Regulation of socmed content creators pushed

A lawmaker has proposed the registration of social media influencers and vloggers on top of the creation of a council of peers among content creators to regulate and fact-check online posts.

At a press briefing on Monday, Bataan Rep. Geraldine Roman said she was eyeing the creation of a Digital Council of the Philippines composed of stakeholders such as content creators, digital advertisers, public relations firms; the Department of Information and Communications Technology, National Bureau of Investigation; and representatives of social media platforms Facebook (Meta), Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter). She said that including government agencies would give the council teeth.

“And then this group will come up with their own Code of Ethics and standards that have to be followed. [The council] would also receive complaints from victims of fake news and they will fact-check [content],” Roman said, adding that false information would be flagged and social media platforms must place an annotation to the post.

Deterrent

The new head of the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), meanwhile, expressed support for the creation of a regulatory body to rein in online content creators or “vloggers” who spread fake news.

In an interview, PCO chief Jay Ruiz said the government, as an alternative to the regulation of vloggers, may need to step up efforts to educate netizens about their responsibility to disseminate only the truth.

“We are studying the possibility [of regulating social media content], and we hope it would somehow push through, especially in the case of those who are responsible for spreading false contents,” he added.

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“I believe it’s about time that we resort to regulation—or if not regulation, at least to notify the vloggers, the social media users about their responsibilities to the public,” Ruiz said.

He noted that while other media platforms were regulated by government agencies, there were no such bodies monitoring social media contents and their creators.