Penalize PR firms, advertisers engaged in online disinformation, lawmakers told

PHILIPPINE lawmakers should consider crafting laws that would penalize public relations  and advertising agencies engaged in peddling disinformation, rather than individuals engaged in troll farms, experts said on Tuesday.

“[We should] penalize masterminds, especially black PR (public relations) firms engaged in disinformation. There has to be a way to penalize the masterminds rather than individual trolls,” Rachel E. Khan, a journalism professor at the University of the Philippines, told lawmakers during a House of Representatives hearing.

“We won’t achieve anything if we go after individuals rather than those who brought them or those who pay them,” she added in Filipino.

Ms. Khan was speaking before the House joint committee on public safety, public information and communications technology, which launched an inquiry into the prevalence of disinformation in social media platforms, described as a “national security threat.”

“Our goal is to develop a code of conduct for content creators, ensuring accountability and ethical responsibility in this rapidly evolving digital space,” Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace S. Barbers said in the same hearing, according to a statement.

“We need to hold accountable the people at the top, the elites in the advertising and PR industries…. we should not only go after the low-level workers,” said Jonathan Corpus Ong, professor of global digital media at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“We should also focus on ‘big tech’ corporations,” he added.

Lawmakers should also consider “different kinds of legislation,” focusing not only on penalizing social media users who spread false information.

A proposal against online disinformation should include “compliance measures” for social media platforms to participate in transparency mechanisms with researchers.

“If the law is not specific and not transparent, a ‘top-down’ regulation can actually do more harm than good,” said Mr. Ong.

Ms. Khan said congressmen should consider legislating a mechanism allowing fact-checkers to counter disinformation through a “rapid response mechanism,” just like in Taiwan.

“This approach has been effective in addressing false information quickly. We can replicate it if there is collaboration among and support from fact-checking organizations,” she said in Filipino. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio