SENATE President Vicente Sotto III and 11 other senators yesterday filed a resolution calling for an investigation, in aid of legislation, into reports that public funds are being wasted on “troll farms” that spread misinformation and fake news in social media platforms.
Aside from Sotto, other signatories of Senate Resolution No. 768 include Senators Francis Pangilinan, Ralph Recto, Franklin Drilon, Nancy Binay, Leila de Lima, Richard Gordon, Risa Hontiveros, Panfilo Lacson, Emmanuel Pacquiao, Grace Poe, and Joel Villanueva.
In the resolution, the senators noted how unscrupulous individuals took advantage of the rise in the use of the internet and of social media platforms of Filipinos to spread fake news and misinformation using paid trolls.
“A social media troll is someone who creates conflict on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit by posting messages that are particularly controversial or inflammatory with the sole intent of provoking an emotional response from other users,” the senators said in the resolution.
They said that messages from trolls often distract and take focus away from the subject by “sending a rational discussion down a rabbit hole of obscenities, personal attacks, and jokes.”
They noted that most trolls also post “misleading statements or outright lies” to sway an individual’s thinking.
The trolls, they added, use fake social media accounts to hide their true identities and escape prosecution.
Lacson has earlier said that a government official with a rank of undersecretary has been organizing at least two troll farms per province to discredit political rivals or those not aligned with President Duterte’s administration.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque has denied the allegation but added that if this was true, “the official in question must be doing it in his personal capacity.”
Also in the resolution, the senators said that suspicions that public funds are being spent on troll farms grew stronger after the Department of Finance awarded a P909,122 communications strategy consultancy contract to a public relations practitioner who was tagged by Facebook as the “operator behind a pro-Duterte fake account network which Facebook took down in March 2019.”
“The network was comprised of 200 pages, with about 3.6 million followers following at least one page, and about 1.8 million users in at least one group. Since the contract’s amount was less than P1 million, the said public relations practitioner told the media that ‘he and the DOF directly negotiated instead of a public bidding,’ which procurement regulations mandated for higher-valued contracts,” the senators said.
They said that the Department of Foreign Affairs also had a similar media consultancy contract with a known pro-administration blogger in 2017, who was accused of peddling fake news and spreading hateful comments against critics of the Duterte administration.
The senators said some of the bloggers and social media personalities were even appointed by the Duterte administration to high positions in various departments and government agencies.
They said the Filipino people should know why the government spend funds on troll farm operators disguised as “public relations practitioners” and “social media consultants” who spread fake news rather than spend the government funds on COVID-19 response, healthcare, food security, jobs protection, and education, among others.
“The above instances illustrate that troll farms and the misinformation and fake news that they propagate may be state-backed and state-funded. In this connection, Congress should look into government funds that are used to fund misinformation and fake news that affect millions of Filipinos,” they added.
Sen. Joel Villanueva said all political groups should commit to a troll disarmament as these trolls “are weapons of mass destruction.”
“The seeds of falsehood they plant ripen into hate ready to be harvested by those who are harmed by the truth…. the repercussions are literally deadly,” Villanueva said.
