For millions of Filipinos who scroll through social media every day, the line between fact and fabrication has never seemed thinner. False health remedies spread faster than official advisories, manipulated videos of politicians circulate with millions of views, and coordinated networks of anonymous accounts turn every controversy into a weaponized narrative. It is in this atmosphere of digital chaos that the Philippine House of Representatives approved House Bill No. 9465, the Digital Media Anti-False Information Act, a measure intended to punish the spread of harmful disinformation online. The bill passed overwhelmingly in June, with 286 votes in favor and only three against, and now rests in the Senate, where its future remains uncertain. Its authors say the law is a crucial tool for protecting national security and public welfare, while also shielding legitimate journalism from being swept up in the crackdown. But a growing number of AI ethicists, media advocates, and legal scholars are sounding an alarm, warning that the bill could end up doing the opposite of what it promises, chilling free expression, encouraging self-censorship, and granting the state enormous power to decide what counts as “truth.”
The bill’s most controversial provisions are also its most concrete. Anyone found guilty of knowingly creating, financing, directing, or materially assisting false information that is meant to cause “verifiable public harm” or a “serious threat to national security” could face six to twelve years in prison and fines of up to two million pesos, roughly thirty-two thousand dollars. The measure also covers undiclosed AI-generated images, video, and audio, making it one of the first legislative attempts in the region to address synthetic media. Lawmakers say the urgency is clear: the Philippines has become a breeding ground for troll farms, bot networks, election manipulation, and foreign influence operations, all of which have been supercharged by advances in artificial intelligence. Supporters point to the need for accountability in a country where disinformation has influenced election outcomes and endangered lives during public health emergencies. But critics argue that the bill’s focus on punishing individual posts, rather than the platforms and networks that amplify them, is a fundamental flaw that could turn ordinary citizens into criminals for sharing something they believed to be true.
The politics of the bill only heighten the concern. Its lead author is House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, the eldest son of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who in February explicitly asked Congress to prioritize anti-disinformation legislation. That request carries an uncomfortable historical weight. Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s rise to the presidency in 2022 was accompanied by a massive, coordinated online revisionist campaign that downplayed his father’s martial law abuses, airbrushed the family’s ill-gotten wealth, and recast the dictator as a golden-age leader. Many researchers and journalists documented the role of troll armies, paid influencers, and algorithmically amplified content in shaping that narrative. To have the younger Marcos now championing a law that criminalizes false information is, in the eyes of many critics, dangerously ironic. The bill’s text was also fast-tracked through the lower chamber with remarkable speed, raising questions about whether the usual consultations with civil society and media organizations took place. For those who have tracked the Marcos family’s use of political power for decades, the law looks less like a defense of truth and more like a potential weapon to be aimed at inconvenient voices.
Among the most vocal critics is Carl Javier, executive director and chief AI ethicist at Data and AI Ethics PH, a nonprofit that advocates for responsible and human-centered AI use. Javier argues that the current bill is built on the wrong foundation entirely. “The current bill looks at content,” he told Eco-Business. “We think the approach should be to look at the behavior on platforms.” In his view, evaluating the truthfulness of an individual post invites arbitrariness and subjectivity. Who decides what is “verifiable public harm”? What qualifies as a “serious threat to national security”? These vague standards, he warns, create a “chilling effect” and a form of “prior restraint” that discourages people from speaking honestly, even when they are not breaking the law. Javier suggests a smarter approach would be to focus on the platform ecosystems that allow disinformation to flourish in the first place: opaque algorithms that reward outrage, engagement-driven recommendation systems that boost misleading content, and business models that profit from division. He also calls for accountability to be shifted toward the coordinated operators who organize influence campaigns, rather than the individual user who shares a questionable article with their friends and family. By targeting behavior instead of content, he says, the law could actually regulate the systems that cause the most damage without turning free speech itself into a criminal act.
The concern is shared deeply among journalists, who see themselves as the first targets of any law that polices truth. Macel Ingles, chairperson of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, does not mince words. “Giving the state the power to determine what is true and what is false is authoritarian,” she said. “This power to be the arbiter of truth or falsehood can be used as a weapon by the powers-that-be to muzzle critical reporting and silence dissent.” Ingles points to a recent and painful precedent: during the pandemic, the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act, an emergency law passed to address Covid-19, contained a provision penalizing false information about the outbreak. Instead of being used sparingly, she says, it was weaponized by the administration of then-President Rodrigo Duterte against journalists, artists, and ordinary citizens who questioned the government’s response. “Our fears are not unfounded,” Ingles said, recalling how critics were accused of peddling fake news and charged under a law that was meant to protect public health. For her, the new disinformation bill echoes that same logic, but with far harsher penalties and an even broader scope. Unlike the pandemic law, which was temporary and tied to a public health emergency, HB 9465 would be a permanent piece of legislation with a ten-year maximum sentence. Journalists, who already face immense pressure in the Philippines, would have to think twice before publishing anything that could be labeled false by a government official, even if the information was accurate and in the public interest.
Rather than rushing forward with the disinformation bill, Ingles and Javier both argue that lawmakers should first focus on a more comprehensive framework for governing AI and the digital information ecosystem. Ingles points to House Bill No. 10362, the AI Governance Act, filed by party-list representative Chel Diokno and other lawmakers about two months after the disinformation bill. That proposed law takes a much broader approach, addressing transparency, privacy, discrimination, labor impacts, and the environmental footprint of AI systems, rather than simply punishing the content those systems produce. Ingles argues that without such a framework, the root causes of information disorder will remain untouched. “As it is, without the AI governance law, the responsibility lies on the sources of information and not on the digital infrastructure that allow opaque algorithms, unregulated influence operations and the proliferation of platform structures that make disinformation flourish in the first place,” she said. She also calls for the long-pending Right to Information Act, which would give practical effect to Filipinos’ constitutional right to access government records. That law, she says, is far more urgent than an anti-disinformation measure because it would empower citizens to verify fact for themselves rather than relying on the state to tell them what is true.
Javier agrees that the Philippines needs a patchwork of legislation, but he cautions against treating the proposed bills as competing options. “We need to develop patchworks of legislation that reinforce current protections, make space for what should be advanced, and create the needed protections,” he said. He believes targeted laws are necessary, but they must surround existing safeguards, such as the Data Privacy Act of 2012, which governs how personal data is processed by both government and private entities. The danger, he warns, is passing a law that feels powerful and decisive but in reality only gives the state more tools to control public discourse while doing little to dismantle the profitable machinery of disinformation. The Philippines now stands at an important crossroads. On one hand, the public is understandably angry about the lies that have distorted elections, endangered public health, and soured the national conversation. On the other hand, the proposed response risks punishing individuals rather than the powerful systems that enable large-scale deception. The Senate will now decide whether to adopt the lower chamber’s approach or step back and design something wiser and more protective of democracy. For Jean, a student in Manila who has seen her own family members fall down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories on Facebook, the stakes are personal. She wants something done about the lies, but she worries about what happens next. “I don’t want people to be silenced by fear,” she said softly. “I want the truth to be able to speak without being punished for it.” Her voice is exactly the one that lawmakers should be listening to as they weigh the future of truth and freedom in the Philippines.