The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) has given Reddit and Discord 24 hours to establish a formal presence in the Philippines, following the third school shooting incident in the country in a span of months.
In separate letters dated September 21, the CICC directed both platforms to designate, upon receipt, a resident agent or local representative who can facilitate Philippine jurisdiction and improve coordination with domestic authorities.
The order follows the September 18 shooting at Banga National High School in South Cotabato, the third such incident after the June shooting in Tacloban City and the August 18 shooting at Ateneo de Zamboanga University. The agency cited rising concern over the use of online platforms to spread violent extremist content and exploit minors.
“We are not asking platforms to police the internet for the government but to be reachable, accountable, and responsive when activities on their platforms put Filipino children and communities at risk. When an online threat spills over into the real world, there has to be clear channel for authorities to act,” said Renato “Aboy” Paraiso, CICC Executive Director.
Beyond designating local representatives, the CICC directed Reddit and Discord to submit written explanations of their existing safety arrangements and concrete implementation plans covering safety standards, rapid response mechanisms, and age-verification or age-assurance measures.
The agency also called on both platforms to join a proposed cooperative framework addressing what it described as a shift from isolated online interactions to activity that fuels real-world violence. The framework would cover networks involved in the creation, solicitation, possession, distribution, exchange, promotion, or monetization of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) and child sexual abuse or exploitation materials (CSAEM), as well as nihilistic violent extremism (NVE).
As part of the effort, the CICC has formally tapped the Department of Foreign Affairs to initiate a coordination meeting involving Meta, Discord, Reddit, and other platforms to discuss measures against online threats linked to violence and child exploitation.
The CICC warned that failure to comply within the prescribed period could prompt the agency, in coordination with other Philippine authorities, to restrict the platforms’ operations or block user access in the Philippines.
The action follows an earlier meeting this month between the government and representatives of Meta and Roblox, which formed a technical working group to implement stricter child safety measures, faster content takedowns, and secure age-verification systems.
Reddit operates as a topic-based discussion platform, while Discord functions as a messaging and community platform built around private messages and invitation-based servers – a structure investigators say can create conditions for grooming, recruitment, and radicalization of minors. Neither company had issued a public response to the CICC letters as of this report.
