This is the new president and vice president of the Philippines
during a YouTube Q&A months before their landslide election victory.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as "Bongbong,"
shares the same name as his father,
the notorious autocrat who led a military government in the Philippines,
which tortured and killed thousands of citizens
while he and his family stole billions from the public purse.
But none of that stopped Bongbong Marcos winning this year's election.
The people have
spoken. They have given Marcos a resounding victory.
Marcos won by a landslide.
He got almost 59% of the votes.
This was an epic win.
The days after the election
friends and colleagues from pretty much everywhere asked me,
"How could this happen?"
Using the power of social media,
Marcos, his election team and supporters have rewritten history,
claiming his father's era was a time of prosperity and strength
rather than murder and theft on an industrial scale.
It's frustrating for us
because all this time we have been debunking the disinformation,
the lies that helped him win this election.
Please subscribe to us.
While Marcos's
opponents contend online misinformation played a key role in his victory
there's no way to prove it.
Meanwhile, Marcos himself has repeatedly denied his campaign engaged in or had
any connection to social media posts with false or misleading claims.
I guess for the journalists and fact checkers in other countries
where this could possibly happen as well, I wish you good luck.
When the iPhone was
released in 2007, just under 6% of the Philippines was on the web.
But smartphones changed that.
Now, two-thirds of the country's 110 million
citizens are connected and spend 10 hours a day online.
That's more than any other country.
You can just imagine how much time we spend here on social media.
Even here, walking on the street, you can see people
looking down on their phones, not looking on the road.
And then according to the data, we use social media to gather information,
including the news, and at the same time to connect to people.
So it's really our main source of information here in the Philippines.
Filipinos spend more than four hours a day on social media, with Facebook
being the most popular platform with nearly 84 million users in 2022.
A survey here recently showed that more than half of the people
who said that they're using social media as their news source
find it very difficult
to distinguish between what's true and what's false on social media.
So you can just imagine the extent of the problem.
The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal saw the data mining
firm questioned over its work for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
One whistle-blower described how questionable rule of law,
high social media usage and corruption
made the Philippines the perfect place to test the limits of online manipulation.
Bongbong Marcos has been building his online presence for over a decade.
During his unsuccessful 2016 run for vice president
he relied heavily on online messaging.
For his 2022 campaign
he sidestepped traditional media, instead speaking directly to voters online
in short video blogs.
He gets a lot of engagements for that and a lot of people like that about him,
the vlog thing, they really patronized that because I guess it humanizes him.
I've seen analysis on social media saying that he intentionally did not attend
debates and interviews because that was what contributed to his loss in 2016.
So there was
a revisiting of the strategy, the campaign strategy, and
as we are able to see now, we could say that it has been effective.
Bongbong has over 7 million followers on Facebook and another 2 million on YouTube.
His supporters flood news feeds and message boards with election messages.
But political posts and videos are often disguised.
A lot of the disinformation that's spreading on social media,
especially in the lead up to the elections, comes in the form of news.
Some are quoting personalities
inaccurately, but are presented in such a way that they look like
and even imitate the colors of mainstream media.
While VeraFiles,
other news organizations and Marcos's opponents cite dozens of instances
of what they call disinformation,
the term itself can be problematic. In the context of political campaigns
messaging regularly relies on exaggeration and half truths, often labeled as spin.
Inside this gray area, social
media has thrived as a powerful tool for politicians everywhere.
In the well over 600 posts
fact checked by VeraFiles, a large majority attacked Marcos's rival.
While positive misinformation was skewed the other way.
And a huge number of that actually benefited Bongbong Marcos
in the way that it hyped up his presidential campaign
and it also tried to distort historical facts
regarding his family.
In the 1970s, Ferdinand
Marcos had led a military government of uncommon brutality.
He disbanded Congress, silenced the media and used the army to torture
and kill thousands of citizens.
Through all of this, Marcos and his wife, Imelda, became
exceedingly wealthy by siphoning money from state funds.
All the while, the Philippines economy crashed and many people suffered.
A critical part of Bongbong Marcos's
election campaign was convincing millions of people
these things simply didn't happen.
Despite the brickbats, the criticism, the pure hate
that has been heaped upon him over the last 30-plus years,
his memory, his legacy continues to endure.
The Ferdinand Marcos era is portrayed by his supporters as one of prosperity,
despite economic downturn.
Thousands of citizens labeled enemies of the state were killed and tortured.
Extravagant parties on the presidential yacht...
And discussions about the billions of dollars stolen
are met with blanket denials.
Ferdinand Jr. is the man in the flashing bow tie.
Social media helped spread this message, with Marcos Jr. claiming
he was presenting his own version of history.
The love for the Marcoses never really left here in the Philippines.
Even after they were ousted, they maintained
quite a strong bailiwick in the northern Philippines.
And that's where the most loyal supporters are.
It's possible Marcos would have won even if social media wasn't part
of the equation.
