sea, and the closure of the ABS-CBN network, He said. .

“We are attributing this network to the Philippine army and police. In particular, we found links between, behind this network connected to both organizations and people associated with those organizations, ”said Gleicher.

He added that “the people behind this activity tried to hide their identities,” but Facebook was still able to establish their connections.

Facebook said these accounts were discovered during its regular investigations of CIB, which it broadly defines as the use of fake accounts for, among other reasons, “artificially boosting the popularity of content.”

‘Damnation evidence’

In a statement, the human rights group Karapatan, one of the organizations often linked to communist insurgents and vilified by the military and police, said the shootdown was “compelling evidence of state-sponsored online attacks, labeled red and massive deception on social media. ” media platform “.

Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said the group had written to Facebook and the Human Rights Commission in June, urging them to investigate the red label online, when duplicate accounts also emerged.

“These forms of misinformation and lies online have put the rights, lives and safety of human rights defenders, and even ordinary people, at serious risk of expressing dissent against the government’s anti-popular policies. However, the most pressing question before us now is: Was taxpayer money used to fund these Facebook accounts? ” she said.

Bayan Muna’s representative, Carlos Isagani Zárate, another victim of the red label, said the Chamber should also investigate these accounts, as public funds could have been used to finance these operations.

Disapproval of the PNP

He noted that the operations of these accounts intensified when the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) was “in full swing.”

In a statement, General Camilo Cascolan, head of the PNP, said that all official Facebook pages of the PNP and its units “continue to meet the standards and continue to serve their purpose throughout these objectives.”

“However, we respect the administrative actions taken by Facebook on what they perceive as violations of their terms of use,” he said.

“All comments and opinions from individual staff, associations and sector groups on matters not related to the activities of the organization are hereby disallowed by the PNP as unofficial and unauthorized,” said Cascolan.

In a separate statement, Maj. Gen. Edgard Arevalo, an army spokesman, said that all of the military’s social media accounts were still “up and running” and that Facebook had not shut down any.

General Gilbert Gapay, AFP’s chief of staff, said that Facebook’s action “led us to review the personal accounts of our staff and remind them of policies and etiquette, what should and should not be posted on social media. “.

Gapay and other military officials met with executives from Facebook Philippines on Wednesday afternoon, but details of the meeting were not immediately available.

In reaction to the crackdown, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Malacañang was leaving the removal of the fake accounts to “good judgment and discretion” by Facebook.

“We hope that the social media giant will act prudently in all its actions to eliminate any doubt of bias given its power, influence and reach,” said Roque.

—With reports from Leila B. Salaverria, Nestor Corrales, Melvin Gascon and AFP

Read next

EDITOR’S SELECTION

MOST READ