The Philippine military and police on Wednesday distanced themselves from more than 100 social media accounts that were taken down by Facebook for allegedly misleading the public.
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All of the accounts that the Philippine military maintains are “up and running” and were not part of the network that was shut down by Facebook, said Maj.-Gen. Edgard Arevalo, a military spokesman.
The Philippine military “upholds truth and accountability of network and social media account managers as to the contents of postings on our websites, pages, and accounts,” Arevalo added.
The Philippine police also stressed that official pages run by the national headquarters and lower units complied with Facebook’s standards.
“All comments and opinions of individual personnel, associations and sectoral groups on matters that are not related to the organisation’s activities are hereby disowned by the (national police) as unofficial and unauthorized,” said police spokesman Ysmael Yu.
The social media giant removed 57 Facebook accounts, 31 pages, and 20 Instagram accounts.
The sites affected had more than 276,000 followers on Facebook and 55,000 on Instagram, according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s cybersecurity policy chief.
“We are attributing this network to the Philippine military and the Philippine police,” he told an online press conference on Tuesday night.
“In particular, we found links between, behind this network connected to both of these organisations and individuals associated with those organisations,” he added.
The contents of the removed accounts were mostly critical of the political opposition, communism and activist groups in the Philippines, and were supportive of President Rodrigo Duterte.