[Tech Thoughts] The Philippine Tumblr blackout shows a lack of due process for site takedowns

2026-03-15 - 01:04

Recently, Filipinos were taken aback by the blocking of popular microblogging website Tumblr. Tumblr announced as much on the morning of Thursday, March 12, saying it was “heartbroken” that users in the Philippines were unable to access Tumblr and was working to resolve the issue. a message to our users in the Philippines. 🫶 pic.twitter.com/GaJn5QWUKG — Tumblr (@tumblr) March 11, 2026 A day later, Tumblr said the issue had been resolved, with the Philippines moving to restore access to the service. huge news for our users in the Philippines! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/7ri7UGbArg — Tumblr (@tumblr) March 12, 2026 What exactly happened, and why is it indicative of the lax nature the Philippine government takes towards established laws and guidelines? CICC’s anti-illegal gambling operations blamed The country’s Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) explained on March 12 that based on preliminary findings, “a system glitch flagged 18 domains that host legitimate platforms — including Tumblr — as ‘accessories’ to illegal gambling operations.” The CICC said that while it has a whitelist to take note of reputable domains from being flagged for takedown when submitted to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and to telecommunications companies for action, the error “resulted in an unintentional nationwide temporary access disruption, causing public alarm” for Tumblr-using Filipinos. To combat this misstep, the CICC said it was reviewing its submitted domain list “to identify any additional domains that may require immediate unblocking.” This whitelist database is also being reviewed to “include additional commonly used platforms, hosting services, and domain registries. Furthermore, internal review procedures are being enhanced to improve safeguards when processing high-volume submissions related to enforcement operations.” The problem with the system The problem, however, is that this shouldn’t be happening in the first place. Not simply on a technical level, but also on a legal one. On the one hand, it violates a Supreme Court decision on the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which makes a court order “required to censor or effect prior restraint on protected speech.” As the 2014 ruling states regarding Section 19 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act, “By allowing the government to electronically search without warrant and administratively censor all categories of speech, specifically speech which is non-pornographic, not commercially misleading and not a danger to national security, which cannot be subjected to censorship or prior restraint, Section 19 is unquestionably repugnant to the guarantees of free speech, free expression and free press and the rights to privacy of communication and against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The method by which Tumblr was blocked, which is to say through some means of automation that underwent a glitch, makes it pressing that there be human oversight over such automated decision-making processes, True enough, the CICC said in their statement that according to its private monitoring partner, they would add another layer to the process. “To ensure that issues like this do not happen again,” the CICC said the monitoring partner “will implement a manual verification process alongside an AI verification system to filter out legal websites.” ‘Legitimate digital spaces must be protected’ The CICC in its statement acknowledged the problem, but did not address the root cause of its missteps. It wrote, “While our mission to dismantle the multi-billion peso illegal gambling industry is relentless, we recognize that legitimate digital spaces must be protected.” Instead of making sure there’s a legal basis for the takedowns, it’s still going through with its automated system, which they added human oversight to. “We are currently fine-tuning our automated detection systems to ensure that surgical strikes against cybercrime do not result in collateral damage to the open internet,” the CICC said. The talk of surgical strikes and collateral damage in this context seems painfully akin to the government doing things with impunity rather than having any actual proper method to or recourse for their actions. It should know better and, ultimately, do better if it expects to be trusted. – Rappler.com