Why crafty Internet trolls in the Philippines may be coming to a website

near you
By Shibani Mahtani and Regine Cabato
July 26, 2019 at 1:00 AM EDT

MANILA — In a white-walled room, a small cyber-army of four is furiously typing.

And posting. And clicking. And scrolling.

And trolling.

For the next eight hours, they will be glued to their screens. They are hired guns
in one of Manila’s hundreds of troll farms churning out fake content, false
narratives and anything else the client wants.

This trolling mission was for a candidate running for the Philippine Senate. One
aim was to cook up fake social media accounts to make it appear as if the
candidate had a vast and fervent base of supporters. Another goal was to smear
any critics, especially those who call them out for precisely the jobs they do.

Across the Philippines, it’s a virtual free-for-all. Trolls for companies. Trolls for
celebrities. Trolls for liberal opposition politicians and the government. Trolls
trolling trolls.

The world of Internet trolls — the gaslighting, the fabrications, the nastiness — is
now a fact of life in the Web ecosystem nearly everywhere.

But something new is happening here: Experienced public relations experts in

the Philippines are harnessing the raw energy of young and aggressive social
media shape-shifters.

How social media companies outsource their dirty work to the Philippines

They are dramatically altering the political landscape in the Philippines with
almost complete impunity — shielded by politicians who are so deep into this
practice that they will not legislate against it, and using the cover of established
PR firms that quietly offer these services.

It is also showing signs of going global — with the Philippines as a hub — as the
United States and countries across the world move into another election cycle in
the troll age.
“This is what disinformation will look like in the U.S. in 2020,” said Camille
François, chief innovation officer at the New York-based social network analysis
company Graphika.

Political manipulation, she said, does not need to come from an ill-intentioned
enemy state. It can originate with those who have cut their teeth in the
competitive worlds of advertising, media and marketing. Social media
companies, she added, were caught off guard before — notably in the U.S.
presidential elections in 2016 — and could be yet again with this new iteration.

“The Philippines shows us trends that are headed this way,” said François, who
led a report commissioned by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
investigating Russian trolls in the United States. “And, it is 2019, the market is
global — so they will find jobs outside of their own nation.”

Facebook’s second-class workers are waging a quiet battle

These ambitious operators now want to turn their country into the go-to place to
influence corporate and political campaigns worldwide — using the same young,
educated, English-speaking workforce that made the Philippines a global call
center and content moderation hub.

The Washington Post interviewed over half a dozen paid trolls, who all spoke on
the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity and illegality of their work.
They offered a glimpse into how Philippine trolls are shaping politics in their
country and possibly showing signs of things to come elsewhere.

For the Senate candidate, for example, the hired trolls worked round-the-clock to
flood platforms such as Twitter and Facebook with seemingly organic messages
of support. Fans leaped to his defense, debated his critics and sang praises of
his leadership style ahead of crucial midterm elections that were held in May.

Except it is all an illusion, manufactured by hundreds of fake accounts all

meticulously tracked on a spreadsheet.

“This one, she is a fan of K-pop,” said one female worker, pointing to an open
Twitter page showing the fake profile of a young, pink-cheeked woman. Buried
among her fan posts for bands such as BTS are messages in support of the
Senate candidate. The more likes and retweets, the better she’s doing.

The candidate was not elected, but he came close.

Several paid troll farm operations and one self-described influencer say they
have been approached and contracted by international clients, including from
Britain, to do political work. Others are planning to expand overseas, hoping to
start regionally.

“It has all become an enterprise,” said Yvonne Chua, a journalism professor at
the University of the Philippines who has extensively researched misinformation
on the Internet.

“It has come to a point where you can rely on the Philippines for all sorts of
things: trolls, click farms, whatever you want.”

Silicon Valley correspondent Elizabeth Dwoskin speaks about The Washington

Post's investigation into job conditions for content moderators in the Philippines.
(Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
'Get into your character'

He calls his operation a “white troll” farm, now an industry-wide term.

“Positive trolling” is another way to describe it, said the owner of a public
relations firm that now specializes in these services. The idea, he said, was to
counter the vitriol of the “black trolls” in the Philippines, linked to strongman
President Rodrigo Duterte, whose supporters have turned online intimidation into
an art.

The troll operator said he watched from the sidelines in 2016, when Duterte and
his allies harnessed the power of self-declared patriots online and turned them
into an organized cyber-mob — the Die-hard Duterte Supporters, or DDS. He
was shocked to see female candidates and opposition leaders being humiliated
on Facebook, threatened with rape and even death.

