1-RIDER party-list Rep. Rodge Gutierrez on Sunday said the spread of false claims on TikTok asserting that China owns Palawan underscores the platform’s failure to effectively curb disinformation.
Gutierrez raised alarm over the viral posts claiming that Palawan is beyond Philippine territory, saying the content was deliberately crafted to mislead the public. He called for stronger proactive measures from TikTok.
It is clear that users are actively pushing false narratives, and yet the platform is not doing enough to stop them from spreading, he said.
According to Gutierrez, TikTok’s response to fake news remained largely reactionary, only acting when harmful content is flagged rather than taking preventive measures to detect and stop disinformation before it reaches a wide audience.
Once a flagged content is removed, the same video could still easily be reposted by a different account.
The issue of misleading content on TikTok was discussed during a House inquiry on online disinformation. Representatives from the Philippine Coast Guard revealed that false claims about China’s ownership of Palawan were being circulated with the use of Chinese characters.
During the previous hearing, TikTok’s public policy manager, Peachy Paderna, assured lawmakers that the platform did not allow misinformation that could cause harm.
But Gutierrez said he was not convinced, saying TikTok’s efforts had fallen short in effectively stopping falsehoods from going viral.
“It tends to be that once there is a narrative being taken by certain bad actors in relation to fake news and it’s posted and they take it down, they just post it through another user,” Gutierrez said.
“So, I hope you’d understand the frustration that this committee would have in relation to the social media posts—and that’s not even going into yet the issue of suppression that our journalists are facing in relation to the territorial dispute of the West Philippine Sea,” he added.
The lawmaker urged TikTok to implement stricter content moderation policies, including more aggressive takedowns of coordinated disinformation campaigns and stricter penalties for accounts repeatedly spreading fake news.