Troll Master: Bong Bong Marcos

Bong Bong Marcos

Son of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, one of the most controversial leaders of the 20th century.
Marcos announced in 2021 that he will run for president of the Philippines in the upcoming 2022 election, under the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP)
Marcos is well known for his social media reach, which includes over a thousand pages/groups on Facebook and a popular YouTube channel.
Marcos’ running mate, VP Candidate Sara Duterte, is the daughter of current president Rodrigo Duterte.
Marcos’ trolls are sophisticated in comparison to the other trolls we’ve found in this election. Their accounts very often look and may be authentic.
There are three types of troll activity: distribution, commenting, and filling up profiles and pages with Marcos content. Some trolls shared hundreds of Marcos posts to their own pages, making their user profile posts look similar to a dedicated Marcos page. Distribution (taking posts from one page and sharing them to multiple other pages) and commenting (frequently with a propaganda image or a short phrase) don’t show on an account’s profile, so spotting a Marcos troll without knowing what they have been doing on other pages is difficult.

These accounts formerly appeared on the troll list here. These accounts are now unavailable:

Below is an interactive example of a troll network in operation.

Many of these trolls in the diagram below are enjoying the same “Attack Leni” benefits of the ones we have identified in the list above.