FR. SHAY CULLEN
“YOU HAVE blood on your hands, your product is killing people.” This is the shocking challenge and accusation made to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerber, by Sen. Lindsey Graham during a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child safety.
Parents beware, your kids are impacted for sure. This hearing follows the exploding child sexual abuse images that are proliferating on all platforms together with other harmful content through the telecommunications companies. Is it time to tell the Philippine telecommunications the same thing?
The many postings and communications through the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on the major platforms of social media is causing sex-extortion, suicides, drug overdoses, blackmail, grooming leading to child rape, excessive gambling, scams, fraud and other evils. The platforms of social media are like crime scenes but no one is held accountable. CEOs of the social media platforms are being challenged to take responsibility and stop the crimes, abuse and harm that their products are doing to children and adults. They must be held responsible and accountable for what they allow on their platforms.
There is a rising cry worldwide for the US to do more to control and discipline the content and change Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
This means the platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok and others cannot be held liable for what others post on their social media platforms. When passed, the lawmakers had no idea what that would do in time- unleash a torrent of hate speech, abuse and lots of evil matter and activities carried on the platforms and published and shared without accountability.
Senator Durbin said that Discord is one of many social media platforms that are used for criminal purposes. “Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children. Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophiles; Snapchat’s disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially sextort young victims.”
Responding to the drug sales over the platforms carried by all ISPs including the Philippines’ PLDT, Globe and Dito, the worst drug peddlers are selling dangerous drugs over the internet and delivered by courier companies disguised as toiletries and cosmetics and so on. Meanwhile, the Philippine war on drugs targeted the impoverished users like malnourished, constantly exhausted pedicab cyclists like Ben Santos (not real name) that spent 50 pesos for a sachet of meth or shabu so he could keep pedaling and earning more into the night to feed his family. Ben was accosted one night by an unidentified anti-drug hit squad and shot dead. He likely refused to give up the name of his pusher.
The real drug smugglers, traffickers and users are the elites living in high rise condos and getting their supplies over the internet through the offending social media platforms for their high-powered expensive parties and to satisfy their addictions. Many young teenagers have been enticed to buy fentanyl online through Instagram or Facebook and died. That led to the accusation to Zuckerberg that he had “blood on his hands.” So many have died as a result of crimes like illegal drug peddling. Who else also has blood on their hands? (To be continued)/PN
