Voters in the Philippines presidential election are facing an onslaught of online lies.
On Monday, voters in the Philippines will pick the nation's next president - amid a tide of falsehoods and social media lies.Jon - not his real name - is part of an industry that could be crucial to the selection of the next president of the Philippines.
According to election observers and disinformation experts, the situation hasn't improved since - in fact, it may have even got worse.Jon is part of this disinformation ecosystem. He says he has around 30 "trolls" working directly for him. Their aim is to boost support for their clients, even if it means spreading falsehoods. He says he's been operating under the radar for years.
Meta - which owns Facebook- says that in the Philippines, it has removed a number of networks which have attempted to manipulate people, including a cluster of more than 400 accounts, pages, and groups that violated their policies.In the lead-up to the country's vote, many candidates have aired concerns about the role that disinformation could play in the outcome.
"What we've seen is a cat-and-mouse game between platforms, fact-checkers and academics trying to expose these kinds of disinformation operators, and [the operators] finding ways to evade detection," says Jonathan Corpus Ong, an associate professor and disinformation researcher at Harvard University.
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