Internet Trolls: The Unseen Force Behind Philippines' Politics | Undercover Asia | CNA Documentary

Summary

The documentary delves into the dark world of internet trolls in the Philippines, especially their role in shaping political landscapes. Highlighting the 2022 Philippine elections, it exposes how disinformation campaigns are orchestrated by shadowy networks employing troll armies to manipulate public opinion. The film follows individuals like 'Sharon,' a hired troll, and 'Rosa,' a PR agent, unveiling the structured hierarchy of disinformation. Despite efforts from groups like Tsek.ph and Facebook to counter these campaigns, new challenges persist due to the fast-evolving tactics of misinformation networks. The documentary portrays a pressing concern for democracy, emphasizing the necessity for laws to combat such digital threats effectively.

Highlights

• In the Philippines' high-stakes election, troll armies unleash chaos online! 🌐
• Trolls in the shadows manipulate social media to sway voters. 🤖
• A look into Sharon's intriguing world - a paid troll supporting her family with her controversial job. 💰
• Digital warfare intensifies as election day approaches and online misinformation reaches fever pitch. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• Troll armies are a major force behind the chaotic digital landscape during elections in the Philippines. 👾
• The documentary reveals the structured hierarchy in disinformation campaigns, with trolls, influencers, and PR operatives. 🏢
• Despite efforts from fact-checkers, disinformation remains a potent threat to Filipino democracy. 📉
• Social media algorithms play a key role in amplifying disinformation by favoring engaging, yet misleading, content. 📲

Overview

The 2022 Philippines elections set the stage for a digital battle of epic proportions, with internet trolls playing pivotal roles in shaping public perception. These elections aren't just fought in the streets but in the digital realm, where misinformation spreads like wildfire.

Meet Sharon, a paid troll whose job is to infiltrate online communities and spread chaos. Meanwhile, masterminds like "Rosa" coordinate these efforts, creating a structured yet covert network designed to manipulate narratives and influence voters.

While platforms like Facebook scramble to crack down on these trolls, efforts often fall short. The Philippines, without strong cyber laws, struggles to combat the disinformation plague, leaving democracy in a fragile state. However, hope shines through in initiatives by Tsek.ph and vigilant citizens who strive to protect the integrity of the electoral process.

Internet Trolls: The Unseen Force Behind Philippines' Politics | Undercover Asia | CNA Documentary Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 In the Philippines, against the backdrop of one of the most fiercely contested elections, agent provocateurs are at play. They are hired guns, armed with malicious intent. These are shadowy networks of disinformation who hire troll armies to spread falsehoods and sow chaos on social media platforms.
• 00:30 - 01:00 Their ultimate goal: to influence the 2022 Philippines elections. Everyone seems to be in on it. They feel that they need to be part of this new political game. Are your political clients aware that you hire people to spread disinformation to help them?
• 01:00 - 01:30 9 May 2022. Almost 67 million Filipinos head to the polls to cast their ballots in the country's general election. It is one of the closest presidential election races in its history, as Rodrigo Duterte steps down upon completing his term.
• 01:30 - 02:00 It's a crowded field with 10 candidates vying for the presidency. Amongst them are Manila mayor, Isko Moreno, multiple world boxing champion, Manny Pacquiao, (Foreign language) (Foreign language) former senator, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr,
• 02:00 - 02:30 and vice-president, Leni Robredo. (Foreign language) The candidates have turned to social media to reach voters across the sprawling archipelago. Online engagement is crucial. According to a 2021 digital report by research firms Hootsuite and We Are Social, Filipinos are the most active social media users in the world,
• 02:30 - 03:00 spending an average of 4 hours and 15 minutes daily on social media, almost double the time spent worldwide. Unlike in some other places where you have a lot of public places or public access parks and things like that, we don't have much of that in this country. So the alternative to that is to socialise online. Professor Jason Cabanes' key research interest is in how media impacts the political development of a country.
