A series of fatal school shootings in the Philippines this year appears to have pushed the progress of two pieces of legislation that seek to limit children’s access to social media platforms. The shootings have been linked to exposure of students to violent and radical content in platforms and gaming sites.
Both houses of Congress have already passed their respective bills on online safety. The Lower House’s version is House Bill No. 11566 or the Safe and Friendly Environment for Kids in Digital Spaces (SAFE Kids) Act, while the Senate’s is Senate Bill No. 2424 or the Safe Media Access and Responsible Technology for Kids in Digital Spaces (SMART KIDS) Act. As of this writing, the bills are at the bicameral conference stage where the committee will seek to produce a final version to be ratified by both chambers.
The affected platforms would be those offering social media services, gaming sites with social networking functions, and sites with functionally equivalent digital services. The key restriction for both proposed laws is an age-gating measure. The House bill favors a tiered access, with a full ban imposed on children younger than 13 years old, and conditional access for users 13 to 17 years old (with parental consent). Meanwhile, the Senate bill imposes an absolute ban for all persons younger than 18 years old. Age verification measures such as presentation of government IDs are being proposed. The usual approach of self-declaration of age sometimes encountered in digital meanderings (“by proceeding, you confirm that you are of legal age”) is expressly disallowed by the Senate bill.
Both versions require the operators to establish some presence in the Philippines, essentially to enable local regulators to enforce compliance requirements against the platforms and sanction non-compliance. The House version that requires registration with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission as a subsidiary or branch, seems to generally align with doing business principles.
As for the Senate bill, this appears to only require designation and maintenance of a legal representative or authorized point of contact in the Philippines, authorized to receive notices, orders, and legal processes and to initiate the platform’s emergency response and escalation procedures. The latter is more similar to the approach under the Internet Transactions Act, and may be favored by global operators whose sites are accessible in the Philippines.
If the proposed bills become law, global operators of broadly used social networking services may need to redesign their platforms, overhaul terms, spend to set up a local point of contact, and contend with greater enforcement risk.
How doable would that be? A few months ago, investigation into and a talk of a ban on gaming and game creation platform Roblox reportedly resulted in an agreement between the platform and local officials on safeguards, including the use of the Philippine National ID system in user age verification, messaging safeguards, and the establishment of a local office with a direct liaison officer. It will be interesting to know how the agreement is panning out.
The views expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of her office as well as FINEX.
Rose Marie M. King-Dominguez is a senior partner of SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan and the head of the firm’s Special Projects Department. She is a FINEX member.
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