When Duterte assumed the presidency in 2016, the idea of a “white troll” farm
took shape in the PR executive’s mind.

Duterte-linked trolls “use this power to peddle lies, concoct fake news, brainwash
people,” he says in an interview. “I said, at least people should be influenced
properly.”

His rules are strict: no harassment, no targeting of women or minorities, no fake

news. Comments cannot be posted through a simple copy-and-paste job; they
must always be new and original. Yet the online accounts that power his
business are still largely fabricated names and backgrounds.
White House escalates war against Facebook, Google and

Twitter “We’re changing the landscape of trolling somehow,” he

says.

His clients range from real estate firms looking to sell units in new developments
to overseas Filipinos, companies battling a public relations crisis or celebrities
looking to fend off black trolls.

He makes the most from politicians, who pay anywhere from about $38,000 to
$57,000 — “depending on their needs” — to hire his company on a month-long
retainer for up to eight months. He has worked recently for seven politicians,
including the senatorial hopeful whose campaign office The Post visited.

“When I launched this two years ago, the idea was really to target politicians
since it’s really meant for them,” he says. “They’re always targets of fake news.
They’re always on the news.”

He likens the job to theater: “You assume different personalities. You should get
into your character.”

Every campaign starts with a client presentation. Any client who asks for a “black
operation” is turned away, he said. Once it is approved, the client has to provide
SIM cards: one is needed for every Facebook or Twitter account.

He then asks for 15 days.

“I call it the cultivation period,” he said. “We just make accounts.”

His social media manager, who chose to be identified as Agnes, carts almost 1,
000 SIM cards with her, in case Facebook asks for a login code sent through
text. Each SIM card stands for a fictitious character who “lives” on social media:
He or she goes shopping, drinks a latte, poses at a popular tourist spot and
shares gifts received.

“You really keep it alive” before you start posting messages of support or bashing
critics, Agnes said.

Troll vs. troll

Then they get to work.
When a politician attacked Agnes’s client, her team went into overdrive. They
pointed out, ironically, that he was merely using hired hacks to criticize the client.
The rival ended up deleting his post.

Her terms to describe her trade evoke images of bloody war on the battlefield.
She speaks of “invading” online chat groups and Facebook fan pages, and she
talks of fighting her “enemies” online in real time.

“That’s how we look at our enemies if we’re fighting online. We check if the
accounts are real,” Agnes says. “We know that could happen to us, too, so we
keep the account ‘alive’. So if they see us, they’ll see . . . ‘Oh, this person was in
[the resort town] Tagaytay. They were in Starbucks.’ ”

And if they are accused of being trolls themselves, “we stick to the statement that
we aren’t,” she said — doubling down on a lie.

“We challenge them to look at our Facebook accounts,” she said.

These sparring matches — between live, paid social media operatives — are the
latest evolution of this industry. It is also the clearest sign that inauthentic social
media behavior has seeped into every layer of politics in the Philippines.

“It is really unique to the Philippines. We haven’t seen so many other countries
that are using live moderators to battle it out,” said Samantha Bradshaw, a
researcher at Oxford University who has studied misinformation campaigns
worldwide. “This idea of the troll versus the troll, it is quite new.”

The operator of the white troll farm is among those who, having perfected their
craft at home, dream of growing beyond the borders of the Philippines. He is
hoping for global expansion, even if he starts small by exploring the market in
regional countries such as Singapore.

“Why not?” he challenged.

A lie 10,000 times

Filipinos spend the most time online in the world — more than 10 hours on the
Internet a day — according to social media analytics firm Hootsuite. The country
is also one of Facebook’s biggest markets. In some cities, there are more users
on the platform than the population.

For Duterte’s trolls and social media operatives, this was fertile ground.
Among the targets of their most vile and aggressive troll campaigns are
imprisoned Sen. Leila de Lima, an outspoken critic of Duterte’s war on drugs;
former opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes, whose term ended in June; and
prominent journalist Maria Ressa, named one of Time’s 2018 people of the
year.

Ressa, ironically, was working with researchers like Graphika’s François,

studying troll campaigns linked back to her government.

“One day, she called me and said, ‘It is me they are going after. I’m the target
now,’ ” François said.

One trolling-services firm says planting and amplifying these falsehoods was
deliberate.

“If you hear a lie once, you don’t believe it,” said a representative of the trolling
services firm, which is linked to the Duterte administration. “But if you hear it from
10,000 people, you start questioning what you know.”

Lima, Trillanes and Ressa are all fighting charges they say are politically
motivated, and they have been the victims of fabricated news articles that allege
corruption, involvement in the drug trade and an assortment of other crimes.

