by Marisa De La Villa When people think of Maria Ressa, they tend to picture a Philippine journalist, and now Nobel Prize winner, in court, battling against strongman Rodrigo Duterte’s government. 1  Yet, while her clashes with Duterte made global headlines, Ressa was fighting a different battle– one against Facebook (among other social media platforms, especially those under META). 2 In 2012, Ressa co-founded  Rappler , a small, digital newsroom based in Manila, built on the idea that social media could help increase civic participation. 3  In the Philippines, most people went to  Facebook  as the way to access the internet– Rappler was made to lean into that idea, but it never grew to outshine the Meta platform. To the untrained eye,  Facebook  was perfect. But in 2016, Ressa and her team noticed some patterns. 4  Networks of strange accounts were on the rise, posting the same memes, boosting pro-government propaganda, and overall, there ...