Five Ways the Duterte Influence Machine is Deceiving Filipinos

By Regine Cabato and Gian Libot
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

Just five months ago, thousands of Duterte supporters were trashing the Supreme Court on Facebook, calling it “useless” and demanding it act against the former president’s arrest. Now these same supporters are singing a very different tune—praising the high court as “fair and just” after a July 25 decision declaring Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment unconstitutional.

The support is part of a long-running political influence campaign, powered by a cyborg operation—part-human, part-machine—made up of hyper-partisan influencers, trolls, and true believers. Its machinery utilizes generative AI to mass produce deepfakes of everything from fictional supporters to baby photos of Duterte, and keyboard warriors to post hundreds of pro-Duterte comments in minutes. As the Dutertes are besieged by numerous charges, ranging from murder to grand corruption, they are mounting a defense not just in court or in Congress—but in the public imagination.

Since last year, the Dutertes’ allied influencers and accounts seeded various narratives on social media to cast doubt on the merits of the impeachment and quell potential outrage regarding controversies surrounding the vice president.

In February, the House voted to impeach Sara Duterte for publicly threatening to assassinate the president and allegedly misusing education and confidential funds in the hundreds of millions. These included large payments made to possibly nonexistent individuals named after junk food and fast-food chains—“Mary Grace Piattos,” “Chippy McDonald,” “Carlos Oishi,” and others.

We identified five tactics used by Duterte supporters as part of a coordinated disinformation campaign meant to shape public opinion, undermine oversight, and build political power before the 2028 elections. Each tactic follows established patterns in Philippine political messaging and draws from a tried-and-true playbook of information disorder.

These are:

• Dismissal or denial of the facts
• Distortion or muddying financial and legal issues related to impeachment
• Distraction or deflection, pointing the finger elsewhere
• Emotional manipulation, portraying the Dutertes as victims rather than perpetrators
• Spreading conspiracy theories that the charges against the Dutertes are a grand plot

These messages do more than just show political support—they’re designed to influence public perception, delegitimize oversight, and consolidate political capital ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

Dismissal and Distortion: The Supreme Court finds Sara Duterte innocent

The claim. After its decision on the impeachment case, the high court’s livestream was flooded by pro-Duterte accounts, praising the justices for doing a “good job.” Partisan influencers said the decision absolved the vice president of her alleged crimes. OPTIC Politics, a Facebook page with over 174,000 followers, said Duterte’s legal team “did not bend the law… And now, the law has rewarded them.” The post was shared over 1,000 times.

One viral Facebook post juxtaposed a fake claim of Duterte’s innocence over the photo of Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the author of the decision. Hyper-partisan Manila Times columnist Rigoberto Tiglao said the ruling “paves the way” for Duterte’s presidency in 2028, in a post shared widely by other pro-Duterte influencers.

The truth. The Supreme Court decision is a legal victory for Duterte but the court ruled only on the procedures of the House of Representatives and did not proclaim Duterte innocent. Moreover, the decision has been criticized by some legal scholars and authors of the 1987 constitution who fear the ruling would make it harder to hold any impeachment trial in the future.

Analysis. Dismissal and distortion are two of the 4Ds of disinformation campaigns (the other two are distraction and dismay). Duterte partisans mocked the Supreme Court when it did not stop the ICC’s arrest of the former president, but praised it when it was seen as protecting the Dutertes. This selective framing erodes trust in democratic institutions by implying they are doing a good job only when their decisions align with partisan interests. They are also aimed at crippling the public’s ability to distinguish truth from partisan storytelling.

OPTIC Politics and Tiglao are part of a growing network of partisan Facebook pages across the political aisle that post lengthy essays fashioned as independent opinion. Pro-Duterte pages like The Political Blogger, JAN Writer, and Dare to Ask outnumber liberal-leaning pages and are often anonymous, thereby evading accountability for misleading or even libelous posts. Often in English and fashioned as smart commentary, these hyper-partisan influencers purport to provide independent analysis — but they disseminate the “alternative facts” and arguments that pro-Duterte supporters recycle and popularize.

Dismissal and distortion: Sara Duterte did not steal public funds

The claims. Mary Grace Piattos, Carlos Oishi, and various fake names used by recipients of large payments from Sara’s Duterte’s confidential funds are “codenames” or aliases for security assets so their real names cannot be revealed. In addition, the Commission on Audit (COA) has issued “clean and unmodified” opinions clearing the Office of the Vice President (OVP) of spending anomalies.

