Battling cyberscams

Some weeks ago I watched a promotional video that dragged on for 10 minutes, featuring what was touted as new medication that I thought could be good for my mother.

I sat through the long video because the endorser was Dr. Willie Ong, who reportedly concocted the substance at home even as he battled cancer.

Doc Willie, who was featured hairless and ailing in the video, used to provide medical services in The STAR, so I’m familiar with his looks, voice and manner of talking. I thought the video looked authentic. I finished the entire clip, but held back from placing an order for the medicine (P1,970 per bottle, at 50 percent discount) until I had verified its authenticity with Doc Willie.

He sent word that he had not endorsed any product, although he noted that AI-generated videos of him falsely endorsing wellness products continue to proliferate. Denying all of them can be exhausting, especially for someone busy fighting cancer.

I wondered how many people have been conned by that ad for joint health, and similar fake endorsements for a wide range of products.

These days you can’t even trust the star ratings, “likes” and reviews for many products sold online because e-commerce sites pay people to do this. I get messages regularly on my phone, sent randomly by the sites, offering to pay me to be among the “likers.”

The desperate or distressed are among the most vulnerable to scams. I have written that I would never fall for a love scam, but I fell for a pet scam when one of my senior dogs died. That was two years ago. The Manila Police District anti-cybercrime unit filed a case in court but never found the scammers, one of whom spoke with a South Asian accent. Maybe the scammers worked for the POGOs.

In my mother’s case, she has the chronic afflictions of advanced age, which I had hoped to relieve with AI deepfake Doc Willie’s miracle cure. The only reason I brushed aside the warning that if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably fake was because he was the endorser. At least I didn’t fall completely for this one.

Scams worse than these proliferate, stealing passwords, breaking into bank and e-wallet accounts, and recruiting Filipinos for fake jobs overseas where they are forced to work in scam hubs or as sex slaves.

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With even lawmakers and other government officials and their relatives getting scammed or becoming victims of trolling and deepfake smear jobs, serious efforts are underway to impose some form of state control on digital content.

Those of us in mainstream media consider ourselves responsible to our readers / audience. We see journalism as a public trust. There is no such sense of responsibility on social media, even with the enactment of laws on cybercrime. Policing these platforms is a work in progress.

Jay Ruiz, a broadcaster before becoming BBM’s fourth presidential communications secretary, and certain lawmakers want the social media platforms to be more accountable and proactive in monitoring content.

Ruiz, facing “Storycon” on One News last week, cited the example of Singapore, which he noted has had such regulations even before the pandemic.

I also learned about this when I attended a media gathering in the city-state some months ago. A government minister told us that social media platforms are required under Singapore laws to take down fake news once the government or aggrieved private party presents proof that the information is false.

Singapore, however, has two things that the Philippines doesn’t have. One is that several of the socmed giants have brick and mortar offices in the city-state and can therefore be subjected to business laws and regulations. These include TikTok, Meta, Google, Viber/Rakuten and even China’s Tencent. (Incidentally, Netflix’s Asia-Pacific hub is also in Singapore.)

Big Tech picked Singapore because of the other factor that isn’t in the Philippines: good governance. This includes rule of law, transparency and accountability, high efficiency and a healthy regulatory environment.

In a weak state, policing online content can be a slippery slope, especially when it comes to commentary and interpretative reports. In the hands of despots, content moderation becomes a weapon of oppression.

Imagine what would happen if Philippine lawmakers gave themselves the power to issue franchises to the socmed giants. Meta could be blocked for failure to feature the “praise release” of a lawmaker.

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The problems have been aggravated by artificial intelligence. Social media was already clogged with garbage before AI reached its current level of sophistication. Today you have to check if the music video attributed to your favorite pop artist is AI-generated. The brighter the star wattage, the greater the number of unauthorized AI-generated stuff. And boy can AI churn out new songs that copy the songwriting and singing styles of pop superstars such as Adele and Jungkook.

At least the music videos still specify if the songs and images are created by AI. News clips are another story. Earlier this year I got conned into watching a string of video clips reporting that one of the BTS superstars had landed in the hospital after suffering physical abuse at the hands of a superior officer during compulsory military service.

My suspicion was pricked only after one of the videos mentioned that because the oppressor was a military trainer, South Korean defense minister Kim Yong-hyun found it necessary to visit the BTS member in the hospital. But I knew Kim at the time had been arrested over his role in the imposition of martial law that led to the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol as president on Dec. 14 last year.

That deepfake about the BTS member, which tended to undermine their country’s compulsory military service program for all males, could have only come from the South’s enemy North Korea – one of the world’s biggest sources of cyberscams, fake news and disinformation, according to IT experts.

Worldwide, there are also continuing debates on who defines harmful content and even whether truth is relative.

A common comment in this debate is that there are universal truths. More to the point, you’re either pregnant or not.

The issues, however, are not as simple as this. In the meantime, all we can do is be mindful of the scammers.