SENATORIAL candidate Francis Pangilinan yesterday urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to work with social media companies to stop the spread of disinformation, trolling, and bashing especially during the campaign period.
Pangililnan also called on media giants like Meta (Facebook), Tiktok, and YouTube, among others, to deactivate or suspend troll accounts deliberately spreading false narratives.
“Maybe Comelec can sit down with Meta, sit down with Tiktok and come up with a memorandum of agreement of some sort so that between now and (the end of the) election campaign, there will be cooperation in addressing disinformation, bashing, and trolling online,” he said.
The former senator made the appeal after he was targeted by an “orchestrated and well-funded” disinformation campaign after he collaborated with social media personality Romeo Catacutan for a food blog during a boodle feast in Pampanga.
During the collaboration, Catacutan was heard asking someone to hand Pangilinan a pot cover which the former senator can use in eating rice and with carabao milk.
A social media content creator posted a video from the event, putting a caption that Pangilinan ate rice soaked in vinegar on a pot cover.
Pangilinan said the video was obviously meant to spread disinformation as what he ate that time was rice and carabao milk, not rice soaked in vinegar.
He said he also said that laughing reactions from Vietnamese-sounding accounts left on the viral video proves that there are people behind the smear campaign against him.
Pangilinan expressed hope that the Comelec would act on his appeal, especially since the elections is barely a month away.
