Pangilinan wants Facebook execs to attend Senate hearings

Senator Francis Pangillinan. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES

Sen. Francis Pangilinan said he wants the officers of social media giant Facebook to attend Senate hearings to explain to the public how they are curbing the proliferation of fake news in their platform.

“Facebook acknowledged that it knows people want accurate information. We are interested in finding out how Facebook is doing it because the platform as it is now is still being abused by perpetrators of fake news,” Pangilinan said in a statement last Friday.

READ: Pangilinan seeks penalty vs social media for spread of fake news

Last week, Pangilinan filed a Senate resolution seeking to conduct a probe on how Facebook can be penalized for supposedly “not being able to regulate fake news on its site and to determine the necessity of amending the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and other pertinent laws.

Pangilinan, president of the Liberal Party, said the propagation of fake news stories has become an “effective weapon of several political operatives to influence public opinion and national discourse.”

In response to Pangilinan, Facebook said they “take misinformation seriously” and have been working to combat fake news for a long time now.

Facebook, in a statement to the media, responded that it has been working on to fight fake news for a long time and admitted that it still has more work to do.

READ: Facebook to Pangilinan: We take misinformation seriously

Noting social media’s role in democracy, Pangilinan said he was hoping that Facebook would take the lead in “helping the public in discerning truth from lies and fabrication that are being spread massively to influence public opinion and national discourse.”

“Facebook’s role in this digital age has become very crucial in the practice of democracy as it moved from a social networking site to a media company,” the senator said.

“We wish to understand Facebook’s standards and mechanisms in identifying violators on its platform. In so doing, the public will be informed which information to trust and where to get them from,” he added. RAM/rga