When Majority Leader Sandro Marcos filed his bill seeking to punish purveyors of false information at the start of the 20th Congress in 2025, he moved to specifically define what “fake news” is.

His bill states that “fake news” refers to “false or misleading information presented as fact of news, deliberately and maliciously disseminated to mislead the public, that may sow confusion, incite hatred or violence, or disrupt public order.”

The word phrase “fake news” — a fixture in the social media-era lexicon — can no longer be found in the substitute bill that passed the House public information committee and cleared House plenary debates past midnight on May 27.

The revised bill, which still puts him first in the lineup of primary authors, instead doubles down on defining “disinformation,” which is the more precise language used by scholars.

It’s just one of the many changes in the substitute House Bill No. 9645, but the revisions are unlikely to allay fears of critics that this measure would be weaponized to suppress free speech, despite new safeguards injected into the new document.

What the new bill is about

The bill that hurdled second reading in the House — also called Digital Media Anti-False Information Act — has the following salient points:

• It targets disinformation and false information that pose “verifiable public harm” and “serious threat to national security.” While these concepts were mentioned in the original bill, the substitute measure uses these as legal requirements for prosecution.
• It explicitly bans troll farms that engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior.
• It bans the dissemination of materially manipulated content, e.g. AI-generated media, without adequate disclosure, or created to cause harm.
• It penalizes coordination with foreign state actors for covert influence operations, and impersonation of government, media, or emergency entities to peddle disinformation.
• It explicitly exempts from liability those “mere liking, sharing, forwarding, or reposting without actual knowledge of falsity and specific intent to cause verifiable public harm.”
• It compels digital platforms — such as a social media network, a messaging service, and a content-sharing platform — to maintain a representative in the Philippines and establish a mechanism for reporting unlawful content.
• It also mandates these digital platforms to publicly disclose sponsored content, political ads, and paid campaigns; submit annual transparency reports to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
• It singles out very large online platforms in the Philippines (VLP-PH) — or those with average monthly active users amounting to at least 10% of the national population — and tasks them to undergo an independent annual audit, appoint a senior compliance officer, and designate a liaisons officer to the DICT who will coordinate as regards takedown requests, among other things.
• It sets a fine of up to P2 million and jail sentence of up to 12 years for convicted violators.

A problematic bill

Nikko Balbedina, multimedia editor of PressOne.ph and a member of the technical working group (TWG) for the measure, views the substitute bill as problematic despite “significant” improvements from earlier proposals.

Aside from Marcos’ proposal, the new bill consolidates 16 other measures filed by around two dozen lawmakers.

“The phrase ‘fake news’ is a misnomer. News is verified, vetted information from multiple sources. If you say it’s fake, it’s no longer news,” he said, articulating a common belief among media scholars.

Balbedina sees the need for government intervention to combat online lies and coordinated inauthentic behavior on disinformation, and even welcomes provisions of the bill requiring large digital platforms to register an entity in the Philippines.

However, he raises concerns over the sweeping powers that will be given to the government once the bill is signed into law.

“At its core, the bill is easy to be weaponized due to its punitive nature. We don’t want the government to have a monopoly on the truth,” Balbedina told Rappler.

Broad definitions

His qualms echo manifestations of Makabayan lawmakers during plenary debates.

House public information committee chairperson Lordan Suan, who defended the measure on plenary floor, insisted that the bill “does not punish falsehood alone.”

“It requires the convergence of three independent elements: actual knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for truth, specific intent to cause harm, and of course, a demonstrable nexus to verifiable public harm or national security threat,” Suan said.

But the left-leaning legislators argue: what’s stopping an oppressive government from defining national security and public harm in their own terms?

Tinio and Co’s concerns are rooted in personal experiences. Their groups have been relentlessly red-baited — and sued — by state forces in the past years.

“If you listen to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, Armed Forces of the Philippines, the secretary of defense, they’d say, ‘They are terrorists, they propagate fake news, etcetera.’ Then, there’s the issue of red-tagging,” ACT Teachers Representative Antonio Tinio pointed out. “This bill will definitely further empower the state itself.”

