Sara Duterte-Carpio. Noy Morcoso/INQUIRER.net
DAVAO CITY — Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte on Wednesday shrugged off Facebook’s taking down of her account, saying the social media giant has the right to remove accounts it may dislike.
But Sara hinted she might quit Facebook for good.
“If Facebook doesn’t like us, then we don’t like Facebook either,” she said of the social media platform which has been a convenient way for the administration to reach out to millions of Facebook-savvy supporters.
In a post shared by Mayor Duterte’s spokesperson Jeffrey Tupas, Facebook reportedly defended its decision to remove Duterte’s presence on its platform and placed Duterte’s account into “hack lock” to protect it from hackers’ “strong attempts” to pry it open.
“Please be assured your account has nothing to do with the takedowns we conducted last week, as your IO has mentioned in his posts and press. We understand his concern but please know that this was a protective measure implemented on the platform,” Tupas quoted the Facebook statement.
Facebook said Mayor Duterte’s account was not among 200 accounts, mostly supporting the administration of President Duterte, that were deleted from the platform last week for allegedly engaging in spamming and other disruptive online behavior.
“You know Facebook is not public property so they have all the rights on whatever they wanted to do with their business,” Sara said on the sidelines of the campaign sortie of administration bets under Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) party in Agusan del Sur. “If they do not like a certain account, they can very well take it down,” she said.
In his earlier post, the mayor’s spokesperson lamented that Facebook had given many concessions to the critics of the administration.
“In short, what happened to Sara’s account was related to what had happened to the accounts of Nic Gabunada, or Jay Sonza or Sass Rogando Sasot and many others,” Tupas said, referring to three of the
administration’s supporters who each had a huge Facebook presence and following, but which were taken down by Facebook last year. The accounts, however, have already been allowed back on Facebook. /lzb