Chipping away at a malignant threat

Sigh. There’s no other way to react because this problem, while urgent, isn’t simple at all.

You can’t blame anyone for an immediate allergic reaction to the word “troll,” which has an inherently negative connotation. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a “troll” as “a person who intentionally posts inflammatory, irrelevant or provocative messages online to disrupt conversations and provoke emotional reactions from others,” oftentimes to push a hidden agenda.

The fact that trolls often post anonymously or under a fake identity in order to avoid accountability¹ — or else are actually automated bots designed to engage more realistically each time they interact with readers on a specific controversial topic — automatically implies nefarious intent. They are the primary agents of disinformation — false, inaccurate, or misleading information that is deliberately crafted to manipulate, deceive, or cause others harm (as opposed to misinformation, which does not have such intentions).

In all probability, all of us have had our share of brushes with them as we scrolled through social media, especially in highly charged environments like the one we find ourselves in these days.

HOTBED
E-mail leaks that in 2014 exposed the operation of about half a million internet trolls under Chinese control (expanding to an estimated 2 million accounts three years later)² showcased information warfare waged by states, soon to include Russia and later on the United States (including an anti-Chinese vaccine campaign that began in the Philippines and spread through Southeast Asia in 2020-2021³), among others. That US operation amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a revelation in April 2025 that China’s embassy in the Philippines hired a private firm in August 2023 to run “keyboard warriors” to discredit the host government and anti-China Filipino personalities⁴ brought the issue of state-sponsored disinformation close to home.

For about a decade now, the Philippines has emerged as a hotbed of online (especially election-related) disinformation⁵, and so it is no surprise that bills have been filed in Congress that aim to penalize disinformation, including Senate Bill No. 1490 (the proposed Anti-Troll Farm Act) and House Bill No. 11178 (the proposed Anti-Troll Farm and Election Disinformation Act) — both awaiting action at the committee level, as well as HB 9465 (the proposed Digital Media Anti-False Information Act), which the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading on June 3.

While these proposed laws seek to punish those organizing, financing, sponsoring, and operating troll farms; require cooperation of social-media platforms on this matter; as well as strengthen digital media literacy programs, I join many others who caution against entrusting the government to define legally what constitutes “false information.” Our recent history has not been lacking in cases of state weaponization of laws to suppress dissent, journalism, and investigative research. Relevant institutions have simply demonstrated just how immature they are in terms of resisting pressure from the powers-that-be in order to safeguard democratic principles. Thus, the Philippines has languished in the “flawed democracy” category in the Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index since this annual ranking began in 2006⁶.

TAKE THEM OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Having said that, there are a couple of regulatory steps worth exploring (the trick to solving a major problem usually being to chip away at it, after all).

As you can imagine, the arena here is multifaceted, since there is huge demand (e.g., political parties and personalities seeking to sway public opinion in their favor) and ample supply (people and groups capable of providing such services, including public-relations firms).

Since the problem here is that these operations thrive in the shadows, one clear solution is to reduce opacity. Antonio T. Carpio, a retired Supreme Court senior associate justice, for instance, is pushing for the updating of Batas Pambansa Blg. 39, or the Foreign Agents Act of 1979, to cover digital operations in requiring Filipinos and others operating in the Philippines who are paid by foreign groups to register with the government and disclose their political activities in the country⁷.

PR specialist Ronald F. Jabal, whose PAGEONE Group itself has declined requests from potential clients to set up and operate troll farms, said in a chat last Tuesday that if there is a legal solution, it lies more in unmasking those behind troll operations.

And since the bulk of these activities are election-related (granted that there may be non-politically motivated operations, e.g., a business seeking to malign its competitor), the first task here is to update political campaign contribution and ad spending rules under the revised Omnibus Election Code of the Philippines in order to make these fields more transparent and to cover modern digital operations.

“Ultimately, the issue of trolls boils down to transparency,” Mr. Jabal said. “It should not be treated as only a social media or a communication problem, but as a democratic infrastructure issue.”

And here, “[i]t is important to follow the money — who is funding it, who is behind it — otherwise, you will not solve anything beyond penalizing some parties…”; hence, not just how much was spent, but also on what operations such money was spent. His proposal dovetails with those of civil society groups like the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).