His huge margin of victory could owe more to alliances with local leaders,
endorsements by parties affiliated with former presidents
and loyalty to his family
among the political elite and everyday citizens.
It's hard to determine whether online disinformation played
a critical role in Marcos becoming president.
And it's even harder to connect it to its sources,
let alone anyone directing the effort.
When I talked to people and asked them who they were inclined to support,
if they said Bongbong Marcos I would say why?
And there would be this gauzy look and these sentiments expressed like,
you know, his father was a great man,
he was a strong leader,
Philippines needs strong leadership now.
And you would say, OK, well, what about this?
What about that? What about the other thing?
And they would blow it off.
The response would tend to be one of two things.
They would say, "oh, look, I was a kid then, or I wasn't born then,
it's nothing to me."
Or they say it's fake news.
Tonight, a brutal dictator's son winning the presidential election in the
Philippines by a landslide.
Bongbong Marcos has been elected as the next president of the Philippines.
And I think that's a very telling indication as to how successful
this disinformation campaign benefiting him is.
God bless the Philippines.
God bless our work.
The days after the election,
friends and colleagues asked me, "how could this happen?"
Then I began to wonder whether the more pertinent question was
what was actually going to stop it?
You have supporters, real people,
and then on the other hand, you have fake accounts.
And these fake accounts, plus the real people who are spreading this,
that creates an ecosystem wherein this disinformation spreads.
We're able to monitor and flag these online disinformation content,
but we really cannot pinpoint who is the person or the persons
but one thing I can tell you is President Bongbong Marcos,
he likes to disassociate himself
and his team from this information campaign that largely benefited him.
In fact, he even said that he's actually the victim of "fake news."
Some people say that history was revised online.
What do you, what is your response to that?
Show me.
Show me where this revisionism
on our part, from our side, whatever you want, show me.
Anything that we have said we can prove.
How much of a concern is disinformation to this administration?
If any illegal acts have been committed
then proper venue for that would be the courts.
But no such wrongdoing has been committed.
Another major factor in Marcos's landslide victory
was the effect of his running mate, Sara Duterte, daughter of the previous
president, Rodrigo Duterte, who remains popular in parts of the Philippines.
This time around, with Sara Duterte running by his side,
he was able to win those provinces in the southern
part of the country where the Dutertes hail from.
And he was able to double the number of provinces that he was able
to win compared to his 2016 vice presidential race, which he lost.
It's really a consolidation of two powerful
political dynasties, political families. One hailing from the north,
that's Marcos, and the other hailing from the south, and that's Duterte.
The Philippines excels at dynastic politics.
The two presidents prior to leader Rodrigo Duterte, they were children of presidents.
The lower house of our Congress, we have majority
and most of our lawmakers are products of political dynasties.
There's even a belief
that the good traits, the leadership qualities of a father or
a parent is passed down to his or her child.
So that's how much political dynasties are welcomed
and elected here in the Philippines.
While Marcos and Duterte ran on a ticket of national unity,
online their supporters pushed lies and attacked the opposition candidate, Leni Robredo.
She was accused of having an affair while her daughters
were accused of sex scandals, all of it unsubstantiated.
A lot of these Facebook pages and Facebook groups
that we were able to flag spreading disinformation and misinformation,
some of them carry his name in their account names.
And we actually also observed back in 2021 that a lot of YouTube videos
that are misinforming people, what happens is
the video was uploaded on YouTube and then there are a number of Facebook pages
that reuploads it on Facebook that also reuploads it on TikTok
and this suggests that there is automation
or that only one person administers or moderates these accounts.
And so it also suggests that there is an organized effort
or campaign with regards spreading mis-and-disinformation.
My father built more and better
roads, produced more rice than all administrations before his.
So will it be with his son.
You will get no excuses from me.
Now as President, Bongbong Marcos fashions himself
as a pragmatist, focused on quality-of-life issues.
On foreign policy, he's promised to grow closer relations with China
even as the two countries clash over fishing rights in the South China Sea.
All the while maintaining historic links to the USA.
This idea or this feeling or this, shall we say, opinion
I have of my father, of the man, has just been strengthened as time goes on.
What's also noteworthy is Bongbong never talked about martial law
in a negative light.
It's all about admiration for his father, a promise to continue
the good projects that came out of that era.
The facts of the past is not really
as effective as the facts of the present and the future.
Maybe it's because the people now cannot relate with what ever happened
during the martial law of Marcos Sr., and they actually only care
about what's going to happen to them now and what's going to happen in the future.
And Marcos Jr. apparently was able to present himself effectively as someone
who will bring about positive change, who will bring hope,
and who will unify the country towards a better tomorrow or a better future.
If you're going to get a platform like social media
that reaches a lot of people, you're going to create a way
by which this version of history is going to spread, and your supporters
are going to spread and believe it.
Imelda Marcos famously said in one of the documentaries about her
Our job as fact checkers, and not only fact checkers, but as journalists,
as amplifiers of truth, would be more challenging in the next six years.
We're preparing for it, and hopefully we could go through it
without any problem.