If You Want a Real Digital Commons, Build It Yourself
Rappler’s answer to state-sponsored lies and harassment was to stop using corporate social media as its public square.
Over the past decade, the Philippines has served as a prime example of how technology can empower an authoritarian regime to undermine the democratic institutions that uphold a functioning democracy. Rodrigo Duterte, the former autocratic president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, would have been unable to achieve his goals without the assistance of Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the dominant social-media platform at the time.
The Philippine government utilized Facebook to transform grassroots social-media criticism into a form of legal harassment. As a co-founder and CEO of the media organization Rappler, I witnessed this firsthand. Facebook hosted a disinformation campaign and harassment directed against us, which eventually resulted in criminal charges that threatened me with life imprisonment.
We fought back in the courts and pleaded with Facebook and YouTube to preserve the integrity of information. However, after enduring years of such challenges, we ultimately concluded that we needed to create an alternative platform that would serve the public good rather than the interests of a few tech oligarchs. Infrastructure that does not pass through a legal framework is essentially law.
The entity that constructs it determines the rules that nobody has ever voted on. The digital infrastructure that most of the world relies on today was primarily constructed by tech magnates with the aim of maximizing engagement and profits while consolidating power. For years, Rappler engaged in a constant battle against the misinformation that dominated the digital commons.
Eventually, we recognized that the only way to achieve genuine information integrity was to develop our own technology: a digital community built upon a foundation of facts. This was no easy decision, as I had initially hoped that more resource-rich companies would create an alternative solution. They failed to do so, so we took matters into our own hands.
The article is an excerpt from Maria Ressa's upcoming book, "The Fight Back: A Citizen's Guide to Standing Up to Dictators."
Written by urgent.news from The Atlantic's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
