Posting Your Favorite Presidential Candidate Meme? - You can get arrested!

I recently just watched a video that was brought to my attention by the Anonymous Philippines Facebook Page. It is a news report about how the Philippine National Police anti Cyber-Crime group is prepared to investigate and file charges on anyone using the internet to disseminate negative, false, or any derogatory information against any candidate.

If you have been active on social media for the past couple of months you have probably seen a lot of these memes, edited images, and even videos that make some of our presidential candidates look foolish and funny.

While I am all for protecting everyone from being accused falsely and lied about with the things that they may or may not have done, I am honestly still a bit torn about libel cases being filed against social media users, especially those who are just sharing these things for the laugh.

In the U.S. talk show hosts like Conan O’Brien make fun of Donald Trump almost every single day. It makes me wonder why they can tolerate that kind of comedy and why we can’t?

Filipinos are known for their sense of humor, but unfortunately I have to admit we are actually “pikon” when we are the subject of a punch line. Hence we hate foreign celebrities who tell us how dirty our streets are… even though they are just telling the truth.

So what now? Should we stop all the circulation of these memes about Mar, Duterte, Binay, Poe, Miriam, etc? Is this the start of a new kind of censorship because the government is starting to be afraid that we are getting smarter?

I suppose from the very start governments have always tried to control the media, my hope is that the internet can still remain free where thinking people can communicate and express what they want.

…Just my thoughts.