Facebook, in protest of the upcoming Australian law on applying tax on Facebook (and Google), blocked news from Australia, with the side-effect of non-news sites getting blocked as well. Whilst the details and merits of the law seem to be interpreted differently by critics and supporters of Facebook, one thing is clear — Facebook has a stronghold of news distribution in Australia, just like most countries.
What does this mean to the Philippines?
The Philippine Constitution defines ownership of media and news companies.
Article XVI. SECTION 11. (1) The ownership and management of mass media shall be limited to citizens of the Philippines, or to corporations, cooperatives or associations, wholly-owned and managed by such citizens.
Facebook fully operates as a media company in the Philippines, though they refuse to be considered as such for purposes of Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996, and is definitely not a Filipino company. Is there a legal issue here somewhere? I am not a lawyer, so I do not know how mass media is defined and applied here.
That being said, similar to Australia and other countries, and probably even worse in the Philippines due to the Facebook-Smart-Globe deal of providing free access on mobile devices, Facebook might have a monopoly of the news distribution — more so now that ABS-CBN has lost its radio and TV broadcasting franchise. A foreign company controlling the distribution of news in the Philippines?
There is no denying that the government loves using Facebook to reach the citizens (is it because the government failed to get the telcos to whitelist official government sites and that the DICT fails to provide a decent platform for government news distribution?), but if and when Facebook decides to block the Philippines (Zuckerberg may not like a proposed law or something, but then again, legislators love Facebook), the government will be drastically affected.
The Australian law is about Australian news companies and their advertising revenues. So speaking of advertising… what about the Philippines?
The same can be said of advertising —
Article XVII. SECTION 11 (2) The advertising industry is impressed with public interest, and shall be regulated by law for the protection of consumers and the promotion of the general welfare.
Only Filipino citizens or corporations or associations at least seventy percentum of the capital of which is owned by such citizens shall be allowed to engage in the advertising industry.
The participation of foreign investors in the governing body of entities in such industry shall be limited to their proportionate share in the capital thereof, and all the executive and managing officers of such entities must be citizens of the Philippines.
Now what is the share of Facebook and Google in the country’s advertising industry? Similar question, is this even legal?
I wish some Philippine legal experts can weigh in on this and provide us with data. Until then, the dependency of the Filipinos on Facebook as their source of news and the dependency of the Philippine government on Facebook as their main information/news distribution surely has implications. Why is our country allowing its citizens to be dependent on a foreign company, which does not answer to anyone, except, maybe the United States? Something is definitely wrong here.
As of this writing, Facebook and Australia have kissed and made up. I wonder what the deal is. Stay tuned.