Zimbabwe: Disinformation Criminalization in Philippines Offers Policy Lessons

On June 3, the Philippine House of Representatives passed the Digital Media Anti-False Information Act bill by an overwhelming 286-3 vote, with seven abstentions. The bill would criminalise knowingly publishing or spreading false information with the intent to cause “verifiable public harm” or a “serious threat to national security.” Conviction could mean six to 12 years in prison and a fine of up to 2 million pesos, roughly US$35,000. The principal author is Sandro Marcos, the House Majority Leader and eldest son of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The administration has made the legislation a top priority. That family connection is difficult to ignore. The Philippines has spent years dealing with the political consequences of disinformation. During the 2022 presidential election, the academic fact-checking coalition Tsek.ph and Vera Files independently concluded that Marcos Jr. was the largest beneficiary of election-related disinformation, while his principal opponent, Leni Robredo, was its biggest target. Tsek.ph’s tracking found Marcos was the leading beneficiary of misleading online content during the campaign. Researchers including Jonathan Corpus Ong have documented a much longer campaign to rehabilitate the Marcos family name after the 1986 uprising that removed Ferdinand Marcos Sr. from power. The former dictator’s government jailed, tortured and killed thousands, while Philippine courts later found that the family had accumulated billions through ill-gotten wealth. This history matters because political memory is rarely a neutral thing online. In the year before the 2022 election, pro-Marcos Facebook pages generated nearly 75 million interactions, compared with just over 39 million for Robredo, according to CrowdTangle data. Researchers linked that advantage to years of organised narrative-building. Marcos Jr. has denied personally directing a troll operation. He has described himself as a victim of fake news and accused fact-checkers of pursuing an agenda and inventing quotations. Now his administration is backing a law that would give the state greater power to determine which information is false and which false information has crossed the line into criminal conduct. This is where the Philippine debate becomes particularly relevant to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has its own history of laws dealing with false statements and information considered prejudicial to the state. Section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act [Cap 9:23] addresses publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the State and carries severe penalties in circumstances covered by the provision. The Cyber and Data Protection Act of 2021 also created offences around the intentional transmission of false data messages through computer or information systems where the required intent to cause psychological or economic harm is established. The legal systems are different. The political histories are different. The point is the principle. Once the state is given broad authority to determine which statements are sufficiently false, harmful or threatening to warrant punishment, the definition of unacceptable speech can become a political question. Zimbabwean civil society and media organisations, including MISA Zimbabwe, have repeatedly raised concerns about broadly framed laws of this kind and their potential effect on journalism, activism and digital speech. That is precisely the danger now being debated in the Philippines. The problem is in the wording. The Philippine bill does not simply prohibit lying. It attaches criminal punishment to information deemed to cause “verifiable public harm” or pose a “serious threat to national security.” What qualifies as verifiable public harm? How serious must the threat be? Who determines whether a statement is false before a court reaches the question of guilt? Those questions matter because governments are political actors. They have interests, enemies, reputations to protect and narratives th