Debunking ‘Duterte Paid Trolls’ Conspiracy

An online troll.

If you are a believer of Maria Ressa’s Propaganda war: Weaponizing the internet, you are either ignorant or a yellowtard.

Let me tell you why.

Journalists fail to find evidence

As the saying goes, “In the age of Information, IGNORANCE is a choice”. Mainstream media’s lies these days have been exposed because of the internet. The internet is so powerful that almost everything is in it. You will have the skills of a professional even though you are not studying in a prestigious University because everything they know and didn’t know were already indexed on the internet.

Articles like Maria Ressa’s gain information from an anonymous source, the same pattern is being used by Business Mirror’s Money and credulity drive Duterte’s ‘keyboard army’ which claims to be over a million trolls hired by the Duterte administration on a P500 per day budget. Wow, this administration must be filthy rich that it must spend P500 million a day just to fuel their power on the internet.

Sounds like a fairytale isn’t it? Coz it is!

Duterte don’t need to spend money to be famous

Duterte is already famous, not just here but abroad!  ‘The Punisher’ from Davao City will have no sweat in making himself famous because in the last election, people are tired with the same old candidates like:

• The failure of ‘Daang Matuwid’ just brought down Mar Roxas’ candidacy. He is known as an ‘epal’ candidate which Filipinos really despise.
• Grace Poe has issues with her citizenship and is ‘too new’ to become President.
• Jejomar Binay, oh dear, the corruption allegations.

Do you think Filipinos are still blind? Folks, that is the formula for Duterte’s popularity.

Let the data begin

There’s no denying that in every day, people we’ve met has a Facebook account. This data shows it correctly. And according to that same article, The median age is 24 - the millennials who grew up as digital natives, and it is public knowledge that the millennials outnumber everyone else when it comes to the population of internet users.

Not convinced? Here are the statistics from Fleire Castro:

11. MILLENIALS TOP FACEBOOK USERS AGE GROUP
20-29 year olds now top the demographics on Facebook usage. This is followed by the 13-19 and the 30-39 age groups. This millenials are gaining ground in these platforms. Knowing that they have the purchasing power and the voting power, this is one key stat that changemarkers, politicians, and company executives have to note. These age groups are now empowered to make a major change in the Philippines.

And if you think Duterte’s social media campaign is weak, well, from the same statistics:

5. FILIPINOS STILL SPEND THE MOST TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

To back it all up here’s more:

“The survey, conducted among 45,123 voters from 733 voting centers, showed Duterte scoring a 33-point lead over his closest rival, administration candidate Mar Roxas, in ages 18 to 24, and a 26-point lead in ages 25 to 34.” [ABS-CBN]

And I quote from Comelec chair Andres Bautista:

“Comelec chair Andres Bautista on Monday said youth voters will likely determine the outcome of the next elections, citing President Benigno Aquino III's victory in 2010.” [ABS-CBN]

The millennials were the key to victory from President Aquino down to President Duterte, were they influenced by trolls? Were they part of the Duterte troll team? That’s two presidents already unless we’ve been ‘trolled’ twice?

All I can say is, Millennials such as myself, won’t be fooled easily, even the Marcos Burial protest is led by the Millennials and that the Youth can see through Marcos’ lies. Sounds awesome, isn’t it?

The lies of Journalists

So going back to BW’s article ‘Money and credulity drive Duterte’s ‘keyboard army’, it cited that there is also a Yellow Army which sole purpose is to defend and promote the Liberal Party in the social media world, but their services are for ‘free’. Isn’t that unfair, a Yellow Army’s services are for free but for the Duterte side, everything has a price? I am more convinced that the Yellows pay trolls because they have gone unpopular these days.

Maria Ressa of Rappler also claimed that bots fueled Duterte’s popularity, the picture below speaks a thousand words.

This is an insight of engagement of pro-Duterte pages namely, MOCHA USON BLOG, Thinking Pinoy and Sass Rogando Sasot. Mocha Uson’s engagement outnumbered local media giants like ABS-CBN News, Rappler and GMA News.

Alleged ‘Duterte Paid Trolls’ don’t need to hang out at pro-Duterte pages because there’s no need to convince the people reading Mocha Uson’s posts. So how the hell did Mocha Uson get so much ENGAGEMENT if Duterte is hiring trolls?

If Duterte is indeed hiring trolls (allegedly), they don’t need a million of them, an entity like Mocha Uson is enough to keep him famous.

And someone did say that Duterte pays ‘trolls’ to fuel the hate on Filipinos, here is a Facebook date on Sass’ page alone:

Here is Sass’ post reach data, all organic, even Juan Nationalist and Bam Aquino’s sponsored post can’t compete with Sass’ organic stats, she doesn’t need to pay anything to get this kind of post reach:

And bots do not generate organic post reach. With these statistics alone, it's undeniable that Duterte’s followers are massive that the administration doesn’t need to spend a centavo to work things out. Duterte won because of strong social media presence which the LP administration underestimated or did they?

Read: Roxas has his own internet army

Rappler’s BOTS

To point it out, BOTS do not generate ‘Engagement’, so here is the formula for engagement on Facebook:

Engagement = Views + ( Like/React + Comment)

Source: Facebook

Let me educate you on bots:

1. it automatically likes
2. and comments on Facebook
3. but surely it does not generate the ‘Views’ formula,

The view formula must be done in an organic way, in short, a real human scrolling down the page post and is actually reading it. Without the ‘View’ formula, likes and comments on Facebook do not generate Engagement.

That is how Facebook’s algorithm works. The algorithm is created by geniuses working at Facebook, so who do you believe, Maria Ressa’s or the scientists at Facebook?

For the bots, you can look it up on Google and do experiments yourself.

Trolling did not work against Leni

So let’s say that Trolling was a factor for Duterte’s victory. But why did it not work against Leni Robredo? Unless you’re going to admit that she cheated on the elections, BUT, if she won in an honest way, then Trolling did not work, and it never worked. If Trolling was so strong and that Filipinos were highly influenced by it, then Alan Peter Cayetano might have won the Vice Presidency. But he didn’t right?

Duterte’s Passionate Trolls

What drives these ‘Passionate Trolls’ of Duterte? Well, they consist of people who grew tired of the past administration, even the Filipinos who belong to the ‘less-privileged’ group has access to Facebook.

They are fighting for the administration that got rid of the common Yellow politics with soft-spoken Presidents like Cory and PNoy. They are people who are tired of crimes and drugs pillaging their towns and felt powerless over them. Now that they have a President who will make sure those evil people hide in the dark and never to return again, they will use all their efforts to defend him. That is human behavior and I know lots of people who were mistaken as paid trolls can relate to it.

My message to the media, give us proof of transactions coming from your ‘anonymous paid troll’ source, then we believe you. If not, then let us continue our support to President Rodrigo Duterte and let us continue trolling the yellow-bleeding hearts.

The truth is, paid trolls exist, but not in the Duterte administration who don’t need to pay people for him to be famous. The yellow team badly needs to pay trolls because as far as the Facebook engagement from pro-LP goes, it’s all under the sink.

And to the yellows, you can investigate the ‘paid troll conspiracy’ yourself. If you have gathered evidence, then we’ll talk.