• 03:00 - 03:30 He sees the Philippines' large overseas migrant worker population contributing to their high usage of social media. A lot of our folks are on social media, trying to maintain connections with these people. The other thing is that we also like to post on our social media accounts, our selfies and all of those things. So we've had very, very high access rates online. COVID-19 lockdowns have also pushed more Filipinos onto social media.
• 03:30 - 04:00 It's harder for us to meet face-to-face in person to have conversations about politics. It's shifted a lot to online and that has really exacerbated this very toxic way of talking to each other. Increasingly, social media has become a powerful tool for conflict, resulting in breeding grounds for the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
• 04:00 - 04:30 Misinformation is when ordinary people who are not paid unwittingly share the disinformation. Disinformation is defined as a deliberate attempt to put false information out there. So, I guess the difference there would be the intent. This is how the politicians are weaponizing disinformation now. There is this increasingly underground digital version of the campaign
• 04:30 - 05:00 where a lot of the toxic stuff happens. It's where a lot of the attacks are happening, all the disinformation is happening. Disinformation campaigns can also be used to systematically manipulate political discourse. And in the Philippines, paid trolls were hired to spread disinformation as early as 2016. According to a report by Mercy Corps, these campaigns play out in three phases:
• 05:00 - 05:30 the development of core narratives, onboarding of influencers and fake account operators, and dissemination and amplification on social media. In a press conference on 25 July 2017, then-president Rodrigo Duterte admitted to hiring trolls during the 2016 campaign period. Investigations revealed Facebook was used to reinforce positive narratives about his campaign,
• 05:30 - 06:00 amplify targeted messages and silence dissent. In a rural area, hours from Manila, "Undercover Asia" tracks down a paid troll.
• 06:00 - 06:30 In her early thirties, "Sharon" lives with her family and has to support them.
• 06:30 - 07:00 Sharon is part of a large for-hire market available in the Philippines. The country has one of the lowest wages in the world, with the average monthly salary of US$204. According to a report published by NATO in 2020, a troll in the Philippines can potentially earn up to US$1,350 a month.
• 07:00 - 07:30 This is almost seven times of what an average person in the Philippines earns, making trolling financially lucrative. Plugging into the online sphere allows Sharon to work from home, or anywhere for that matter.
• 07:30 - 08:00 However, she doesn't know who her colleagues or bosses are. Sharon goes on to reveal that she has been gearing up for the 2022 election season, as she's received instructions
• 08:00 - 08:30 from political parties and their campaign teams. First, she lays the groundwork. Then she executes her mission: spread lies to as many people as possible.
• 08:30 - 09:00 Her daily target is at least 150 shares. She uses fake profiles to infiltrate popular groups on social media.
• 09:00 - 09:30 To get as much engagement as possible, she targets their weak spot - their emotions.
• 09:30 - 10:00 Her job supports her family financially, but they don't exactly know what she does. Activities by operatives like Sharon have caught the attention of investigative journalists in the Philippines.
• 10:00 - 10:30 Don Kevin Hapal leads the Rappler forensics team as they've been investigating the spread of disinformation. We noticed as early as November last year, that there seems to be something off with some of the trending hashtags relating to Marcos.
• 10:30 - 11:00 For the other more organic campaign, the creation date of their accounts were more spread out because a lot of people were organically jumping in to join the conversation. The hashtags that were specifically promoting Marcos and attacking critics, attacking anyone they deem to be critics of Marcos, they were mostly created around October, around the same time,
• 11:00 - 11:30 which is extremely suspicious. However, their war against paid trolls comes at a price. Whenever we publish stories that expose disinformation and networks of disinformation, obviously those networks would fight back. For example, some of these screenshots here. These are messages sent to me by people I don't know. They were making fun of my photos. They were calling me a paid journalist or they were calling me gay,
• 11:30 - 12:00 or some other derogatory remarks. I was not only being flooded with these threats and attacks via private message. They were also posting my photos everywhere. The manner of their attacks hint that paid trolls are not lone-wolf operators. They are part of larger, organised networks. It's really systematically coordinated.
