Cong Corrales“It’s fair game, just relax and enjoy the ride.” - Fair game, Crosby Stills, and Nash
DO you know what Change.Org is? No, it’s not a creation of the trolls of the Turd Reich. It has existed long before the word “change” was used as part of the campaign slogan of Digong Dada. It’s an online petition platform where one can beef up their advocacies online.
I remember, we, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines together with the Right to Know Right Now Coalition, used this online petition platform to drum up support for the enactment of the Freedom of Information (read: the law not the useless executive order) and to call for the scrapping of the Anti-cybercrime Act.
Lately, however, more and more people seem to be using this online platform for an entirely different purpose. It has been deluged with petitions and counter-petitions to shutdown certain Facebook pages.
Paul Quilét started a petition with Change.Org to suspend the Mocha Uson Blog page on Facebook. The last time I checked, this guy has already gathered 32,315 souls to his cause.
“Mocha Uson, a Filipino entertainer-turned-Duterte die-hard supporter uses her Facebook page to spread fictitious/unsupported claims, fake news, and false information about pressing issues in the Philippines, from the role the USAID plays in the country to news concerning government officials and other personalities, eliciting unwarranted hate from the public. The said Facebook page widens the rift between those who support the current administration and those who are critical of it,” Quilét reasons in his petition.
This ludicrous petition was later countered by Cheryl Anne with her own petition, also on Change.Org, calling to stop online petition silencing the Mocha Uson Blog page on Facebook. As of this writing, the petition has gathered 34,185 supporters.
“If we allow them to silence Mocha Uson, the elite and media together with blog sites against the Duterte government will feed the people twisted news and wrong information,” Anne argues on her petition.
Please do take note that both petitions, although different, have two common points– both hate the guts of what they deem to be biased and elitist mainstream news media and want to silence its social media presence.
Not to be outdone, Charles Robert Coloma started his own petition as well. Coloma filed a petition on the popular online petition platform to shutdown the Facebook pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Rappler. Coloma has about 85 online signatures, as of press time.
“The news reports they provide are biased. They cherry pick items, quotes, and facts that would suit the political party they support in order to mislead the readers into thinking ill of the current administration. This is equivalent to spreading panic, fear, and misinformation and should never be tolerated,” Coloma wrote on his petition.
First, the right to freedom of expression and free press is universal. That doesn’t only mean it is applicable in all nations. Universal means it is applicable to everyone even within one nation. You cannot enjoy free speech and disallow another because you do not subscribe to what they’re expressing.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” reads Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Please do take note that Article 19 emphatically states “receive and impart information and ideas.”
In a free market of ideas, one “kills” an idea by debunking that idea and offers a more superior idea. Now, how can one do that if you shutdown the other person with an opposing view?
I do not support Mocha Uson. I have called her out many times on my Facebook, not because she’s a vapid woman, but because she is peddling lies. But I do not support shutting her down either. It would be hypocritical of me, being in the communications industry, to deny her of her right to free speech because she is peddling lies on her blog to support her precious Digong Dada. This is the same with the Rappler. We have been witnesses so many times in past of their “kuryente” news. Still, those aren’t enough reasons to censor or shut them out.
The moment you support this ludicrous idea that you can shut down another person’s right to free speech just because you do not agree with them is tantamount to accepting that yours can be curtailed too.
You can engage them. Call out their lies and offer the truth. Argue with them but do not shut them up. I agree with a colleague in media when he posted on his wall that he’d rather have Mocha Uson and the other trolls of the Turd Reich blab their lies “noisily” than have them scheme and plot in silence.
But hey, go ahead and file these inane petitions at Change.Org. At least, now we will have the list of probable trolls of the Turd Reich. (cue-in: evil laugh)
That is the genius of free speech. It is both an avenue of tolerance and abuse.
However, there is this other freedom also--the freedom to choose and to discern what you’ll take in as your own and what not to believe.
As for the Facebook pages and accounts that you don’t agree with, you can always choose to “unfollow” or straight up “block” a Facebook page or account so that it will never appear on your newsfeed. You don’t have to go to all the trouble of filing a ludicrous petition at Change.Org.
Why should the entire social media platform be censored for the lack of tolerance but generous amounts of ignorance of a few?
Everything on social media is fair game. If you can’t stand the heat on social media, then you always have that choice to get out of it. Get a life outside the virtual world.
In the seemingly chaotic chatter on social media about information, disinformation, lies, truth, and worst--memes, the ignorant could never sift through all those debris. The ignorant and intolerant will always be the biggest losers in all social media platforms.
But then again, you can also choose to stay. Otherwise, who will we use as comedy and satirical fodder on our Facebook walls.
