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MANILA, Philippines — Presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he was offered to use online troll farms to boost his campaign, but he denied using them — and even urged his critics to find even just one of his supposed trolls.
“Find me one. Show me one. Just one. They don’t exist. You show me the place where there are hundreds of trolls sitting in front of a computer spreading fake news. It doesn’t exist,” Marcos said in an interview with CNN Philippines that aired on Tuesday.
“There are no trolls. We have no trolls. None. Not a single one. I have been offered a click army, I’ve been offered a troll. I did not use it,” Marcos said, speaking in a mix of English and Filipino.
Twitter earlier suspended hundreds of accounts allegedly linked to Marcos’s supporters for violating its rules on manipulation and spam.
Asked about the accounts linked to his supporters taken down online due to spamming, Marcos said: “Those are their individual accounts.”
“Besides, I don’t know. Some of these things are… these are from the United States. They don’t know what’s going on here. So maybe they might be mistaken in some instances,” Marcos said.
According to him, his camp does not even boost their online posts, saying doing so will not show his real numbers during the campaign.
“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.
Preliminary findings of Tsek.ph , an academe-based fact-checking initiative, showed that Marcos has been the beneficiary of positive but misleading messaging on social media ahead of the 2022 national elections. The findings were released in February.
Meanwhile, Tsek.ph found that Robredo has been the “biggest victim” of disinformation.
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