Related to this tack, he added, is the need to modernize the guidelines of the industry’s Ad Standards Council, whose motto is “truth in advertising is everyone’s business,” but whose parameters focus largely on traditional media (i.e., TV, radio, print, cinema, billboards, transit ads, posters, etc.) and techniques (even if on the internet). He pointed out that “influencer messages is a form of advertising,” hence, the need to be able to distinguish paid content masquerading as independently ascertained facts.

IN SEARCH OF LOW-HANGING FRUITS
Research in 2024 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on how best to combat troll operations and the proliferation of disinformation prescribed “a portfolio approach” by “pursuing a diversified mixture of counter-disinformation efforts while learning and rebalancing over time”⁸. Such a portfolio could range from tactical fact-checking and labeling of social media content, to a long-term media literacy drive and sophisticated counter-messaging strategies that target “the deeper feelings and ideas that make false claims appealing.”

Perhaps more doable in our setting — though facing capacity constraints especially among the poorly educated and those with deep-seated biases in an increasingly polarized society — is improving media literacy campaigns.

To be sure, the government has lately been undertaking media and information literacy (MIL) to train senior high school teachers and advisers on how to evaluate sources, verify information, understand media bias, flag misinformation and disinformation, and to use digital media responsibly, although I have yet to see updates on this fairly recent effort.

PAGEONE’s Mr. Jabal lamented that current “media literacy” efforts have so far been confined to tips on “how to spot fake news.” “It’s a start,” he said. “But it isn’t enough.”

Thus, he cited the need to elevate this campaign to teaching social media users to be more discerning with what they consume online. Tall order, I know, even without considering the poor state of education and level of critical thinking among many in this country.

To be sure, elementary and high schools have started doing their part, but note how even many educated adults fall hook, line, and sinker for anything they read and watch online.

Since this task involves education across generations, perhaps it’s time to kick this effort up a notch, with the private sector providing much-needed fuel.

In fact, not a few companies have taken it on themselves to educate their staff not only on defensive MIL (e.g., how to spot “deep fakes”) but also on how to maximize artificial intelligence tools for better data collection, analysis, and presentation. Clearly, they consider this task a competitive imperative.

There are also a handful of private groups — among the biggest, it seems, being the FactsFirstPH coalition — involved in fact-checking and/or MIL, but it is not clear to me just how sustained their efforts have been.

So, how about pooling industry groups, civil society advocates like Namfrel and PPCRV, and media outfits for better-crafted and -implemented, as well as sustained public education drives across all media platforms?

This way, valuable lessons will no longer be confined to the artificial silos of these varied groups and can be honed and packaged for easier, more effective consumption.

Content to be disseminated can be bite-sized, ranging from how to spot fake news to best practices in using widely available AI platforms — basic skills indispensable to upgrading the human capital especially of middle-income economies.

We have seen what this effort could look like in the form of temporary cross-sectoral watchdogs during election campaigns, but maybe it is time to form a more permanent multisectoral advocacy group that will be big and representative enough to even pressure the government to undertake relevant reforms here. Note, for instance, how reforms proposed for political/election campaign finance and political party development have dragged “for decades,” says one who has been at the forefront of this push. “Reason: private money influence and state capture. Those who benefit from this flawed system are, unfortunately, some of the very ones responsible for reforming it.”

Because disinformation is here to stay, plaguing us in increasingly more sophisticated digital forms. It is a social cancer of our age that gnaws at and poses an existential threat to our democracy (now, why can’t I shake off that feeling that a superpower has not only been benefiting from our division, but may even be funding it, especially as the 2028 national elections approach?)

Hence, it will take no less than a genuine, well-designed and -executed, sustained “whole-of-nation/-society” (not the usual rhetoric please) approach to lick it.

Notes:

¹ https://tinyurl.com/2darscq3

² https://tinyurl.com/2b5vkmg2

³ https://tinyurl.com/2yecev5b

⁴ https://tinyurl.com/289emexc

⁵ https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/02/CyberTroop-Report20-Draft9.pdf

   https://tinyurl.com/2884rlcr

   https://tinyurl.com/2ynm6pq4

⁶ https://tinyurl.com/29calbwc

⁷ https://tinyurl.com/28vcsnhk

⁸ https://tinyurl.com/25dmbjhk

Wilfredo G. Reyes was editor-in-chief of BusinessWorld from 2020 through 2023.