In PART 1, we exposed the coordinated effort to spread fake news in QC. At the heart of this operation is former mayor Herbert “Bistek” Bautista along with his cronies. They have spread false information in QC, which we have since refuted, to incite anger and destabilize the LGU. Their goal is to bring Bautista back to power so he can escape his multiple cases for stealing QC’s money.
In PART 2, we revealed the inner workings of Bautista’s troll army, aided by his cronies from Bingbong Crisologo and Mike Defensor’s camp. We presented some evidence of who is behind the troll army and how they managed to reach the masses.
In PART 3, we delve further into their new tactics. Because their past strategies have been exposed and both the authorities and Facebook have acted to take down their illegal operations. Now Bautista and Defensor’s camp have switched tactics – creating a more organic way to spread hate on social media.
I. TRAPOLITIKO in QC
Herbert Bautista’s new “friends” in Quezon City are all members of PDP-Laban: Bingbong Crisologo, Onyx Crisologo, Edwin Dayrit Rodriguez, and Mike Defensor. While PDP-Laban as a party supports the president, these four politicians are TRAPOLITIKO, who only jumped ship to PDP-Laban to save their skin before the 2016 and 2019 elections. They are not Duterte supporters and were only there to take advantage of people’s popular support of Duterte.
Let’s take a look at these posts:
NOTE: THE FAKE NEWS IN THESE PHOTOS HAS NOW BEEN DEBUNKED. CHECK OUT THE PARTS 1 & 2 OF OUR INVESTIGATIVE EXPOSE.
The Edwin Dayrit Rodriguez page posted this photo on March 21, 2020. Some days later, the page DDS Quezon City reposts an edited version of it. The caption this time is more of an appeal to the DDS people. The next day, Kyusi Laban sa Mandarambong shared the same post.
Three different pages with three different audiences, all saying the same script and even using the same photos. All three pages are managed by none other than the troll master Edwin Dayrit Rodriguez.
But who is he? Edwin Dayrit Rodriguez is the current Sec. Gen. of PDP-Laban QC and the one who handled Bingbong Crisologo’s campaign in 2019 along with Mike Defensor. He is the same guy who mobilized JoyRide trolls to increase their visibility and ratings EVEN BEFORE THE APP LAUNCHED. He is a businessman who used his connections to gain power and position in the government. He turned politics into business.
Now, to the three pages. The first page, Edwin Dayrit Rodriguez was a personal page where he spews his opinions and promotes his business, mostly followed by Crisologo trolls and JoyRide trolls. However, the page went offline at the time of writing. Was it disabled by Facebook or did he unpublish it?
The second, Kyusi Laban Sa Mandarambong, is a rebranded page formerly known as Bingbong Laban Sa Mandarambong which used to post about Crisologo’s campaign and where Crisologo trolls gathered during the election. Now, it parades itself as a DDS page that spreads fake news about Quezon City, the LGU and its incumbent Mayor, Joy Belmonte. Note that its main source of DDS-related content is DDS Quezon City.
The last page is DDS Quezon City. It is a fake DDS page, pretending to be supporters of Duterte. This is so they can have access to the hoards of DDS netizens. Typical trapolitiko moves, leeching off someone more powerful than they are. The page was created ahead of the 2019 elections, hoping to influence the DDS in Quezon City to destroy Belmonte’s reputation. Now it is used for churning fake news on QC.
These pages are only a few of the other FB pages and Twitter accounts of this troll farm we have uncovered in PART 2. Rodriguez is more active in the troll farm than the Crisologos and Defensor because he is not running for any public office.
What’s more, Bistek and Defensor’s camp is now using DDS trolls as well to destroy Quezon City through fake news and misinformation.
II. Coordinated Attack by Bistek and Defensor’s DDS Trolls
Because the authorities are now cracking down on fake news peddlers, Bautista and Defensor’s camp is now focusing on creating memes to make fun of the LGU and its Mayor Joy Belmonte. This cultivates disrespect, loss of confidence, and destabilization of the current administration.
Regin Rex Palma
On May 8, 2020, a video of Joy Belmonte dubbed over with a character from Ghost Fighter surfaced and went viral. It was posted by an account named Regin Rex Palma. It all seemed to be in harmless fun, as most netizens believed. But after we investigated this, we found out it was part of a more sinister plot.
