[DECODED] How the internet decided the President was dying

I’m sure you’ve noticed how rumors about President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s health have been spreading in the previous months. Here’s what happened so far:

• January: The Palace disclosed to the public on January 22 that Marcos stayed in the hospital overnight and was diagnosed with diverticulitis. Since then, Marcos had skipped public events and instead sent various family members and Cabinet officials to represent him, until January 29.
• February: A fake St. Luke’s Medical Center report circulated online, which Malacañang debunked. The President also appeared in public several times, including a meeting with former rival Leni Robredo and a forum in Makati.
• March: Marcos attended the UN General Assembly in New York. Unsubstantiated claims about him having cancer also started to circulate.
• April: Claims of Marcos’ cancer evolved to say that it had reached stage 4. Marcos himself assured the public he was healthy. To date, no medical bulletin has been released.

But on the internet, the false claims have taken their own form in the last few weeks, especially since they’re left to spread and be amplified on social media platforms that provide no incentive for facts.

Online, here’s what has happened: claims about the President’s poor health evolved into a “secret” cancer diagnosis, and eventually into speculations that he was already dead. Photos and videos showing Marcos in public events were branded as being recycled from previous years.

The Nerve looked into social media posts mentioning President Marcos, from March 29 to April 10, 2026, and found more than 65,000 public posts on Facebook.

Topic map of public Facebook posts mentioning President Marcos, from March 29 to April 10.Using natural language processing, The Nerve clusters each post into topic themes based on their semantic similarity.

Of these posts, around 20% were about Marcos’ health. These posts surged on April 9 when Marcos attended an Araw ng Kagitingan event in Bataan, which many of the posts said was staged. About 4.4% of the total Facebook discussion was about the April 9 event. Marcos debunked the rumors days later by doing jumping jacks and lifting small sacks of rice to prove that he’s healthy.

The posts ranged from accusations that the mainstream media was manipulating or fabricating footage of the President, to framing Marcos’ supposed illness as a constitutional issue. There were even posts arguing that Vice President Sara Duterte should assume the presidency.

Screenshots of posts discussing Marcos’ health — and supposed death

Malacañang’s refusal to release a medical bulletin only widened the information vacuum that allowed this to happen. But in our current reality, it’s not like Malacañang is legally obligated to disclose the President’s medical records. After all, a previous attempt to compel Duterte to disclose his health while he was president was dismissed by the Supreme Court, which ruled that it is ultimately up to the president to decide to do so.

This means that in the end, it is the public who suffers because, as long as we’re kept in the dark, we are left to fill in the blanks ourselves. And on social media, where lies spread faster than facts, it never ends well.

This is only what the data shows. The Nerve is collaborating with Rappler senior reporter, Bea Cupin, to align the data with what’s happening outside the internet. Bea is working on the full story, so stay tuned for her in-depth look into this issue. Download the Rappler app, or bookmark the Decoded page for updates. – Rappler.com