The legislative push to address disinformation picked up steam as House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos’ pushes for House Bill 9465 in time for President Marcos Jr.’s forthcoming State of the Nation Address.

HB 9465, or the Digital Media Anti-False Information Act, consolidates many other bills, the majority of which focus on more traditional content-based policing, but also include much-welcomed provisions for systems-focused governance, as well as platform and algorithmic accountability.

As the bill moves toward a third reading, a fundamental question persists: should the legal weight fall on the “polluted water” — the individual user’s post — or the “factory upstream” — the platform’s systemic operations?

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa has often suggested that traditional content moderation is akin to scooping a glass of water out of a polluted river, cleaning it, and dumping it back in. To effectively address the crisis, she argues we must look “upstream” at the algorithmic systems and business models that prioritize engagement over factual accuracy. “What we have to do is to go all the way to the factory polluting the river, shut it down, and then resuscitate the river,” Ressa said in 2023.

Such a focus would certainly be most welcome for HB 9465’s current critics who fear that, in the wrong hands, it can be used punitively against perceived government detractors, and be used to censor dissidents. The danger being seen is that it may become a new law that can be weaponized not unlike the country’s current cyber libel laws.

If the Philippines is to successfully address disinformation, our legislative strategy may find its most effective tools by auditing the “invisible editor” or the algorithm that runs our digital feeds rather than relying heavily on the threat of individual punishment.

‘Upstream’ accountability, giving news space in the recommender systems

Perhaps the most technically ambitious attempt at upstream accountability is found in Senate Bill (SB) No. 1441, the “Social Media Fairness and Algorithmic Transparency Act.” This bill recognizes that algorithms are not neutral intermediaries but active participants in shaping political discourse.

It recognizes that “Recent years have shown how unchecked algorithmic amplification has fueled political polarization…”

It proposes that platforms submit comprehensive disclosures of their models and signals to government agencies, including the specific weights assigned to engagement metrics like “likes,” “shares,” and “watch time,” “the manner in which negative signals are applied,” and explanations for content suppression and how a user’s profile affects what they see. It’s an attempt to open up the black box of social media algorithms.

The bill also prohibits platforms from modifying these algorithms to suppress, downrank, or amplify content based on political ideology, party, or belief systems, and wants platforms to clearly label political content.

It also recognizes how news outlets need to have its space in the information ecosystem. To further protect the information ecosystem, it suggests that content from accredited news agencies receive a “presumption of credibility” and be algorithmically prioritized over unauthenticated users. “Platforms should ensure that fact-based news reporting is not outcompeted by viral misinformation in recommender systems.”

It seeks to institutionalize mandatory fact-checking partnerships between platforms and fact-checkers. For example, when political content reaches a threshold of “high virality,” the bill requires platforms to automatically escalate it to independent fact-checkers and suspend algorithmic amplification until the review is complete.

Notable efforts worldwide to help newsrooms survive in social media include directives in Australia and Canada for platforms to strike deals with newsrooms to have the former pay the latter for news content.

HB 9465’s provisions for platform accountability, painful fines

HB 9465’s provisions that take aim at the platform were derived from HB 4544 or “The Truth and Integrity in Digital Communications Act of 2025.”

HB 9465 requires platforms to be transparent about their recommender systems and, significantly, must offer users a non-profiled feed or a display option that does not rely on user profiling or data but uses chronological or context-based ordering.

Like SB 1441, it requires a regular transparency report on disinformation, undergo an annual audit, and engage with third-part fact checkers.

Unique to it, the bill seeks to require platforms to provide “vetted researchers” approved by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and National Privacy Commission (NPC) “secured data necessary to studying systemic risks.”

Accountability is only as strong as the deterrent behind it. Historically, social media giants have often treated small administrative fines as a negligible cost of doing business. However, HB 9465 adopts a more aggressive revenue-based sanction.

Under this bill, the DICT may impose penalties ranging from P1 million to P10 million on platforms.

Additionally, those that are classified as “Very Large Online Platforms in the Philippines” (platforms reaching at least 10% of the population in terms of average monthly active users) may see fines of up to 6% of their Philippine annual gross revenue for grave or repeated violations — similar to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) which fines platforms based on a revenue percentage, in consideration of the platforms’ massive profits.

Still, despite these platform-oriented proposals, HB 9465 carries a significant focus on the end user.

The bill imposes criminal penalties, including 6 to 12 years of imprisonment and fines from P500,000 to P2 million for various offenses related to “deliberate dissemination” of false information. While the bill includes explicit exemptions for satire, political opinion, and journalistic inquiry, lawmakers and critics have expressed apprehensions, as reported by Rappler already, fearing they could be used punitively.

Some of the provisions in the bills mirror the DSA.

Yet the DSA does not create new criminal charges for end users. It acknowledges that users can be held liable for illegal content under already existing national or European Union laws. It does not seek to add new avenues for the state to jail individuals, and focuses almost entirely on the due diligence obligations of the service providers.

By focusing on the “factory” (the algorithm and platform conduct) rather than the “water” (the individual user), perhaps the government can address the source of digital pollution without necessarily creating a new mechanism that could be misused to silence critics, and focus on holding the platforms to the highest standard of accountability. – Rappler.com