One influencer, Zaza Flores, whose bio note says she is a Filipino-British “critical thinker,” claimed an unmodified opinion means “no anomalies, no irregularities, no misuse” in a video that reached 123,000 views on Facebook. Another partisan influencer, Mark Lopez, claimed “all agencies” had confidential funds and their own versions of the Piattos names.

The truth. COA guidelines require that the real names of unnamed or secret recipients of confidential funds be disclosed in a sealed envelope, with identities made known to the state auditor. The real names of these supposed aliases, however, were not provided in sealed envelopes, showing they were likely not top secret security assets, even if they really existed, said independent budget consultant Zyza Nadine Suzara.

Clean and unmodified opinions do not mean innocence. On the contrary, COA issued a notice of disallowance for ₱73 million—a sign of possible irregularity—and flagged another ₱164 million from the vice president’s 2023 budget. If funds were actually used for matters of national security, “that’s not the mandate of the OVP,” Suzara said. “The proper process is… you go to the [Department of Justice]. They pay for a safehouse [and] the informant.”

Analysis. Pro-Duterte messages cast doubt on the charges against the vice president by twisting the facts about government spending. Their aim is to provide an alternative explanation for the anomalies or dismiss them altogether. They do this mostly through comment seeding or flooding public comment sections — usually of mainstream media outlets — with the same talking points to create the impression of majority support.

On March 16, 2025, News5 posted an updated list of confidential fund recipients with suspicious names like “Jay Kamote” and “Miggy Mango.” The post drew over 26,000 comments, most of which recycled the old argument that the names were aliases for security assets. Analysis by PCIJ shows the comments came from a mix of anonymous and seemingly real accounts, some of which were locked. Recently recorded pro-Duterte influence campaigns have shown similarly mixed elements of real and manufactured accounts.

Whether authentic or not, these accounts coordinate their actions by flooding a post with comments during a set window of time, echoing — sometimes even copy-pasting — the same script. Comments on the News5 post repeated the same arguments over and over,  used the same words like “alias” and “codename,” and almost always accused TV5 of bias. They also uniformly resorted to name-calling or dismissing those who believed the charges as “stupid.” Constant repetition of the same arguments and lies can create an illusion of truth — people start believing something is true just because they’ve heard it so many times.

Deflection: Pointing the finger elsewhere

The claim. Duterte ally Senator Bong Go has argued that “impeachment cannot be eaten.” Pro-Duterte accounts have echoed this, saying the impeachment should be junked in favor of gut issues, such as the price of rice, health, or flooding. The Duterte camp also questioned Marcos’s own confidential funds and the alleged mishandling of the Congress budget under House Speaker Martin Romualdez, while sidestepping questions about their own spending.

The truth. The impeachment can also be heard alongside other issues. Similarly, the scrutiny of the use of public funds by both Duterte and the Marcos administration can co-exist.

Marcos’s spending deserves scrutiny— he has ₱4.5 billion in confidential and intelligence funds, thanks to his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who increased the Office of the President’s budget from ₱500 million.

Sara Duterte’s confidential funds are smaller than Marcos’s but have been flagged due to suspicious receipts, notices of disallowance, and some ₱125 million being spent in 11 days. The pro-Duterte narrative “skirts the issue,” said Suzara, because it’s not a question of whether one official should be held accountable to the exclusion of another. “If there really was no wrongdoing,” said Suzara, “it’s so easy for anyone in government to explain what it is for.”

Analysis. Duterte supporters aim to deflect attention by raising the issue of Marcos-Romualdez corruption without answering the anomalies in Sara Duterte’s spending. Most of the hyper-partisan influencers now accusing Marcos Jr. of corruption had no qualms about these issues when they campaigned for him in 2022. This has marks of two of the 4Ds of propaganda: distraction.

Such deflection was a recurring narrative in the News5 comment section cited earlier. It has also been the topic of AI-generated videos featuring made-up man-on-the-street interviews, one of which was amplified by Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Davao City acting mayor Sebastian Duterte.

Ay Grabe, the Facebook page which posted that video interview, has over 288,000 followers and a markedly pro-Duterte slant. It depicts the impeachment and other criticism of the Dutertes as a distraction from bread and butter issues — while engaging in distraction techniques itself. Its recent content hits the Marcos administration’s handling of flooding. Although it tags its content as AI-generated and “for entertainment purposes only,” the videos are easily taken out of context, spliced, and spread as real among supporters.

This tactic qualifies as false audience consensus because viewers were led to believe that the viral videos were real. The unlabeled AI videos may be a violation of Meta guidelines which require disclosure of AI-generated content. Ay Grabe later issued a disclaimer on Facebook. By then, the content had already migrated to other social media platforms.

