Den Haag, The Netherlands—Should the Mocha Uson blog be banned? No, but the real issue goes beyond free speech, to echo chambers and social media’s very architecture.
Matanglawin, the Ateneo de Manila Filipino student paper, spoofed the blog and Mocha allegedly cyberbullied its editor. Days later, Paul Quilét started a Change.org petition to have Facebook ban Mocha, with over 33,000 signing.
A beautiful debate emerged on free speech’s limits, anti-intellectualism and feminism.
The petition decries a “culture of misinformation,” of Mocha using “her Facebook page to spread fictitious/unsupported claims, fake news, and false information about pressing issues” and “eliciting unwarranted hate from the public.”
First, Mocha posts a lot of content. As she argues, there can be nothing fake about her interviewing national figures from police chief Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa to, most recently, former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Her curated lineup of “die hard” Facebook pundits, such as my friend federalism advocate Orion Perez, are likewise real people.
Banning all this because Mocha shares links to fake news sites undermines the spirit of free speech.
Second, free speech protects false speech. No one would speak on public issues if they could be silenced the moment they cite a mistaken fact. Thus, the legal rule is to punish such mistakes only when there is “actual malice.”
Former presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda criticized Mocha for not researching the nature of USAID (US Agency for International Development) before criticizing its $24-million grant managed by the Gerry Roxas Foundation. But we cannot ban everyone too lazy, in Lacierda’s terms, to google first.
Third, free speech protects hateful speech. Mocha has as much right to publicly wish she saved Sen. Leila de Lima’s mobile number (which was read aloud in Congress) as national artist F. Sionil José to tell Chinese-Filipinos born in the Philippines to go back to China.
Threats and cyberbullying, of course, are no longer speech that conveys ideas.
Mocha posted Matanglawin editor in chief Rambo Talabong’s public Facebook profile to cite that he interned in Rappler, implying bias.
But he was named a leader, not harassed the way trolls spread the mock tombstone of a student who interrupted then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte at a UP Los Baños forum. If no one would object to Mocha addressing criticism of the Inquirer to publisher Sandy Prieto-Romualdez, perhaps Matanglawin underestimates its prominence.
Mocha previously posted specific journalists’ photos and called for them to be punished for misinformation, but has hopefully stopped.
Perhaps Quilét’s frustration is not about Mocha per se, but about a confused marketplace of ideas where it is too simplistic to defend another’s right to say something one abhors—I am proud my former students did—and tell Quilét to put up his own blog.
Even before Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, many have cautioned how social media distorts democracy. Free speech protects the exchange of ideas, but online interaction is increasingly fueled by emotion, with memes, sound bites and satirical graphics overtaking nuanced debate.
Truth becomes secondary. Facts, even fake news, serve only to confirm one’s beliefs.
No less than the World Economic Forum points to misinformation as a threat to national stability. Confronting people with facts backfires, emotionally entrenching their beliefs. Experts and the media are dismissed as evil conspirators.
Finally, as social media algorithms show that a person more and more content with what he already agrees becomes trapped in an echo chamber of one-sided and increasingly extreme opinion. Such supplants multifaceted debate and objective reporting in traditional media.
Making free speech meaningful in an age of echo chambers is not easy. Facebook is rethinking its algorithms. Sen. Bam Aquino is proposing that schools teach social media awareness.
But what is sure is that our Constitution has not changed to strip Mocha of her rights simply because the internet has evolved.
React: oscarfranklin.tan@yahoo.com.ph, Twitter @oscarfbtan, facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan.