Deadly consequences
Friday’s school shooting in South Cotabato—the third in three months—exposed, again, how minors’ vulnerability to violent online content could trigger a tragic incident. It also tested how fast concerned agencies and social media platforms could respond to real-time tragedies.
The shooting at the Banga National High School in South Cotabato killed three students, including the gunman, and wounded six others. Officials said the 16-year-old shooter was an active member of a “true crime” online community and “idolized” other school shooters.
This issue is significant because the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has faced increasing scrutiny over how it handles harmful online content.
This week, the House of Representatives suspended plenary debates on DICT’s proposed P10.68 billion budget for next year after lawmakers raised concerns that the need to protect children from violent content on the internet, among other issues, has “not been addressed well.”
True crime community
They wanted first to assess the outcome of the department’s efforts to combat harmful internet content—as they should to ensure that taxpayer money is being used effectively to hold tech platforms accountable and keep minors safe.
A Senate inquiry into the school shooting in Tacloban City in June has looked into the influence of this true crime community, which cybercrime officials had described as an online network of young people who share and consume violent content. Authorities have also linked the Zamboanga City school shooting in August to extremist digital content and online radicalization.
The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) reported that Meta—which owns and runs Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads—immediately took down videos related to the South Cotabato school shooting incident and swiftly blocked the accounts that shared the material. The CICC is an agency attached to the DICT responsible for preventing, suppressing, and investigating cybercrime.
Meta’s cooperation is necessary as the most-used social media platform among Filipinos and therefore also the one with the widest reach. It is also an obligation considering its enormous influence among social media users in the country. But is it doing enough? DICT, in responding to the House’s decision to defer debates on its budget, singled out the social media firm for continuing to “fall short of its responsibility and commitment to youth safety.”
Sagip Bata Act
FPJ Panday Bayanihan party list Rep. Brian Poe, who sponsored the DICT’s budget in plenary, said two of the “nonnegotiable” conditions that Philippine officials have made on Meta are opening a physical office in the country and requiring the National ID to create and maintain an account on its platform. While Meta was reported to be open to these requirements, it remains to be seen whether it would follow through with its representatives scheduled for a visit to the country this month.
But it is not only the violent content on social media platforms like Meta that must be cracked down on, but gaming platforms and messaging apps as well. A report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism published in July exposed how Filipino minors were being preyed on by violent extremists on Roblox, an online gaming platform. A police investigation showed that they were lured by strangers there before moving to other platforms like Discord and Telegram, where they were radicalized.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros met with Roblox representatives this week, with the latter expressing openness to appointing a qualified third party as its local representative and maintaining channels for coordinating with law enforcement agencies. Hontiveros is the author and primary sponsor of Senate Bill No. 1819 or the enhanced Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children bill, now known as the Sagip Bata Act, which is still being debated in the Senate.
Country representative
Legislators must act with haste in passing this measure, which mandates online platforms to designate a country representative authorized to receive subpoenas, takedown and blocking orders, and requests for account information, among others.
It is not only the DICT’s 2027 budget that is at stake here, but the bigger picture of how social media platforms are addressing their duty to prevent graphic online violence from bleeding into the real world and ending in tragedies like the three school shootings that the country had to witness in the last three months.
The first incident should have already been sufficient warning, but a third one is an indictment of how delayed moderation could result in deadly consequences. Another similar incident should not be the price that the country pays at the expense of our children before government oversight and tech platforms get their act together.
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