• 12:00 - 12:30 It's no longer just this individual working on his own, but really an army of different trolls trying to evoke certain responses from the digital sphere of the public. And these networks have people at the top pulling the strings.
• 12:30 - 13:00 It's a fiercely contested 2022 Philippines presidential election. By the end of January 2022, opinion polls reveal two candidates have surged ahead from the rest. The front runners, Bongbong Marcos Jr, son of former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr,
• 13:00 - 13:30 and vice-president Leni Robredo, the human rights lawyer. It's a rematch of their bitterly fought vice presidential bids in the 2016 elections where Robredo narrowly edged out Marcos Jr. 8 February 2022. Bongbong Marcos Jr kicks off his campaign with a huge rally.
• 13:30 - 14:00 An estimated 25,000 passionate supporters come out in a show of force. It is a star-studded affair with a celebrity line-up of entertainers.
• 14:00 - 14:30 (Foreign language) Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr! As political campaigning officially commences,
• 14:30 - 15:00 the disinformation war on social media goes into high gear. Digital disinformation happens across the political spectrum. So, a wide array of politicians. And it actually surprised us that it's not just one camp, but many different political camps. Everyone seems to be in on it. They feel that they need to be part of this new political game.
• 15:00 - 15:30 Behind the scenes, shadowy figures are pulling the strings of the troll armies. These masterminds were identified in 2018 in the groundbreaking report titled, "Architects of Networked Disinformation" by professors Jonathan Ong and Jason Cabenes from De La Salle University. At the top of this network, you would have... we call them the chief architects of network disinformation. They're mostly ad and PR people,
• 15:30 - 16:00 and some of them are media journalists, former journalists. Through interviews with key players, they discovered that these networks operated with a multi-layered hierarchy. Chief architects at the top, followed by digital influencers and paid trolls at the bottom. The majority of the money will stay with the chief architect of network disinformation. We would say around 75% to 80%,
• 16:00 - 16:30 and then the 20% would be more of the operational expenses, paying the other trolls. Through connections within the local media industry, "Undercover Asia" tracks down a "chief architect" who agrees to speak to us over the phone
• 16:30 - 17:00 on the condition of anonymity. "Rosa" runs an independent public relations agency, and they've been hired by political candidates for the 2022 presidential elections.
• 17:00 - 17:30 It's a growing international business that attracts many industry players.
• 17:30 - 18:00 Rosa further shares that their political clients prefer to pay in cash, using Philippine pesos.
• 18:00 - 18:30 That's almost US$19,000 a month. Are your political clients aware that you hire people
• 18:30 - 19:00 to spread disinformation to help them? In October 2021, survey results by Pulse Asia, a public opinion polling body, found that the number of Filipinos who relied on social media for news about the government increased by 14% between June and September 2021. This period was crucial as it led up to the October deadline for political candidates
• 19:00 - 19:30 to file their certificate of candidacy in the elections. In total, close to 50% of Filipinos relied on social media as their news source. The ease of access means that a higher volume of weaponised information can reach more people faster and via multiple channels. Gemma Mendoza, a journalist for over 20 years,
• 19:30 - 20:00 is one of the pioneers at Rappler. She spearheads efforts in addressing disinformation in digital media. She noticed highly irregular behaviour by a popular YouTube channel called "Showbiz Fanaticz" during the campaign period. In 2020 January, it started out... It peaked here, where most of the content was really about celebrities. But here, if you look at this, the celebrity content went down
• 20:00 - 20:30 and then the content about critics of government, they grew. They became the dominant content in that channel. Five months later, after building a large following from their celebrity-based content, they switched to mainly producing videos focused on politics. We've seen that being used to basically bait audiences and then attract audiences and grow the reach
• 20:30 - 21:00 of YouTube channels, Facebook pages and so on. So that's typically done. Based on their research, they conclude that politicians are behind the hijacking of these popular social media pages and are using them to push disinformation. They buy the accounts, the pages. Then they change the names. You can actually see it. So if you want to know if a group has changed its nature,
• 21:00 - 21:30 you can go to the transparency tab of the page on Facebook and you can see if that page has changed its name. It's one of the ways you can discern if you're being manipulated. The posted content spreads rapidly due to how the social media platforms are designed. Information is tailored to the individual's preferences. Machine learning takes that personalisation further, serving up targeted content to confirm and reinforce that information.
