When thousands joined the September 21 rally, the debate didn’t just happen in the streets. It spilled online, where hashtags trended, posts circulated, and heated comment threads rose and sank. The same thing is happening with the flood-control issue: social media became the stage where citizens shared frustration, demanded accountability, or defended policy. But here’s the catch—what the public saw wasn’t simply the product of what people wrote. It was filtered, sorted, and amplified by design choices built into the platforms themselves.

That’s the core problem: platforms don’t just host conversations; they script them. Code and interface decide whose voices rise and whose sink, shaping public perception in ways that look natural but are anything but neutral.

Yet the spotlight almost always falls on influencers. We track their sponsorships, controversies, and viral posts, as if they alone carry the weight of online culture. But this fixation hides the way digital design quietly shapes the participation of ordinary people.

Consider community livestreams that sprout during floods or disasters. Residents post updates—malakas na ang tubig dito, hindi dumating ang rescue—but some comments vanish into cluttered feeds, delayed by auto-filters or drowned under engagement-boosting reactions. The people who need to be heard most end up invisible.

We saw the same dynamic during the September 21 rally. Which posts gained traction and which slipped away wasn’t random—it was the outcome of algorithms ranking “relevance,” moderation filters suppressing certain keywords, and interface choices that reward speed over depth. These are not small quirks. They are decisions with political consequences.

And as research on “automated transparency” shows, platforms often present these filters and dashboards as neutral or empowering. In reality, they push the burden onto ordinary users. Citizens must adapt to disappearing posts, throttled comments, or shifting visibility rules, while larger players—political campaigns, advertisers, influencers—enjoy smoother treatment.

Policy debates, meanwhile, stay stuck on influencers. Politicians talk about regulating viral content, policing creators, or fact-checking celebrities. But the everyday user—the barangay resident posting flood updates, the volunteer livestreaming relief, the ordinary citizen speaking out at a rally—rarely figures in the conversation.

That has to change. If we’re serious about inclusivity in digital spaces, we need to take the design of everyday interactions as seriously as we take influencer scandals. We need to ask: Do platforms give communities the tools to be visible? Do filters protect citizens without muting them? Do algorithms prioritize civic dialogue, or bury it beneath metrics designed for advertising?

In the Philippines, where digital platforms are now central to both commerce and civic life, these questions are urgent. They determine whether disaster updates reach neighbors in time, whether citizen voices are amplified during rallies, and whether public debates like flood control are shaped by genuine participation or by algorithmic sorting.

Digital literacy must move beyond “think before you click” slogans or influencer crackdowns. It must include awareness of how design governs our interactions and how policy can push for fairer, more inclusive digital spaces. To focus only on influencers is to confuse the actor with the stage itself.

Ordinary voices matter. And if the internet is truly a public square, then we cannot ignore the architecture of the square itself. Every filter, every layout, every default setting tells us something about who is invited to speak and who is left standing outside.

To take digital culture seriously is to take ordinary people seriously. And that means recognizing that platform design is not background noise—it is the script that makes or breaks our voices.