MANILA – A lawmaker believes social media platform Meta should keep its third party fact-checking system amid the proliferation of false content and misinformation. 

During the House Tri Committee hearing on Tuesday, Meta representatives said third party fact-checking on the platform will continue outside the Unites States. 

House Assistant Majority Leader and Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong said 

“Any possible mechanism that would maintain a productive and healthy discussion online is a welcome development. I would advise personally not only Meta, but all the social media platforms to sanitize their platforms from distorted videos and fake news that is harmful not only to the individual being targeted but to the entirety nung public discourse,” he said at a press conference on Thursday. 

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The lawmaker warned of possible effects and ramifications if the platform does not sanitize its platforms.

“So I would agree kung dapat talaga ay all possible options and mechanisms na kailangan para lang just to maintain a truthful relay of information to the public is a welcome development and they should maintain that,” Adiong added.  

Meta Director for Public Policy in Southeast Asia Rafael Frankel explained to lawmakers on Tuesday that the community notes system has only been rolled out in the US. 

“As of I believe yesterday, in the United States only, we have moved to a system of community notes as opposed to our third party fact-checking system. Everywhere else in the globe, our third party fact-checking system is the system we still use,” Frankel said on Tuesday.  

“The determination by our global leadership, the fact-checking in the US was that we saw that it had become in some way politicized. And that they believed that there was the potential to improve on that system, using the community notes system. Which companies like X have already developed and implemented for quite sometime,” he explained.

Frankel said there’s no plan yet to change globally the use of the third party fact-checking system.

“I think that I would just always say that whether it's our fact checking system, whether it's our generative AI products, whether it's the user experience in some way, we're always looking to improve everything we do, we're always looking at innovation,” he added.  

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“And so, you know, the community notes that are now rolling out in the United States, we're obviously gonna be looking at, are they effective? You know, do they make sense? And testing the capabilities there. But as of now, there's no plan to change the system other than in the United States,” Frankel said. 

Meta partnered with Vera Files, Agence France-Presse and Rappler for Facebook’s third party fact-checking in the Philippines. Lawmakers acknowledged Meta’s efforts in fact-checking and handling misinformation, but urged that the platform should take more responsibility for the posts of its users.