THE Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) has retracted the extension it granted Discord to comply with its directive to set up a local office in the Philippines, saying the platform merely offered a briefing on its existing safeguards instead of addressing the government’s demands.
However, the extension given to Reddit, which the agency earlier said was ‘indefinite,’ stands. This, after the platform committed to establish an office in the country and a team that would coordinate with the CICC.
‘We thought they were proposing a meeting. Unlike Reddit that had concrete plans of complying, they just provided us a list of their existing safeguards,’ CICC Executive Director Undersecretary Renato Paraiso said of Discord in a phone interview.
‘They just wanted to have a briefing and not address our demands.’
Paraiso said he wanted Discord to take the kind of steps Reddit had committed to.
The CICC initially extended the deadline for both platforms after officials of the two companies reached out and committed to work with the government on online child safety. Reddit responded within the original 24-hour ultimatum and met with CICC officials online on Wednesday, while Discord separately wrote to the agency.
‘We decided to grant them an extension since they responded within the 24 hours and we want to give them the opportunity to work with us because what we want is accountability and a clear mechanism for government to coordinate with the platforms,’ Paraiso said.
He stressed then that the agency expects concrete results.
‘While we welcome their commitment to work with us, we will not settle for anything less. This commitment must translate into concrete action, genuine accountability, faster response mechanisms and stronger protections for our Filipino children online,’ Paraiso said.
Reddit’s commitments
During the Wednesday meeting, Reddit Vice President of Policy Jessica Ashooh, Deputy General Counsel Leslie Liu and Policy and Regulatory Affairs Manager Vijay Pamarathi discussed setting up ‘green lanes,’ or direct channels where Philippine authorities can flag potentially harmful content for expedited review and possible takedown.
These channels would cover content involving online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (Osaec), child sexual abuse and exploitation materials (Csaem), scams, misinformation, harmful content, and materials associated with Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE).
Reddit, however, did not provide a specific timeline for putting its office, coordination team and other mechanisms in place.
In return, the CICC will provide Reddit with information and literature, including Philippine laws and regulations, to help the platform better understand the local framework governing online safety and cybercrime.
In its letter to Paraiso, Discord expressed concern over recent incidents in the country and said it was willing to work directly with the CICC to protect minors from exploitation, grooming and exposure to violent content.
Amid scrutiny over the use of Discord in communities associated with NVE, the platform said it was prepared to brief the CICC on its newly rolled out Global Teen Experience, which includes age-assurance measures designed to place teenage users in an age-appropriate experience by default.
Discord Senior Public Policy Advisor Vasundhara Singh said that under the new system, users who cannot be confidently placed into an age group through account-level signals may confirm their age through privacy-preserving methods, including on-device facial age estimation, with biometric data neither shared with nor stored by Discord.
Discord also offered to brief the agency on its Family Center tools and its Kodex system, which allows law enforcement agencies to submit lawful takedown and data requests and receive fast-tracked responses.
For Paraiso, these were ‘not enough’ noting ‘if I wanted to know what they were doing, then I would have just read their policy page.’
The CICC had earlier given both platforms 24 hours to designate a resident agent or local representative who could facilitate Philippine jurisdiction and improve coordination with authorities.
The order came as law enforcement and cybersecurity agencies raised alarms over the use of private, invitation-only digital communities to groom, radicalize and recruit minors into real-world violence.