• 21:30 - 22:00 Cleve Arguelles, a data analyst in Manila, has spent the last three years researching about disinformation on social media. Social media platforms have this algorithm, It's built-in, it's part of the platform, wherein they try to show you the things you want to see. They try to promote, in your own feed,
• 22:00 - 22:30 different contents that will make you more engaged. You don't realise that this algorithm favours certain content that may not necessarily be true, that may not necessarily be the complete picture. But because you like seeing them, and that the people around you like seeing them as well, then it gets fed to you. So the danger in that is that social media algorithms may also, from time to time, not always, but from time to time,
• 22:30 - 23:00 reward behaviour that is disinformative, reward trolling behaviour, etc. The algorithms keep people engaged on their platforms as long as possible to feed the advertising arm. It's a lucrative business as social media advertising spend in the Philippines reached US$428 million in 2021.
• 23:00 - 23:30 The bottom line is that, as long as they could keep these users on their platforms, they can make money out of it. The consequence of that is that you create this echo chamber in which you think that all the things that you are seeing is actually a reflection of reality. But it is not. It's only a partial reflection of reality. The disinformation is further amplified by influencers who run social media pages.
• 23:30 - 24:00 While a whistle-blower reveals how social media platforms track down trolls online.
• 24:00 - 24:30 Ahead of the May 2022 Philippines general elections, investigative journalists uncover suspicious social media sites that have been spreading disinformation to influence voters. As the journalists publish their findings, Facebook takes down a network of over 400 accounts, pages and groups in the Philippines.
• 24:30 - 25:00 "Andy", a former Facebook employee who does not want his identity revealed, is based in Manila. Part of his job was to monitor and identify paid troll accounts on the platform.
• 25:00 - 25:30 On Leni Robredo's official Facebook page, he spots users with inauthentic accounts.
• 25:30 - 26:00 Once Andy identifies a suspicious account, it's sent for review.
• 26:00 - 26:30 While working for Facebook, Andy says there were internal protocols to combat paid trolls. But that has not stopped paid trolls who purchase multiple SIM cards and register multiple accounts using different phone numbers.
• 26:30 - 27:00 To counter this, Facebook has developed ways to identify users by tracking their IP addresses, internet protocol addresses that identifies the location of where the accounts are created.
• 27:00 - 27:30 Despite the crackdown, tech companies' policies have struggled to keep pace with threats. Disinformation networks have become more skilful at masking their trails. For social media platforms like Facebook, for example, what they're looking for is coordinated inauthentic behaviour. But precisely, it's built into the plan that it feels organic and it's not coordinated
• 27:30 - 28:00 because they distribute the work to different people who don't necessarily know that they're working on the same project. So, it's these kinds of disinformation tactics that are well thought of that often evade regulations and policies, and that's a real big concern. While troll armies engage in a cat-and-mouse game with social media platforms,
• 28:00 - 28:30 the campaigning on the ground heats up. April 2022. And polls show that presidential candidate, Bongbong Marcos Jr, holds a large lead. His closest rival, Leni Robredo, falls behind on opinion polls.
• 28:30 - 29:00 Leni! Leni! She stages her largest rally yet, with organisers claiming a crowd of over 400,000 people. A line-up of celebrities show up to support Robredo's candidacy.
