LET’S not mince words: Everyone who is responsible for the leadership and management of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and its two main line agencies, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), should be fired immediately and replaced with people who understand digital communications, social media platforms, and the general reality that we are living in the 21st century.
The ignorance of these agencies was put on full display last week, when, in a knee-jerk reaction to another tragic school shooting in the country — the third this year —social media giant Meta, which manages Facebook, Instagram and the WhatsApp messaging program, was threatened with being blocked in the Philippines unless it complied with a government demand to establish a representative office here. We addressed that particular bit of nonsense in an editorial at the time, but even before that commentary had time to reach print, the CICC issued an imperious 24-hour demand for the popular Discord and Reddit platforms to do the same.
Reddit apparently was able to reach a temporary compromise with the authorities, but Discord did not, resulting in the platform being blocked by the country’s main telecommunications providers. This ignited an understandable storm of public discontent, because Discord, apart from its many other uses, is used by tens of thousands of students and teachers as a conduit for online learning, and by a considerable number (several estimates put the number at about 15,000) of so-called online gig workers, who suddenly found themselves cut off from their livelihood.
The justification given by the CICC is that platforms such as Discord are channels for “radicalization” and other forms of abuse of young people, the implication being that online influence was at least partly responsible for the recent school shootings. When confronted with the stark fact that its action was completely illegal — blocking access to an online platform evidently requires a specific court order authorizing it — and that it unfairly punished legitimate users for the sake of a presumption of harm that is completely unsupported by clear evidence, the CICC withdrew the block, after about four hours.
In a podcast posted on Facebook shortly afterward, CICC director Aya Macalma lamely explained, “Hindi namin alam na ginagamit pala sa business at pag-aaral.” (We didn’t know it [Discord] was used in business and education.)
This is completely unacceptable.
First of all, the admission that the agencies and officials charged with the responsibility to protect the country from online threats are so ignorant about what applications common, widely used platforms serve indicates a severe deficit in competence and professionalism. As things now stand, there is absolutely no reason for anyone in the Philippines, no matter what their need or desire for access to online platforms is, to have any faith at all that the government agencies responsible for protecting them have any idea what they’re doing.
Second, we do recognize that the “open access” nature of online social media and similar platforms does present a very real risk of inappropriate and harmful content being available to Filipino users, and particularly impressionable young users, the rush by government officials to pin the blame for tragic incidents such as the recent school shootings on some imagined influence from the internet diminishes the seriousness of those events, and diverts attention from real problems that need solutions.
Blaming social media platforms for incidents such as school shootings is a weak attempt to find a quick and simple solution to an extremely complex problem; one that, in reality, exposes uncomfortable truths regarding the lack of proper education in using the internet, the serious deficiency in mental health programs and school counselors within the education system, and the appallingly casual attitude of the country toward gun ownership and disregard for gun safety, among other things. For those among us who had the privilege (or the misfortune, depending on one’s point of view) to have spent some of their formative years in the United States, what is happening now in the Philippines with statements from government officials about the “evil influences of the internet” sounds a lot like the American hysteria from three or four decades ago about “satanic cults,” or “music that promotes violence.”
The job of the DICT and its attached agencies is to promote greater connectivity for Filipinos, while safeguarding against the threats that can present. So far, it is utterly failing. It perhaps would not be, if these agencies were manned by people who understood the subject matter.