Ahead of the Philippines midterm elections in May, The Washington Post found a
number of other senators using fake accounts to boost their popularity, one
strongly allied with Duterte.

Some gave themselves away easily. In March, a Twitter account in support of

Sen. Sonny Angara was found using a profile photo of a dead Filipino girl,
murdered in the United States last December.

The account has since been taken down. But an image search by The Post also
uncovered the same photo being used in accounts supportive of politicians Bong
Revilla and Grace Poe, a former presidential candidate.

The Post also found Twitter accounts supportive of Angara and Poe misleadingly
using photos belonging to a travel blogger, a software start-up founder, at least
two beauty pageant candidates, “The Apprentice Asia” winner Jonathan Yabut,
and Filipino American social media personality Bretman Rock.

Revilla, Poe and Angara all won Senate seats in the midterm elections. Poe led a
Senate hearing on misinformation last year, and she described the problem as
something that “plagued” society.
However, she pushed back on the idea that lawmakers should legislate it for fear
of censorship.

All three denied that they utilize such services.

'We're determined, too'

The Philippines is one of the countries where Facebook offers its “Free Basics”
service, providing free Internet access to a small number of websites and
Facebook itself — essentially turning the platform into the de facto Internet. The
main Philippine cellular providers also offer cheap Facebook data packages.

Facebook is now using the Philippines as proof that they can right their wrongs.
After apologizing for not acting sooner, the company has staffed up a local office
in Manila — a rare move for Facebook — and launched a digital literacy
program.

Hundreds of Facebook pages linked to Philippine troll farms have been removed
from the platform, including digital marketing group Twinmark Media. It controlled
a so-called digital news website, Trending News Portal, that posted unverified
and salacious articles critical of Duterte’s opponents.

In late March, the social media platform removed 200 pages, groups and
accounts that they said were linked to Nic Gabunada, who was the head of
Duterte’s social media strategy during the 2016 campaign.

The social media analysis company Graphika, which helped Facebook archive
this content before its removal, said these pages glorified Duterte’s war on drugs,
which human rights groups say has resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000
people in police raids and extrajudicial slayings.

Gabunada, in response to questions from The Post, pushed back on the idea
that he was running a trolling effort. He said he was merely sharing his views on
politics and support of Duterte, and was consulting with Duterte supporters who
wanted to start their own fan pages.
He also believes he was unfairly targeted.

“The vitriol we observe in social media conversations today are coming from both
sides,” he said. “I have a feeling I was singled out, whereas the anti-Duterte and
opposition pages were not.”
A separate trolling-services firm linked to Duterte said the Facebook crackdown
was so dramatic that their clients considered cutting their budget by 70 percent,
unsure whether the investment was worth it if pages kept getting taken down.

The firm has since evolved: investing more in making their pages look authentic
and posting memes and photos rather than text, which are harder for algorithms
to detect. Business has picked up again.

“We know this work will never be done. We have determined adversaries who will
keep evolving their tactics to circumvent the new barriers we put in place,” said
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook. “But we’re
determined, too, and will continue to be focused on making it as difficult as
possible for bad actors who want to abuse our services.”

Ellen Tordesillas, a longtime investigative journalist at Vera Files, a nonprofit

media organization that also works with Facebook to fact-check in the
Philippines, said a particularly nasty bout of trolls emerged after Facebook pulled
down the hundreds of pages.

“It is not like they can post on Zuckerberg’s Facebook page and have any impact;
their office in the Philippines is not exceptional,” she said. “So it is easier to
attack us.”

Another wave came after the news organization published a commentary on a

list of names supposedly linked with the drug trade, from a whistleblower who
called himself “Bikoy.” Among them was Paolo Duterte, the leader’s son, who has
denied the charges.

As she spoke to The Post, her phone rang. It was an unknown number, but she
picked up anyway, thinking it might be the bank. She soon realized it was a troll.

“How’s Bikoy?” the person said. “You’re done for.”

She hung up, but the same caller tried again, and again, and again, until the
phone stopped ringing.
Shibani Mahtani
Shibani Mahtani is the Southeast Asia correspondent for The Washington Post,
covering countries that include the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand and
Indonesia. She joined The Post's foreign desk in 2018 after seven years as a
correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Southeast Asia and later in Chicago,
where she covered the Midwest.
Regine Cabato
Regine Cabato is the Manila reporter for The Washington Post Southeast Asia
Bureau. Before joining The Post in 2018, she worked as a writer for broadcast
and digital platforms at CNN Philippines.

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