Joke post claiming Philippine university to be made a shopping mall misleads online
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 27, 2022 at 11:32
- 2 min read
- By AFP Philippines
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"U.P. Diliman Campus To Be Converted To The World's Biggest Mall!" reads a screenshot shared on Facebook on May 13.
It features an image of a building in UP's main campus in Diliman in the country's capital region -- overlaid with the text "Great Mall of the Philippines".
The post's Tagalog-language caption translates as: "Boom.. It's now UP Mall.."
The post circulated online after UP student leaders called for a walk out in protest of the 2022 Philippine presidential election results.
The May 9 vote saw Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the country's late dictator, win in a landslide in an astonishing reversal in the fortunes of the Marcos family, who have gone from the presidential palace to pariahs and back again in the space of a few decades.
Similar posts were also shared on Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Some social media users appear to have believed the posts.
"It's a great idea," one commented.
"Close it down it's been giving the government headaches for long," another said.
A Google keyword search, however, found the screenshot corresponds to a post published on the satire blog "The Adobo Chronicles" here on May 10.
A disclaimer on the blog reads in part, "The Adobo Chronicles is your source of up-to-date, unbelievable news. Everything you read on this site is based on fact, except for the lies.
"We abide by the highest standards of creative writing."
Multiple posts from the blog have been misleadingly passed off as genuine news in posts debunked by AFP here, here and here.
Responding to the misleading posts, Dr. Elena Pernia, UP Vice President for Public Affairs, told AFP: "There are no plans for converting any of the University of the Philippines' campuses into commercial shopping malls, now or in the future.
She added the claim in the posts is "irrelevant to the functions of any higher education institution" and "runs counter to UP's legal mandate as delineated in RA 9500".
RA 9500 is the Philippine law that defines UP's institutional purpose. The full text of the law is found here.
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