Cyber libel is ordinary libel published online, and only the author is liable

Cyber libel requires a discreditable imputation, publication to a third person, an identifiable subject, and malice. It is ordinary libel under the Revised Penal Code, published online. Only the original author is liable, so liking or sharing a post is not punishable, though a comment that adds a new accusation of its own is.

The same crime, by a different means

Cyber libel is not a distinct offense with its own definition. The Supreme Court said so when it upheld the provision:¹

Indeed, cyberlibel is actually not a new crime since Article 353, in relation to Article 355 of the penal code, already punishes it. In effect, Section 4(c)(4) above merely affirms that online defamation constitutes “similar means” for committing libel.

The Court restated it in 2026: the crime called cyber libel “is, in actuality, libel as defined and penalized under Article 353 in relation to Article 355 Revised Penal Code, and it is committed by publishing the defamatory remark online using a computer system or ICT.”²

Article 353 defines libel. Article 355 supplies the means and the penalty, and it does not list a computer among its means, which is why a defamatory post made before the Act took effect is not punishable as libel at all.³ Section 4(c)(4) of the Cybercrime Prevention Act supplies the missing means, punishing “[t]he unlawful or prohibited acts of libel as defined in Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended, committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future.”⁴

The four elements

The elements are the ordinary ones, and the Court states them in a single sentence: “(a) the allegation of a discreditable act or condition concerning another; (b) publication of the charge; (c) identity of the person defamed; and (d) existence of malice.”⁵

Article 353 supplies the content of the first:⁶

A libel is a public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead.

Publication and identity are separate elements, and each has to be shown.

Publication is satisfied when the material is communicated to a third person, and “[i]t is not required that the person defamed has read or heard about the libelous remark.”⁷ On a platform, a post visible to anyone other than its subject clears this.

Identity is not met by the subject recognizing themselves. It must be shown “that at least a third person or a stranger was able to identify him as the object of the defamatory statement.”⁷ A post that never names anyone can still satisfy it, and a post that names someone can still fail it, depending on what a reader could work out.

Malice is presumed, and there are two exceptions

Article 354 supplies the presumption:⁸

Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if it be true, if no good intention and justifiable motive for making it is shown, except in the following cases: 1. A private communication made by any person to another in the performance of any legal, moral or social duty; and 2. A fair and true report, made in good faith, without any comments or remarks, of any judicial, legislative or other official proceedings which are not of confidential nature, or of any statement, report or speech delivered in said proceedings, or of any other act performed by public officers in the exercise of their functions.

Under the words “even if it be true”, truth on its own is not a defense to the presumption; the poster has to show good intention and justifiable motive as well.

The presumption also depends on who was written about. Where the subject is a private individual, “the prosecution need not prove the presence of malice. The law explicitly presumes its existence (malice in law) from the defamatory character of the assailed statement.” Where the subject is a public official or public figure, the stricter standard applies, and “[t]he defense of absence of actual malice, even when the statement turns out to be false, is available”.⁹

That distinction decides a large share of these cases.

Only the author

In Disini the Court upheld the provision only in part, declaring section 4(c)(4) “VALID and CONSTITUTIONAL with respect to the original author of the post; but VOID and UNCONSTITUTIONAL with respect to others who simply receive the post and react to it.”¹⁰

The Court’s reasoning turns on what a reaction is:¹¹

Except for the original author of the assailed statement, the rest (those who pressed Like, Comment and Share) are essentially knee-jerk sentiments of readers who may think little or haphazardly of their response to the original posting.

The Court struck down the aiding-and-abetting provision as applied to online libel in the same ruling, so there is no route back to liability through section 5.¹²

A comment is not a reaction when it adds something new: “if the ‘Comment’ does not merely react to the original posting but creates an altogether new defamatory story against Armand like ‘He beats his wife and children,’ then that should be considered an original posting published on the internet.”¹³ Adding an allegation of your own, in a comment under somebody else’s post, makes you an author.

One charge, not two

Section 7 of the Act provides that a prosecution under it is without prejudice to liability under the Revised Penal Code. As applied to online libel, that provision was struck down: charging the same post under both section 4(c)(4) and article 353 “constitutes a violation of the proscription against double jeopardy.”¹⁴

The penalty

Section 6 raises the penalty for a crime committed through information and communications technologies by one degree.¹⁵ The base is article 355, which since 2017 has read that libel by writing or similar means is punished “by prision correccional in its minimum and medium periods or a fine ranging from Forty thousand pesos (P40,000) to One million two hundred thousand pesos (P1,200,000), or both, in addition to the civil action which may be brought by the offended party.”¹⁶

The word “or” matters. In People v. Soliman the Court clarified, “for the guidance of the Bench and the Bar, that as worded, both the RPC and RA 10175 prescribe the penalty of imprisonment or a fine for the crimes of Traditional Libel and Online Libel, depending on the circumstances present in each case”, and that neither statute altered “the character of the penalties of imprisonment and fine as alternatives to each other, or as concurrent penalties”.¹⁷ The same decision holds that the Court’s own guidelines on a rule of preference for fines in libel cases reach online libel, so a court may impose a fine alone where the circumstances warrant it.¹⁷ A conviction does not automatically mean imprisonment, and it does not rule it out either.

The fine range should be checked against the date of the source quoting it. Disini was decided in 2014 and reproduces the pre-2017 range, so the leading case on cyber libel states a penalty that the law no longer carries.

How long there is to file

Everything above goes to whether a post is actionable at all. Whether it can still be prosecuted is a different question: the Supreme Court settled the prescriptive period for cyber libel in April 2026, En Banc, on an eight to seven vote, and how long there is to file is the subject of its own article.

This is litigation work for the complainant and for the accused. A complainant who waits past the period loses the case whatever the evidence, and a poster who assumes an old post is safe may be wrong about when the period started.