• 29:00 - 29:30 Over several months of campaigning, Robredo has been targeted with intense disinformation attacks on social media. YouTube channel, Showbiz Fanaticz, posts multiple videos
• 29:30 - 30:00 accusing Robredo of being behind the petition to prevent Bongbong Marcos Jr from running. And another video claims hackers plan to commit electoral fraud against Bongbong Marcos Jr. Many of these popular social media channels have a large number of followers and are run by digital influencers armed with unique skill sets.
• 30:00 - 30:30 Their role is to kind of translate this very theoretical conceptual strategy into actual posts, actual memes and comments that will become viral. So that's their expertise. "Brandon" is in his thirties, and he's a part-time influencer who's the main breadwinner in his family. He used to work in the television entertainment industry
• 30:30 - 31:00 where he sharpened his skills in producing attention-grabbing video content. Brandon has been hired by a congressman for the election to create videos to boost the congressman's popularity and to hurt his opponents' credibility. Brandon has a full-time job, but his employers are unaware of what he does to earn additional income.
• 31:00 - 31:30 He and his friends used to produce videos with no political content.
• 31:30 - 32:00 They made some money from their original content
• 32:00 - 32:30 but realised that they could earn attractive additional pay by creating and sharing disinformation for politicians hoping to sway the public's opinion. With a predominantly Filipino audience, Brandon's social media page was the right medium
• 32:30 - 33:00 for politicians targeting a local audience. He reveals that it has become a common practice for politicians to hire social media influencers to create and spread disinformation.
• 33:00 - 33:30 While there has been widespread paid troll activity
• 33:30 - 34:00 since the 2016 elections, COMELEC, the Commission on Elections in the Philippines, has been unable to take any action.
• 34:00 - 34:30 There have been no legal actions taken simply because there is no law that penalises this directly, especially not in relation to elections. So there being no law, it's very difficult to initiate any sort of action. Other than that, of course, the difficulty is the fact that there is no easy way to identify these trolls. A single person can have as many as 10 separate accounts
• 34:30 - 35:00 with 10 fully formed identities. And that would be very difficult by itself to police. Ultimately, there is no law that penalises trolling in the Philippines. Candidates are legally required to declare their campaign's spending, but it hasn't proven to be effective in exposing the hiring of paid trolls. We imagined that the use of money for disinformation would be drastically under-reported,
• 35:00 - 35:30 if reported at all, obviously. Misinformation, while technically there are very few laws that penalise it, everyone knows that it is bad. And no one would cop to it. The disinformation networks are a few steps ahead and the authorities have been playing catch-up. The government needs to step up with new laws. Law enforcement has to step up because law enforcement has to be abreast of new technologies as well. Again, you've heard stories
• 35:30 - 36:00 of the law enforcement not knowing, or not being able to identify a server rack versus a dumb computer. That becomes a problem, especially since enforcement has a very technical component to it. With polling day fast approaching, the onslaught of online disinformation is rampant. But against this backdrop,
• 36:00 - 36:30 ordinary citizens are banding together to fight back. With just over a week to the Philippines presidential polling day, campaigning on the streets has reached fever pitch.
• 36:30 - 37:00 On social media, the shadowy war of disinformation is at full throttle. Troll armies of keyboard warriors have been hired to spread falsehoods and lies on social media. These are alleged attempts by politicians to sway public opinion.
• 37:00 - 37:30 The Vera Files is a non-profit online news organisation founded in 2008 by a group of veteran news journalists. What Vera Files does is it has tried to look into the types of narratives that have surfaced regarding election-related disinformation. Who are the beneficiaries? Who are the targets? Since 2021, they've been monitoring disinformation campaigns
• 37:30 - 38:00 and reveal startling finds. So out of 336 fact-checked articles, there were 120 that had to do with the elections. What we noticed in terms of looking at the beneficiaries, it was former senator Bongbong Marcos who benefited the most from disinformation. There were 52 fact-checked articles that were published
• 38:00 - 38:30 concerning disinformation about him. He benefited a lot from disinformation about his father's accomplishments or about the ill-gotten wealth cases. There was disinformation that claimed that all the ill-gotten wealth cases against the Marcos family were dismissed. Bongbong Marcos Jr's camp has declined requests for an interview to clarify. However, there are reports where he strongly rejects accusations
• 38:30 - 39:00 that his campaign was involved with any troll army to spread disinformation. There also has been no evidence proving that Bongbong Marcos Jr had hired any troll armies. In terms of the biggest targets, what we noticed is that it was vice-president Leni Robredo who became the biggest target of disinformation. There were a lot of fake quote cards that were attributed to Robredo
• 39:00 - 39:30 made to look like she is incompetent or she makes nonsensical statements. That is the type of disinformation that we have seen. After months of intense campaigning marred by allegations of troll armies, millions of Filipinos head to the polls to vote for their new president and vice-president.