“For example, a government official could not enter the office because there were people outside calling for his resignation. Then later, he said, ‘No, those claims that I’m part of a scheme of corruption are fraudulent and wrong.’ Is that covered by the ‘national security threat’ provision already?” Kabataan Representative Renee Co added. “It can be dangerously broad and can have the effect of criminalizing protest.”

While the bill explicitly states that those who merely liked or shared content will not be penalized, worries remain that accused individuals will still have to carry the burden of proving their innocence before the courts.

These legal battles are costly and are sometimes only meant to harass individuals who are subject of these cases.

“This could possibly create a chilling effect,” Tinio said.

“Your observation, valid or not, does not apply only to this bill. It applies to all laws. Because there’s nothing stopping anyone from filing frivolous suits,” Bataan 1st District Representative Antonino Roman III, another plenary sponsor, argued.

Gov’t role in info control

The left-leaning lawmakers also flag the role of DICT, which will be responsible for accrediting out-of-court dispute settlement (ODS) bodies that provide resolution services for user appeals regarding platform decisions, and accrediting “vetted researchers” who can access platform data.

“What criteria will the vetted researchers use as basis? And whatever systems they end up creating, how will they ensure that these will be fair, impartial, and will not, at the end of the day, favor certain narratives?” Co asked.

“Some people are saying that agencies under the executive branch are now acting in a politically motivated manner — in the same way that they did under the previous administration. So that is our concern,” Tinio added. “With regard to the DICT and its powers, frankly, I believe those powers are excessive.”

Roman said content verification will be handled by independent fact-checkers, not vetted researchers.

Supposed safeguards

To their credit, the authors of the revised bill appear to have made an effort to set a high bar before the state can crack down on purveyors of disinformation.

One section explicitly enumerates types of speech that the bill cannot police: political opinions, criticisms of government and public officials, satire, journalistic inquiry, investigative reporting, editorial judgment, whistleblowing, public interest advocacy, commentary, opinion, academic discourse, and artistic and religious expression, among others.

“It shall also not be used to penalize inadvertent errors made in good faith and subsequently corrected, expressions clearly identified as humor or creative content, nor shall it target individuals or groups engaging in legitimate political organizing or online advocacy,” the bill also reads.

Roman acknowledges the measure is not perfect, but insists it’s a serious effort to address disinformation.

“If we do too little, malicious actors may exploit digital spaces to cause real-world harm. If we do too much, we risk chilling lawful expression and constitutional freedoms. Our task, therefore, is not to choose between liberty and responsibility, but to pursue a framework that protects both,” Roman said.

Despite these efforts, the issue persists: it’s a bill that’s prone to abuse, especially by a kind of government that does not understand what it means to have a healthy democracy.

“The premise that government cannot be trusted to implement its own laws is a premise that swallows every statute ever passed. And it is not an argument against this bill, but an argument against governance itself,” Suan argued.

Alternative approach

Tinio does not want this bill, but said that if regulation was necessary, it should be handled by a body with “semblance of autonomy,” and not by DICT, an agency under the executive branch, which he said, can be politicized.

For Balbedina of PressOne.Ph, the government should prioritize education over punishment.

“We need to revive media literacy subjects. We need to start as early as K-1,” Balbedina said. “Children nowadays learn how to operate smartphones even before they learn how to ride a bike or run around outside.”

The committee report on HB 9645 was approved in the morning of May 26, and was immediately tackled in the plenary later the same day and subsequently hurdled second reading. Interestingly, the substitute bill had not even been uploaded to the House website when plenary deliberations began.

The quick turnaround is likely because the House only has three remaining session days before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s next State of the Nation Address in July, and it wants to pass the measure — classified by the administration as a priority — on third and final reading in the House before then.

This gives the President another measure to take pride of in his annual speech, even though his son’s bill is only halfway through the legislative process, as the Senate has yet to pass a counterpart proposal. – Rappler.com