Gapay calls on Facebook to be impartial, unbiased in taking down accounts

Social media giant Facebook should have been impartial and unbiased in taking down accounts and pages, Armed Forces chief General Gilbert Gapay said Tuesday.

During an online forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP), Gapay voiced out that Facebook should review its organization that it branded as "fact-checkers," noting that some fact-checkers are ill-advised and often biased to the government.

"We are also telling them as media platform, they should be impartial and unbiased in this. That's why they cannot just take down accounts because of CIB although they have policies on this. They should look into the content," Gapay said.

"We are now asking Facebook if they could advise before they take down or further investigate because CIB alone, without looking into content, may not be enough for good pages to be taken down," he added.

Gapay also claimed that the social media giant has been unfair to them as the latter had linked to the police and military the accounts and pages it had purged due to coordinated inauthentic behavior.

"They were unfair to us in taking down those sites because there are many sites that are really espousing hate, violence, terrorism that should have been taken down in the first place, not these good sites that we are advocating through Facebook," Gapay said.

Gapay said the AFP continues to coordinate with Facebook's management regarding the matter. It also appealed to restore the page of The Hands Off Our Children (HOOC), an advocacy page fighting against recruitment of youth by communist groups.

Both the police and military have denied that they have links to fake Facebook accounts.

They have insisted that they are adhering to online etiquette and it does not tolerate uploading fake news and fictitious social media accounts. — RSJ, GMA News