On checking, we found multiple pages sharing and reposting the post. The curious thing about them is that all these pages were created between March and May 2020. As we have uncovered in PART 1 & PART 2, these months were the height of troll attacks in Quezon City. Because of the recent troll page takedowns by Facebook, the troll army had to create new pages again.
Some of these pages were created on the same day as the post went viral. One of which is JACKS Entertainment. This page reposted the video as well.
What makes JACKS Entertainment suspicious? A couple of things: First, it was created on the same date the video went up. Second, out of all the reposters of the video, it was this unknown page that got picked up by a news site.
Politiko – News Site
Politiko is a news site established in 2014 and a known Pres. Duterte supporter. On May 10, 2020, it published an article covering the meme videos popping up in social media targeting Mayor Joy Belmonte. But instead of quoting Rex Palma, the original poster whose video has been widely shared, Politiko picked up JACKS Entertainment which was then two days old and only had a small number of followers – an unknown page at the time.
JACKS Entertainment as well as the pages we listed above are part of Bautista and Defensor’s new wave of troll pages, masquerading as DDS pages. They use the DDS supporters and trolls to reach more people, but the main agenda is to incite hatred of the QC LGU and its incumbent Mayor, Joy Belmonte.
As we dig deeper, we found out that most of the likes, shares, and comments in the meme videos came from DDS trolls – Bautista and Defensor’s fake DDS trolls.
Rex Palma’s video didn’t go viral on its own. A massive troll farm boosted its engagement count (like, share, comment, view) so that Facebook’s algorithm will label it as VIRAL and send it spiraling up to the mass population’s news feed.
Politiko’s article is nothing but a paid advertisement by Bautista’s camp to give traction to the page and the post. And this massively complex operation requires tons of money. Fortunately for them, Bautista’s hard-earned P218-billion stolen from the city’s coffers can amply pay for it all.
III. New Tactics
Previously, the trolls will immediately saturate various groups with their scripts. Now they take their time to establish posts in private mode, by increasing their engagement before spreading them further.
Facebook allows you to set your page in Private or Public. Private mode can only be seen by people you allow. Public mode can be seen by everyone.
Incubation Period
A post is created in private in one of the troll-owned pages, groups, or accounts. This post will remain in private until it gains enough engagements (likes, shares, and comments) from their trolls.
Their troll accounts will start supporting it. They will share it with other troll-owned sites. They will also tag their “friends” who are also trolls. At this stage, the most important thing is the NUMBERS. A post needs all the engagement that it can get to make it viral.
Post Becomes “Viral”
With enough engagements, the social media algorithm will now consider this post “viral” and promote it in suggested posts or trending topics. Only it isn’t viral, not yet. It hasn’t reach anyone beyond the “troll community” – the circle of trolls managed by the same people.
Release
Now that they’ve breached the algorithm, the trolls will now make the post public. They will now begin sharing it consistently to various QC groups (buy and sell, political, memes, Viber groups, etc) and pages.
Looking from the outside, the masses will see the high number of shares, likes, and comments and think these are viral posts. Other pages with large followers will pick these up and repost them. People will share them. They will have no idea that there is a massive troll farm behind the viral post, paid and managed by Herbert “Bistek” Bautista and Mike Defensor, using the stolen Quezon City money.
This new pattern of attack makes the troll post more believable. People remain unaware and will engage with these posts because that’s what you do with viral posts. The end goal is to denigrate the work of the Quezon City’s LGU and to drill into the minds of the people that they should throw respect out of the window. This may seem harmless fun to a typical netizen, but this is a dangerous mindset to cultivate. If people lose respect and trust in the authorities in the middle of a crisis, it will be the people who will suffer the most.
As our days in quarantine grow longer, unease and unrest will continue to grow. Agitating people to disrespect the authorities will inevitably lead to anarchy, violence, and even death.
No local government including Quezon City can effectively protect its residents from both the pandemic and the chaos. Bautista and Defensor may entertain the idea of returning to the seat of power by destabilizing the QC government, but definitely this will be at the expense of more people dying as the life and death struggle against Covid-19 continues.