Palace: No censorship of PNoy's FB page
MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang has denied censoring the web sites of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, including his Facebook (FB) page.
Only profanities and expletives were filtered in the web sites in accordance with protocol, a Palace official said.
According to Presidential Communications Operations Secretary Herminio "Sonny" Coloma, Malacañang has no desire to censor negative comments.
He said this is part of their aim is to get feedback from the people.
Coloma added they will not censor the websites because “cyberspace is a democratic space,” and President Aquino himself is a “foremost advocate of free expression.”
“We welcome criticism,” Coloma said.
Facebook account
In President Aquino's Facebook account, which has 1.9 million followers to date, rules have been set by the volunteer administrators overseeing the account.
"All comments containing derogatory words ('cussing') or just plain nonesense [sic] are removed or erased by the Admins. Why? Because they do not contribute positively and only creates animosity. Most people want to voice out their feelings or opinion here on the fanpage so they are heard by everyone, and not to see comments you couldn't even repeat in front of our children," they wrote.
The administrators of the same Facebook account also reminded netizens that they are bound by Facebook's Terms of Use which prohibit bullying, intimidating, harassing, and posting content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, and incites violence.
The President's official Web site, president.gov.ph, also has a "Transparent Government" page where people can post comments and messages for the President. -- ABS-CBN News
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Sorting out the confusion
As former content head of the Noynoy Aquino for President Campaign New Media Bureau, I would like to set the record straight regarding inadvertent confusion over President Aquino’s Facebook “fan pages”. Shortly after the recent horrific hostage taking of Hong Kong tourists at the Quirino Grandstand, Agence France Presse published two stories about a disclaimer posted on one of President Aquino’s three verified Facebook pages after being inundated with thousands of indignant comments: "We reserve the right to block anyone who fails to follow these rules and report them as spammers to Facebook,"
The Facebook page in which the disclaimer was posted is Noynoy Aquino (P-Noy) and may be accessed here: http://www.facebook.com/presidentnoy?ref=mf?. This is the official Facebook page as created by the Presidential Communications Operations Office under the leadership of Secretary Herminio Coloma. This page currently has 36,649 fans and is a component of the current government’s feedback mechanism.
It should not be confused with http://www.Facebook.com/noynoy.aquino?ref=ts from which the above screen shot is taken. This is the Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III Fan page created by campaign volunteers and New Media Bureau members Ben Totanes and Betty Abrantes. Both continue to manage this fan page that has 1,958,319 “likes” as of this writing. Although this page was also swamped with irate comments regarding the hostage taking incident, its administrators did not issue a disclaimer but simply deleted posts considered unfit for publication.
It is hoped that the above clears up any unintended misunderstanding.