How Duterte Turned Facebook into a Weapon, with Help from Facebook

That attitude is even more unsettling to me, somehow. "Aside from all the murders he's committing, things are going well."

I agree with you mostly, but um, if you pay attention our cops shoot and kill thousands of people per year, many of them unarmed. And we have a president that was lauding this practice (and praising Duterte). We're nowhere nearly as bad as Duterte, but we're heading in the wrong direction.

You shouldn't, but you can certainly be killed by someone working for the government. You need to check this out, even though the video footage is disturbing to say the very least: http://www.newsweek.com/police-release-graphic-video-officer...

You are taking excerpts of my response out-of-context to argue your point.

Again, they had reason to believe it was true, because the information came from a source they trust (AFP/the news wire). I would not call it "fake news" if they admitted the case from the other side later on.

If you'd sneer at people admitting their own mistakes (like by issuing errata)...well I hope you don't make mistakes of your own.

> So, it's a standard that "journalists" can disregard with impunity.

You are the only one saying that. If their reporting does not check out with their references, they lose credibility at best or get sued for libel at worst.

> But Pres. Duterte does not

I am not claiming that he is doing it. I am claiming that he _can_ do it. He CAN dictate the police/influence regulating bodies to strangle institutions. In contrast, these institutions do not have any similar influence. That is why, unless you are using the word "dictator" in a context other than political, you cannot label institutions as dictators.

> Regarding the live updates[1], He called it out because it may endanger the soldiers.

Now this, my friend, is a clear example of what you are calling "fake news that could have caused panic". Quoting the article: "But Aznar stressed that if Nieto's accusations of him endangering the troops were true, why is the Armed Forces of the Philippines still allowing him to cover the Marawi siege?" Surely, on-the-ground AFP units know better than Nieto on whether Aznar is endangering them? And yet Nieto saw it fit to raise an online hue-and-cry. Errata/apologies from Nieto: 0, nil, zilch, nada. Makes it hard to believe that his intentions were for the best interest of the AFP (and in fact, had that been the case, would it not make more sense to discreetly raise the matter to AFP, seeing that he has contacts in the government the ordinary Filipino does not?).

And also,

> Regarding the NUJP's condemnation[2], Nieto seems to be joking.

Imagine if a professional journalist made "jokes" in bad taste like that. Imagine the professional backlash they would face. And yet Nieto who keeps passing off his opinions as "fact" is not held to the same standard.

Point: any professional journalist who value their own credibility would be careful not to say things like this, joking or not.

> What I meant is that he effectively raises issues using his words such as the Dengvaxia scandal.

Ends do not justify means. You originally raised Nieto's part in exposing Dengvaxia in response to me labeling Nieto as "fake news". I stand by my original assertion and that even if Nieto's role in exposing Dengvaxia is significant, that does not redeem him from all the other times he peddled baseless accusations or outright lies.

> he found a way to do it quickly in his first few months what the previous administration wasn't able to do after many years in office

Duterte would not have been able to implement it quickly were it not for the legislative foundations (House meetings, Senate deliberations, etc.) that happened in the previous administration. It is not as if all the work on this bill was done exclusively by Duterte's administration. To claim that the previous administration weren't able to do anything for FOI after many years in office is outright false.

In fact, no amount of executive orders can will an ordinary bill into a strong law in a matter of months. Should any president try, there are checks and balances in the government (hi Supreme Court) that could question the process and hold the implementation. Heck the RH Bill took its sweet time before it even became a document awaiting a president's signature and it was still issued a TRO for over a year. Not to mention that today, the RH Law is a toothless version of what was originally passed.

I don't know where someone hinted that you're a fake account, but you are certainly disingenuously passing yourself off as some kind of authority on what ordinary Filipinos think, when you don't even live in the Philippines, but a country thousands of miles away.

This explains why your only evidence of "the entire population" favouring Duterte is a Youtube of people who like Duterte saying they like Duterte, and what some people allegedly told you when you visited the country.

> even though they live in the country [...] who has probably never been in the Philippines?

And why are you even getting so worked up and fanatical about this? Because you spent two weeks in Boracay? It's not your country - you live in South Africa - so why are you acting otherwise?

No more stupid than 60m people in Germany or 40m people in Italy or 10m people in Chile or 4m people in Haiti or 30m people in the Philippines or 7m people in Zimbabwe or 20m people in Venezuela etc.

It doesn't require a 'stupid' population to believe the propaganda of murderous regimes; it's something any group of people is susceptible to, as we have seen time and again at great cost.

People is saying two things. First we (as western world) know dictatorship is bad, because exactly how you said, we've been there. Expecially Europe. US has actually never tried it. But we actually know what happens.

Second, we also know that to get to power dictators always have to use extremely violent or aggressive techniques. Maybe by condemning these we could prevent dictatorships and all the crap that follows altogheter.

Besides, it's instead entirely possible to me that this is an unskippable step in a country's history, and people have to go through that phase and try it on their skin, so whatever.

The point of the artcle was more about the role of Facebook into this anyway.

It suggests the unthinkable possibility that a leader, whom the downvoter doesn't care for, may actually be popular with others. And that just can't be right, it has to be all propaganda and fake news causing this mistaken popularity. Similar to "Russians stole the election!" in the US. It's a failure to comprehend or accept people have different backgrounds, beliefs and values and a certainty that preference and political opinion are objective truth.

Because you suggested many people may in fact possibly support Duarte, you threaten the illusion which is tantamount to supporting Duarte yourself in the mind of the downvoter. It really is a shockingly form of mental myopia from otherwise intelligent people and renders them unable to accurately predict and understand large chunks of the world (like last election in US).

Whether it's politics, religion, unrealistic business goals or unrealistic career goals ("I'm going to be a famous rap artist or else play in the NBA!") I think there is simply no way to get hated on faster than attempting to ground an illusion with reality. You become perceived as part of the problem when you do that. (Still needs to be done though IMOP).

This is the second post in the thread where you've basically said that murder is an acceptable response to journalistic corruption. As you're so in love with your 'FACT' perhaps you can give us a factual definition of what makes someone a 'son of a bitch.'