Meta to put up office in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will establish an office in the Philippines to streamline communication with the government in taking down harmful posts, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Melvin Matibag announced yesterday.

Matibag said Meta had also committed to sharing data with the government to combat nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), which was seen as a factor in the school shootings in Tacloban City in June and Zamboanga City in August.

Government officials met with Meta’s regional executives at its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore last week.

The Philippine delegation included Matibag, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Henry Aguda, Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center executive director Aboy Paraiso and representatives from the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Department of Education, the National Telecommunications Commission and the National Privacy Commission.

“Meta would respond to what we’re requesting to address the problem of NVE, so they would provide information and share data,” Matibag told reporters.

“As we speak now, we are sharing data based on what’s coming from our monitoring about possible threats similar to what happened in Tacloban and Zamboanga. So, we have resolved that Meta should have an office here to communicate with them about all the posts that we ask them to take down immediately,” he added.

Paraiso earlier said Meta took seven to nine minutes to remove the video of the Zamboanga school shooting livestreamed by the suspect himself.

The government, meanwhile, reported that it took five minutes to report the video because it was not immediately flagged by its system.

Matibag is also seeking Meta’s assistance in pursuing “slanderous” accounts and those posting fake news.

“The message here is this: those who are making mischief cannot hide behind Meta and Facebook anymore,” Matibag said. “We will closely monitor those accounts.”

Privacy

Paraiso, meanwhile, assured the public that Meta would not have access to the personal information of Filipino users under a planned integration of its user verification process with the Philippine Identification System.

“We are not giving Meta access to the information contained in our database. The purpose is simply to verify, while the personal data remain with the government,” Paraiso said in a statement.

He said an application programming interface or API would allow Meta to ask the Philippine Statistics Authority whether a particular identification or reference number matches its records.

The PSA would only confirm whether the information matches instead of providing Meta with the user’s personal information contained in the National ID database.

“We want stronger accountability online, but we also want to make sure that privacy is fully protected,” Paraiso said.

The public is also assured that the government was mindful of privacy considerations as it develops stronger identity verification mechanisms to improve online child safety.

He explained that the National ID System already has authentication services that allow relying parties to verify an individual’s identity through government-backed mechanisms.

The integration was among the measures discussed by Meta and Philippine cybersecurity officials during their meeting in Singapore to protect children from exposure to inappropriate online content and anonymous accounts.

Protecting minors online

With the government taking a platform-by-platform approach to online safety, cybersecurity officials are also preparing to meet with Discord executives to discuss measures to protect minors from online threats.

Aguda said yesterday the government is eyeing discussions with representatives of the instant messaging and voice over internet protocol platform as part of its broader child online safety initiative.

“We are taking a platform-by-platform approach. Roblox is one step. We are also looking at other platforms where children and young people spend their time online,” Aguda said in a statement.

No information was provided on when the meeting with Discord representatives would take place.

Aguda, however, said the discussion would cover direct message restrictions, explicit content filters, friend-request controls, parental monitoring tools such as Family Center and server-level safety settings to help reduce unwanted contact and exposure to harmful content. — Emmanuel Tupas