Facebook said the pages and accounts were 'linked to a network organized by Nic Gabunada,' social media director for President Duterte’s 2016 campaign.
at Facebook Philippines' office in Taguig City that a total of 3.6 million Filipinos follow at least one of the"inauthentic" pages, and at least 1.8 million Facebook accounts are involved in one of the identified groups.showed, in the Philippines, much of the extreme political rhetoric on Facebook props up Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's authoritarian reign.
During Gabunada's interview with BuzzFeed News, he dubiously insisted that the engagement was “organic” and “volunteer-driven” and also said Duterte’s campaign purchased no Facebook ads, and only occasionally boosted posts. Yet Facebook's post yesterday tells a different story. The company said it detected around $59,000 in spending for ads on Facebook paid for in Philippine peso, Saudi riyal and US dollars. The first ad ran in January 2014, the company said, and the latest ad ran as recently as March 2019. Additionally,"the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action," Facebook said.
And despite Gabunada's claim last year that the actors behind pro-Duterte pages and accounts posted content of their own accord, he also boasted that his team largely directed the messaging and supplied stories."[We] gave them something to talk about,” Gabunada said at the time.
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