Facebook & Twitter Unveils “Online-Libel-Proof” Features for Filipino Netizens

“When someone in the Philippines tries to type a possible libelous status update, Facebook algorithms detects this and suggests alternative posts that a user might want to consider,” Facebook wrote in a recent addition to its help page.

According to the help page, Facebook suggestions will try to stay as relevant as possible with the message that you’re trying to convey, but will sometimes deviate or rephrase your status update entirely if what you’re trying to say is really-really libelous.
This would be the first time that the social networking giant made a feature specifically for a country.

“We decided to add this feature so as to protect our users against tyrannical, oppressive and backward-thinking politicians in the Philippines,” said Facebook CEO Mark Suckerberg.

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He added, “When political image and vanity of elected officials trumps freedom of expression of the masses, you know that something is wrong in a country that prides itself of so-called democracy.”
The newly announced feature is still being rolled out, so it’s not available to everyone just yet. Facebook tests features in stages so that an unforeseen bug doesn’t hit its entire network at once, but it should be widely available to Philippine netizens in the next few weeks.

Coincidentally, Twitter also announced that it is set to roll-out new features to make Filipinos’ tweets “online-libel-proof”.

In a tweet posted this morning, the microblogging service revealed that new features will roll out on the 25th that will “suppress freedom of expression” for Filipino Twitter users.  It ended its tweet with the hashtag #Ironic because the country will also celebrate the 28th anniversary of the Edsa People Power Revolution on the same day.

Netizens should expect the following features when they compose a tweet on Tuesday:

1. The “Twitter Sarcasm Font” – A special font that will replace the default one when the servers detect a hint of sarcasm in a person’s tweet. It will automatically replace the typeface before posting it to your timeline. To be extra sure, the sarcastic word will have a different font and will be boldfaced.

A tweet with sarcasm font enabled...

2. The “Twitter Auto-Rephraser” – This new feature would rephrase your libelous tweet into a non-libelous tweet. If your original tweet’s intention was to malign someone specifically, the rephrased version won’t. Although less hard-hitting, the rephrased version will hopefully save you the time and money not defending yourself in court.

Left: A tweet without Auto-Rephraser. Right: Auto-Rephraser in action.

3. The Automatic “With All Due Respect” Hashtag Inserter – As the name implies, Twitter will automatically insert a #WithAllDueRespect hashtag at the beginning of your tweets so as to remove any malicious intent that your thoughts might have against our elected officials.

No word yet whether other social networking sites like Instagram and Tumblr would follow suit in adding features to protect netizens’ freedom of speech. Stay tuned.

From: http://goo.gl/vEfFzf

Protest Online Libel!

by: Jules M. Ragas

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago rallied netizens against what she described as “erroneous” decision of the Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of online libel.

Santiago said a motion for reconsideration could be filed against online libel or the Senate could pass a new Anti-Cybercrime measure that will in effect overturn the SC’s decision. Either way, the senator vowed to give her full support to the new measure.

“I humbly submit that the Supreme Court ruling on this particular provision is erroneous and I call on all netizens to magnify all our efforts and to speed it up as soon as possible so that we can either file a motion for reconsideration with respect to this particular libel provision or we can speed it up here in the Senate on that new law that I have filed from crowdsourcing,’ she said at a press conference in the Senate.

Santiago lamented that the Supreme Court is treating social media “as if it were just a scion or a successor or just another classification of traditional media.”

Santiago also questioned the practicality of imposing criminal liability for online libel, citing the already populated prisons in the country.

“It will add to the burgeoning prison population of this country. We are spending taxpayers’ money to sustain these prisoners and then you add up more people to populate the prisons because of libel?” she asked.

“You have this question of practicality. Is it practical? How many people are you sending, how many people are using the Internet every day, day-to-day?” she further asked.