AFP wants ‘defense’ accounts on Facebook

The Philippine Armed Forces want Facebook to restore the accounts of private promilitarian “advocacy” groups that were removed by the social media giant for violating its standards, military spokesman Major General Edgard Arevalo said Thursday.

Arevalo said Gen. Gilbert Gapay, the chief of staff, asked Facebook’s head of public policy in the Philippines, Clare Amador, in a meeting on Wednesday if they could specifically restore the Hands Off Our Children (HOOC) page.

He did not identify the other groups, saying only that they were “of similar defenses such as the prevention of child exploitation and trafficking of minors, and the fight against terrorism.”

Arévalo said that Gapay urged Amador and his team to “investigate the process they observe when eliminating accounts unilaterally and that they take due account of the cause that the account holder defends to eliminate doubts that FB is partisan.”

Facebook announced Tuesday that it had removed more than 100 fake accounts and pages linked to the Philippine military and police that targeted activists and dissidents, and more than 150 people based in China who supported President Duterte and his daughter’s possible presidential candidacy. , Davao. Mayor of the city Sara Duterte.

Facebook said these accounts, whose true owners were not fully disclosed, had engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” in violation of its community standards. This is broadly defined as the use of fake accounts for, among other purposes, “artificially increasing the popularity of content.”

‘Demonize the leftists’

The promilitarian accounts appear to have been part of a 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. Its operation escalated between 2019 and 2020, coinciding with the debate over, among other things, the then-pending counter-terrorism law, increased Chinese aggression in the Western Philippine Sea and the closure of the ABS-CBN network, it said.

The HOOC page was found to have been managed by Army Capt. Alexandre Cabales, head of the Army Social Media Center.

The US-based Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (DFRLab) discovered that Cabales was also the operator of a fake account network that had been “demonizing leftists and youth organizations” and “red-labeling the president’s critics. “

Army defends the captain

Speaking to the Inquirer by phone, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Ramon Zagala condemned the DFRLab’s “radical” statement against Cabales and called for his base to make accusations against the officer.

“We will not tolerate any irregularities or inaccurate information and we are sure that Captain Cabales is not doing that. That is why we are alarmed. If they have evidence, I think they should present it or Facebook should let us know, ”he said.

Zagala said that Cabales told him that he had not published “anything inaccurate” and that HOOC was a group of “parents looking for their children who were recruited by the New People’s Army.”

“This is a legitimate defense,” he said, adding that it was the parents who asked Cabales to be the administrator of the page.

Zabala said the HOOC was not an official AFP page, but that the group’s defense “is fine for us.”

“We are conducting an investigation if there is any crime,” said Zagala. “In the past, we have punished people who committed crimes in the Army when it comes to social media, so this is something we take seriously.”

Troll army ‘admission’

Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas said Gapay’s request to restore the HOOC page was a “clear admission” by AFP to maintain an “army of trolls.”

Bayan Muna’s representative, Ferdinand Gaite, said that the “‘Duterte Troll Army’, some of whom are literally soldiers of the Armed Forces”, was used to “spread lies, disinformation and slander and terrorist labels that threaten life” .

“General Gapay should also stop misrepresenting his sponsored pages and fake accounts as belonging to advocacy groups, because clearly spreading malicious lies, hoaxes and labeling of life-threatening terrorists are not advocates,” he said.

Brosas backed calls for Congress to analyze the payrolls and intelligence spending of the AFP and the Philippine National Police to determine how much funds were “wasted on so-called communications specialists who are essentially trolls.”

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque defended government officials and employees who may have Facebook or other social media accounts, saying that “even government officials have freedom of expression.”

“What is prohibited is that it be done in official media maintained by the Republic of the Philippines,” he said.

I distrust the ‘impunity’ of FB

Amid the current furor, a social media watcher said Facebook should also be held accountable for any misinformation on its platform that threatens democracies.

“While most criticism will focus on those responsible for this coordinated disinformation campaign, we are also concerned that Facebook will get away with it once again,” said Red Tani, director of communications and advocacy for EngageMedia, a private company media and technology industry. Pacific organization focused on digital rights.

“[We] We must also demand more responsibility and proactivity from Facebook and other social media platforms, and when they fail, we must also demand accountability, ”he said.

Tani cited a 2018 report in which Facebook admitted that its platform was used to incite the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.

But two years later, groups that incite violence against activists and seek to silence critics of the government were allowed to use the platform until independent analysts such as DFRLab and the University of Oxford came to their attention.

Popularity of the ‘artificial’ Du30

“Until Facebook and other corporate social media platforms take responsibility, we must continue to demand transparency and accountability when they fail to act,” he added.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), one of the main targets of the promilitary Facebook accounts, said the takedowns showed that Duterte’s popularity was artificially created using people’s money, which it said was also used to “promoting fascism and blind idolatry of Duterte”.

“Now it is becoming clear that the so-called Duterte Diehard Supporters are a fabricated trend spawned by a state-funded troll farm of hundreds of Facebook accounts and other government-controlled social networks online,” the said in a statement. Thursday.

WITH REPORTS FROM MELVIN GASCON, JULIE M. AURELIO, KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING AND JIGGER J. JERUSALEM

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