Cybercrime, libel and loveloveloves

The Philippines’ Supreme Court has declared the controversial “online libel” clause of the Cybercrime Law constitutional yesterday. While butt hurt politicians and artistas might be relieved, for the Philippine blogging community, the approval of this clause would be detrimental, if not dangerous for the blogs, readers and bloggers themselves.

First, the quality and good intention of blogs are compromised. The provision for online libel hijacks critical thinking, skepticism and fairness. Bloggers and commenters will be afraid to speak out, and most of the Philippine internet scene will be reduced to a big echo chamber of false Filipino pride, senseless showbiz news and other stupefying social media aberrations. In the case of Pas-sosyal, blog posts which have skepticism and critical thinking at its heart may be threatening to corporations who purport questionable beauty “science”-inspired claims. Without criticism, what will my readers get from my work? Mindless raves on how good a product smells or how frilly the packaging is?

No one should be afraid of their posts if what they provide is the truth since libel is defined as “a false statement of a fact which may harm the reputation of a person or a company”. However, do note that proving truth – the antidote to a false statement – is expensive. But this is the Philippines - a country where money says more than anything else, where facts become lies and lies become facts.  Any penniless netizen who may have critical publications on a blog post, review, blog comment, forum and social network can easily be labelled as a defamer by a big corporation.

In essence, the online libel provision takes away whatever empowerment ordinary netizens derive from the internet and shifts the boat towards to the already powerful. Millions of netizens silenced, afraid, caged, unfree. In a country built supposedly by democracy, this declaration of the constitutionality of a suppressive clause is just another drop to the farce we love, the Philippines. 

To Pas-sosyal's readers, you will still get to see reviews, but nil negative reviews and material on beauty skepticism. I plan to take down previous posts with the abovementioned content so I could continue with my blog.