MAKABAYAN senatorial candidate and ACT Teacher Rep. France Castro yesterday accused Meta of unlawful censorship and restriction following the take down of her official Facebook page for the second time in as many months.
The militant lawmaker said her first FB page was unpublished on February 16, 2025 without a substantial explanation, followed by the take down of a second page also under her name last March 15.
Prior to being removed, page administrators reported intermittent accessibility with both pages appearing briefly before being unpublished again.
Castro said she has gone through the standard appeals process for the restoration of her FB accounts to no avail.
“This is a clear case of digital harassment and censorship. Meta is systematically silencing progressive voices that speak truth to power. My FB pages were being used to convey crucial information to the public, particularly the school teachers and education workers. They were a platform for democratic discourse and to vent the pleas of marginalized sectors,” she said.
Castro added that even the personal FB accounts of the page administrators have also experienced restriction prompting her to call out Meta for imposing digital censorship and attacking freedom of expression.
ACT Teachers party-list nominee Antonio Tinio, a former House member, also condemned Meta’s actions, saying the removal of Castro’s pages is not an isolated incident but part of a larger pattern of suppression.
“We’ve seen this happen to numerous progressive organizations and individuals. Digital platforms like Facebook have become essential public spaces for discourse, and Meta has the responsibility to uphold free speech, not suppress it,” Tinio said.
He voiced concern that the legitimate voices of progressive lawmakers and organizations are being suppressed just when the country is seeing surge in the spread of fake news and disinformation.
The group announced its plans to raise the issue in Congress and explore legal remedies against what it sees as an arbitrary and politically motivated censorship by the social media giant’
“We demand that Meta immediately restore our pages and the accounts of our administrators. We also call for transparency in their content moderation policies and appeal procedures. We will not be silenced by this tactics,” Castro stressed.
Last week, Castro also sought the assistance of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in going after a fake account on Facebook that has been posting malicious videos, text, and pictures red-tagging her and other candidates under the Makabayan bloc.
She revealed that the FB account has been misrepresenting itself by using the name “Makabayan” while targeting her and fellow senatorial bets under the Koalisyong Makabayan through AI-generated photos and videos showing her supposedly alongside armed members of the New People’s Army.
