Can Comelec regulate social media posts of candidates, influencers?

Alice Leal Guo launched a vlog in the thick of campaign for the May 2022 elections, less than a month before she got elected as mayor of Bamban, Tarlac.

“A Day with Alice Guo,’’ uploaded on Youtube on April 20 that year, revolved around her routine as an agri-business entrepreneur.

The vlog begins with her rising from bed and having breakfast with a girl Friday who rattles off her itinerary for the day. Then it brings viewers to her office at home, where she explains the nitty gritty of her work while signing papers. 

In the next scene, Guo stands inside a chicken farm. As she picks up eggs from trays under pens, she says: “It’s also part of my routine to go around our piggery farms. Even though we have an election, I would still want to focus on our business.”

It seems like an ordinary “day in the life’’ kind of vlog until it cuts to the final scene, where she turns up at a festive campaign rally in a packed gymnasium, rallies villagers to vote for her, dances with the crowd, and poses for selfies with children.

Guo is just among a growing number of politicians who have tapped social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok or engaged influencers to boost their campaign ahead of elections, an act that has yet to be regulated by a law.    

Two years after her election, she’s now facing a Senate inquiry into allegations she has links to Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs) and is a “spy’’ for China. She has denied both allegations. So far, she has given conflicting answers about her background.

PAID INFLUENCERS

Former elections commissioner Luie Tito Guia underlined the challenges facing Commission on Elections (Comelec) in the era of TikTok, X and Meta.

“I was told that even local or aspiring local candidates are engaging local influencers… to gain a headway in elections,’’ he said during the Regional Election Forum organized by the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) on May 13.

Historian blogger Mona Veluz-Magno or “Mighty Magulang,” also made the same observation at PCIJ’s Third National Conference on Investigative Journalism on May 1.

“Buying ad time is no longer the trend. What’s trendy now is you get micro-influencers to create content for you, and that’s where you get the engagement,’’ she said.

NEW LAW NEEDED

Comelec Chair George Garcia has urged Congress to pass a law regulating the candidates’ social media content during the campaign period to foster equality among all candidates. 

Republic Act 9006 or The Fair Election Act limits candidates’ airtime on TV and radio, and ad space in newspapers. Garcia said the amount of time and money that candidates spend on social media should also be regulated.   

“How come it’s unlimited in social media? Candidates that have no means to create many accounts or create content are at a disadvantage,’’ Garcia told reporters on the sidelines of the LENTE-hosted forum on May 13. 

“If they will listen to us, we will ask for the same limitations on TV, radio, and newspapers, wherein their contacts are submitted to us,’’ he said when asked about the limitations on social media that he would seek from Congress.

Garcia said candidates should inform Comelec about the details of the contract, such as the amount paid to a social media influencer or content creator, as well as the list of social media accounts registered under their names. 

In the absence of such a law from Congress, “it’s free for all,’’ he said.  

Guia said the country’s Omnibus Election Code already requires paid influencers to declare with the Comelec all of their transactions with candidates. But a new law is still needed to set the limits on social media campaigning.

Guia said paid influencers are “in effect” contractors under Section 112 of the law, which requires “every person or firm to whom any electoral expenditure is made” to file with the Comelec a sworn report declaring the contract with the candidates.

“Tumanggap sila ng bayad. Dapat i-declare nila ‘yun dahil gastos ng kandidato at dapat masama sa computation to determine their total expenditure,” Guia said.

“But how do you set the limits on social media? It’s very different from newspapers, TV, and radio,” Guia said.

Garcia said the new law should not only regulate campaign spending, it should also give the Comelec the teeth to fight widespread online disinformation during elections.

“How then do we deal with troll farms? What about disinformation and misinformation? How do we penalize these acts if there’s no law penalizing these types of actions?’’ he added. 

At present, the Comelec could use the cyber libel law only if an offense takes on the nature of a cyber libel, the Comelec chair said.

Pending the passage of such a law, Garcia said the elections body would sign a memorandum of agreement with each social media platform to remove content from “fake accounts’’ or accounts promoting a candidate but is unregistered to the candidate.

“These should be removed as often as necessary,’’ he said.

LENTE PUSHES FOR TRANSPARENCY, NOT REGULATION

For LENTE, transparency initiatives are “less draconian’’ than content regulation in addressing disinformation.

Citing its own research, it said that purely content regulation policies in countries such as Bahrain, Cambodia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Thailand and Saudi Arabia “lead to censorship and abuse.’’

“Content regulation involves broad and ambiguously worded definitions of what constitutes false content or disinformation and is used in conjunction with criminal sanctions,’’ it said in an email to PCIJ.

Since the disinformation landscape has evolved from the use of bots and trolls to enlisting influencers, any transparency initiative by the Comelec should consider how influencers are hired to create content and how this relationship is “not adequately captured’’ in laws and Comelec’s own policies, LENTE said.

If at all, Comelec should provide candidates and parties a platform for a healthy debate and give them equal opportunities to address election disinformation against them, it said.

LENTE said that the Comelec’s Task Force Against Election Disinformation for the 2025 elections should draw up initiatives that synergize existing initiatives by organizations and monitor their implementation. 

It also recommends that the elections body tap civil society organizations that have the know-how and tools to effectively monitor social media during elections.

A research by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) showed that Facebook pages controlled by at least 14 potential senatorial candidates or their supporters have spent a total of P3.54 million over the last three months to boost their posts on the social media platform.

Reelectionist Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go led the pack with nearly P1 million expense to boost 266 posts, followed by former Sen. Paulo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV, who spent more than P800,000 to boost 62 posts, based on data from the Facebook Ad Library.

The country is scheduled to hold the mid-term elections in May next year simultaneously with the parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. — PCIJ.org