Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned Facebook on Monday that it cannot stop him from promoting his administration’s objectives after the social media giant recently disabled several accounts in the country advocated by the government and military.
“Facebook, listen to me,” Duterte said in a televised address, as quoted by Reuters. “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if [the] government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country?”
The president’s remarks follow Facebook’s dismantling of hundreds of accounts in the Philippines on September 22. Facebook said the accounts were removed for violating its policy against foreign or government interference, defined by the company as “coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.”
All accounts allegedly belonged to two distinct networks based in China and the Philippines. Facebook said it had linked some of the accounts in the Philippines to the country’s military and police forces. The Philippine police and military have since denied any links to the accounts.
Some of the accounts criticized the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA). One such account, Hands Off Our Children, educated Filipino parents on how to identify pro-communist propaganda and recruitment tactics targeting young people. The Facebook page was self-described as “a group of mothers fighting against terrorist recruitment.”
The NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
Philippine Lt. Gen Antonio Parlade Jr., a spokesman for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), headed by President Duterte, refuted Facebook’s allegations against Hands Off Our Children last week. He insisted that the page was not maintained by the military, as alleged by Facebook.
“Who is Facebook to judge them [parents belonging to the group] on what they are going through? I will not be surprised if interest groups hurt by the truth these parents are spreading are responsible for the take-down [of the accounts],” Parlade said.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has since urged Facebook to restore the Hands Off Our Children page, explaining that its advocacy was something the military “shares and advances,” an AFP spokesman said last week.
Duterte similarly defended the “ideas” promoted by the now disabled anti-communist Facebook accounts in his speech on Monday.
“What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us? We are not advocating mass destruction, we are not advocating massacre. It’s a fight of ideas,” Duterte said in comments directed squarely at Facebook.
“If you are promoting the cause of the rebellion…, if you cannot reconcile the idea of what your purpose is or was, then we have to talk,” the president concluded.
“Is there life after Facebook? I don’t know,” he added.
The Philippine government and the NPA have been engaged in an ongoing conflict since 1968 that has killed tens of thousands of people in the country.
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