It’s been fascinating watching things unfold: the “outing” of Cocoy Dayao (in quotes, because was he even hiding at all?), the expected united front of Duterte’s lead supporters on social media, the old(er) hands in the blogging and online community standing with Cocoy, the Senate doing an inquiry on fake news, Duterte’s supporters attacking anonymity, and the critical (anonymous) websites pushing back, insisting that it is within their rights to be speaking the way they do, especially at a time when Duterte supporters do exactly the same thing and get away with it.

Angela and I, she with 10 years of blogging and I with nine — real blogging, like writing long-form analyses on our own websites, not long statuses on Facebook pages, thank you very much — have watched things unravel knowing full well that this is nothing more than distraction, but also hoping against hope that this might actually mean talking better about the state of discourse online and how we might address the dissemination of falsity and lies.  (more…)