• 39:30 - 40:00 While voting takes place on the ground, the fight against disinformation occurs at the same time online. Tsek.ph, a three-year-old pioneer in fact-checking, is relaunched for the 2022 election. Thirty-four partners from academia, media and civil society institutions
• 40:00 - 40:30 work together as fact-checkers. The goal is to provide the public with verified information to counter viral social media disinformation. Right now, I'm helping to edit the fact-checks that our students and volunteers are doing. So, we make sure that before a fact-check is uploaded, there are at least two or three eyes who look at the fact-check to make sure that all the sources are original sources
• 40:30 - 41:00 and that they are verified information. There's a lot of disinformation with regard to trying to make the candidates look like they were disqualified or that there's massive cheating going on. As voting takes place, Tsek.ph fights disinformation
• 41:00 - 41:30 as it happens. They fact-check content, then upload it onto their website and social media to provide the public with up-to-date verified information. They've even set up a tipline for the public. If they detect any disinformation on their own social media, they can inform us, send us the link and then we will fact-check it.
• 41:30 - 42:00 Tsek.ph faces an uphill battle as the disinformation networks have been coordinating their attacks for a long time. I think the fact that disinformation has been going on for more than a year prior to this election, it has already influenced the minds of the voters. So it's something that has been building up. It's not like it just happened overnight towards the election.
• 42:00 - 42:30 And that's why it's effective. It has been more of a long-term effort to mislead people. It's 6pm and the polls close. Multiple news outlets report of numerous disinformation campaigns that had attempted to hijack the election process.
• 42:30 - 43:00 With a lack of laws against disinformation in the Philippines, the authorities are rendered helpless. Well, the limitations within laws is a huge anchor around our necks. I mean, the fact that... The fact that there is very little to stand on, legally speaking, that becomes very difficult. The digital disinformation producers know how to work around the regulations and the policy.
• 43:00 - 43:30 Yes, these are disinformation accounts that we're seeing being taken down. But I think they're just really the tip of the iceberg. There are many other things that are going on there that are difficult to catch.
• 43:30 - 44:00 Ladies and gentlemen of the 18th Congress, Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr, the duly elected president of the Republic of the Philippines. In a landslide win, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr secures over 31 million votes, with 58% of the electorate. That's more than double the number of votes for his closest rival, Leni Robredo.
• 44:00 - 44:30 He is officially declared the next president of the Philippines. While the election campaigns were marred by allegations of widespread disinformation, there is no data that proves falsehoods directly influenced the outcome of the election.
• 44:30 - 45:00 But it's apparent that no matter who wins the election, online disinformation threatens democracy and weakens confidence in public institutions. It harms democracy because in a democracy, when people are being fed wrong information, if they don't have access to truthful, verified, quality information, it incapacitates them in terms of making decisions, in terms of making political choices.
• 45:00 - 45:30 Democracy thrives in a space where, first of all, you have to agree on the facts, and then you debate. And that debate needs to happen. There needs to be, at some point, a consensus. Right now, what's happening is people are being driven into tribes and echo chambers. There's no room for debate. There's no room for consensus. It all becomes, "I'm right and you're wrong."
• 45:30 - 46:00 That is something that is not conducive for democracy. Captions: CaptionCube