Presidential aspirant Vice President Leni Robredo wants to make social media platforms “accountable and responsible” if she becomes the president by penalizing them for making pornography accessible to minors.
Asked what her stand on pornography addiction among minors because of their access to it via social media, Robredo lamented that “we don't have a law that seeks to make accountable the social media sites.”
“The laws also shouldn't be static. They should change with the demands of the times. Legislators should think that their primary purpose is the protection of the people, especially children,” she said in a mix of Filipino and English.
“So we need a law that criminalizes and penalizes social media sites for them to be accountable and responsible; that it shouldn't be accessible to people who aren't ready to process — in this case, your example of kids that get addicted to that because it's accessible,” she added.
Robredo was the presidential aspirant featured on Boy Abunda’s “2022 Presidential One-on-One Interviews.”
“Social media sites should make sure that their content is accessible only to those who can digest it mentally and psychologically,” she added.
The Vice President noted that there is no law that makes social media sites accountable.
However, Robredo was also quick to clarify that she is not for censorship of these platforms, but only for the social media companies to be responsible as to who gets to access their content.
The burden to protect minors from these content must be shared by the parents, families, schools, social media platforms, and the government, the lady official said.
“Social media platforms had been abused in many varied ways already in many countries. Suddenly the world has become so small that everything is in our grasp, but we should be fixing accountability,” she added.
She confirmed to Abunda that a legislation providing the mechanisms to make social media platforms accountable “is very doable.”