Bongbong Marcos: I have no troll farm

Presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. speaks during the Agri 2022 Online Forum. Image from Facebook / Bongbong Marcos

MANILA, Philippines — Presidential aspirant and former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Monday said he never had a troll farm, claiming that the social media support he is getting is “organic.”

Marcos was responding to claims that he was only topping presidential surveys due to huge troll farms, a notion which the former senator laughed at.

“I challenge them to show me where the troll farms are. I challenge them to show me where I boosted. I challenge them to show me where I put ads,” he said in an interview over One News PH.

“I have no troll farm. I have never had a troll farm. I have never had a click army, I never boosted. Everything’s organic, and I never bought ads,” he added.

“Boosting” in social media means platforms like Facebook will give a post wider visibility for a fee. Posts that get clicks without boosting get traffic organically.

He said using troll farms are an “insult to the Filipinos’ intelligence,” especially to the youth, whom he claimed are able to spot fake news right away.

“Alam nila ‘yan, huli ka diyan. Walang silbi ‘yan, I don’t know why people do it,” Marcos said.

(They know that, you will be busted. That is useless.)

Twitter, meanwhile, has suspended hundreds of accounts allegedly linked to Marcos’ supporters which the social media giant said had violated its rules on manipulation and spam.

Twitter said it had reviewed the accounts and hashtags identified in a recent article by news site Rappler.

More than 300 accounts had been removed “for violating our platform manipulation and spam policy,” Twitter said.

Marcos however said the people involved in these accounts are not part of his organization and are just “friends of supporters who are trying to help and expressing their opinion.”

“Hindi namin kontrolado. Siguro ‘yung iba diyan kilala namin but hindi namin palakad ‘yan, ‘yung ginagawa nila,” he said.

(We do not control them. Maybe we know some of them but we are not involved in that.)

“The fact of the matter is they have not proven that these are Marcos accounts,” he added.

/MUF