On the suspension of Malaya Movement’s account

Yesterday, Malaya Movement USA’s Instagram profile was temporarily suspended for the first time, just a day after our statement regarding the congressional hearings on Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. 

Anyone who is familiar with the dire state of information sharing in the Philippines will know that politicians and the government apparatus itself monitor, manipulate, and silence information on social media. 

We are not surprised that we experienced this attempt at censorship, given the following: 

1) Meta’s conduct around disinformation and safety, which too frequently silences and endangers critics

For years, Malaya Movement has been pushing META to address the fact that its platform is being used for mass deception at a national scale in the Philippines and for the targeting of critics and activists, which too frequently is followed by events as sinister as disappearance or death. 

2) Duterte’s rabid and fascist base of supporters

Duterte’s reign was colored by paid online trolls, accounts with the clear purpose of red-tagging critics, including that of his supporter Apollo Quiboloy's Sonshine Media Network International. His base of supporters take it upon themselves to silence criticism of their idol, calling themselves DDS, fashioned after Duterte’s armed mercenaries or “Davao Death Squads.”

3) The Philippine military and police use of social media to discredit activists

The 2020 discovery and purge of more than 100 fake Facebook accounts run by the military and police should give us a picture of the lengths corrupt and brutal security forces will go to to manipulate Filipino citizens. 

There have been countless times we’ve reported incidents of terror-tagging and harassment on META’s platforms and no action was taken. In some cases, terror-tagging was even deemed as abiding by their community guidelines. This suspension highlights the concerns we’ve expressed with social media being weaponized against progressive organizations and individuals. 

End the weaponization of social media! 

Learn about our Trolls & Tyrants Campaign: malayamovement.com/weaponizationsocialmedia