Emotional manipulation: Playing the victim

The claim: The Duterte impeachment is baseless, politically motivated persecution. Sara Duterte, abandoned by the UniTeam, was left to defend herself against the charges of misspending. She was betrayed by the Marcoses and deserves sympathy for the suffering they have inflicted on her. Now cast as pariahs, the Dutertes will one day make a comeback.

Duterte’s critics, whether they are opposition politicians, academics, or public finance experts are biased, elitist, or motivated by partisan politics. The claim also asserts that unlike Marcos Jr., Rodrigo Duterte was more tolerant of opposition and shielded then-vice president Leni Robredo from impeachment.

The truth. Duterte’s impeachment has broad support across party lines, including figures aligned with Marcos, liberals, and the left. The fourth and final complaint is also generally understood to be a consolidation of the first three complaints filed at the House. Recent polls also show strong, if not majority, public interest in an impeachment trial.

Comparing Duterte to Robredo is a revisionist framing that ignores key distinctions: Robredo was excluded from the Cabinet, subjected to smear campaigns, and received minimal institutional support from then President Duterte. She was also not implicated in financial controversies of similar magnitude.

Analysis. This narrative follows the so-called “hostile media effect,” in which all unfavorable coverage is interpreted as evidence of partisan bias and part of a machine that victimizes the Dutertes. It creates a protective emotional frame for supporters, positioning the Vice President not as an official accountable to democratic norms, but as an unfairly targeted messiah figure. Research into disinformation networks shows that globally, appeals to persecution are among the most potent tools for undermining trust in democratic processes.

The comparison between Duterte and Robredo can also be read as designed to court soft Robredo supporters.

Conspiracy thinking: Blaming the U.S. and communists

The claim. The impeachment is part of a broader conspiracy targeting the Dutertes, often linked to the United States. Duterte’s impeachment is billed as a strategy by the Marcos administration to deflect from its own controversies or a calculated move to eliminate Duterte as a competitor in the 2028 presidential race to keep the Philippines in the hold of the U.S. and away from China.

Just hours after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled to bar the fourth impeachment complaint,  Duterte partisans unleashed a wave of Facebook posts repeating a copypasta or copy-pasted caption that claimed “VP Sara won—but more than that, we exposed the truth.” Over a hundred accounts, many of them low-quality profiles with minimal friends and little prior activity shared the identical message in rapid succession. The post framed the decision as a sweeping vindication, alluding to a grand conspiracy of collusion between opposition figures, the U.S. “deep state” and even the NPA.

The truth. While the U.S. has a troublesome history of intervening in Philippine and other countries’ affairs, the “deep state” is a widely recorded conspiracy theory that posits the government has unauthorized and top secret networks. It is a common talking point of the American far right. Tiglao accuses the “deep state” of being the incumbent U.S. government — even if U.S. President Donald Trump has accused a “deep state” of hindering his administration.

Defense and foreign policy analysts question the characterization of the Philippines as a U.S. puppet, as it oversimplifies the Philippines’ growing bilateral relations with new strategic allies, from Canada to Japan. Moreover, there is no basis to say that politically disparate movements and the U.S. were the puppet masters behind Duterte’s impeachment.

Analysis. Conspiracy theories are both symptomatic of, and further aggravate, distrust in public institutions — and in this case, also foreign states. Here, we see Filipino disinformation actors import a foreign conspiracy theory to meet their own partisan ends, even if there is no consensus on whether a “deep state” exists or how it operates.

The sudden and uniform release of this pre-packaged narrative reflects coordinated inauthentic behavior: synchronized messaging, the use of disposable or low-credibility accounts, and rapid amplification aimed at shaping early perceptions of a political event. This mirrors earlier disinformation strategies used during Duterte’s presidency, which also linked critics and opposition candidates to foreign agencies or criminal networks like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or a debunked drug matrix without evidence. These narratives lack basis in evidence, but can be emotionally compelling as they feed on latent fears or misunderstandings of government functions and politics.

The promotion of conspiracy theories also displaces blame and refocuses attention on abstract enemies rather than policy failings. It aligns with documented patterns of using conspiracy to maintain political loyalty by creating a sense of siege or moral urgency. In this case, the impeachment process is not seen as a constitutional remedy but a covert political operation.

In the eyes of hyper-partisan disinformation operators, no matter how contradictory, the communists, liberals, Marcos, Marcos’ allies, and the United States conspired to impeach Duterte. It is everyone’s fault, except Sara Duterte’s own.—PCIJ.org