Former senator Leila de Lima has vowed to go after bloggers behind the disinformation and social media attacks in 2016 when government prosecutors filed drug-related cases against her.
The plan to go after some bloggers is not a surprise move, coming from the recently released former senator and justice secretary, but her course of action could mean a lot towards raising the quality of discourse on popular social platforms.
Although the planned move will be her second priority, she said, the first being to seek her acquittal from the remaining third drug-related case, her legal action against certain bloggers will call attention to illegal acts on cyberspace.
De Lima is currently out on bail after over six years in detention at Camp Crame for drug-related charges filed against her during the term of President Rodrigo Duterte.
An Inquirer.net report last week said de Lima plans to file “libel, cyber libel, defamation, slander, and assault to honor” charges against these bloggers. She did not name them but the report said de Lima admitted that Mocha Uson, Rey Joseph Nieto, and Mike Acebedo Lopez “were mentioned” by her legal team.
De Lima recalled that these “offensive” and “unprintable” social media posts were made in 2016 when prosecutors during the Duterte administration accused her of receiving millions of pesos from convicted drug personalities during her time as justice secretary, the report said.
Part of the material presented at that time was a sex video that allegedly showed de Lima with her former driver, Ronnie Dayan. Duterte said then that the video showed the “unhampered” corruption inside the New Bilibid Prisons when de Lima was justice secretary.
Several studies have pointed to the proliferation of fake news and disinformation in the country from the 2016 and 2019 elections to the present.
In 2022, a Pulse Asia survey found that “an overwhelming majority of the country’s adult population (90 percent) have read, heard, and/or watched fake political news.” The sources of fake news about government and politics are the internet or social media (68 percent) and television (67 percent), the survey report said.
De Lima said social media posts of some bloggers were an abuse of their right to free expression. Social media, she said, “was supposed to have been envisioned for good…, (as) a source of information to do good for society.” However, some bloggers use social media to create and spread disinformation and fake news.
She said she usually ignored the messages that at times reached over 2,000 a day. She even stopped herself from looking at her mobile phone to avoid reading the “cruel, hateful statements,” but she later thought to take action against the misinformation and disinformation, otherwise people might believe the lies.
De Lima should pursue this course of action against some bloggers to remind platform users that social media is not like the wild, wild West but a venue for responsible exchanges.