Supporters of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are using live video to spread misinformation on social media. Voters have become inured to the situation, researchers fear.
CAVITE, Philippines — Arnel Agravante, a YouTuber in the Philippines, told his followers last October that he knew how Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the presidential front-runner and his candidate of choice, had become wealthy.
The story, he said, was simple: Mr. Marcos’s dictator father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., did not steal money from the government, as has been widely reported. Rather, he was given tons of gold by a secretive royal family in the Philippines. “That’s what they call ‘ill-gotten wealth,’” Mr. Agravante said, ridiculing Mr. Marcos’s critics.
The gold story has been debunked by multiple fact checkers as well as by Mr. Marcos himself, but that has not stopped Mr. Agravante from repeating it. The way he sees it, he is part of the “alternative media” countering a mainstream press “spreading stupid and wrong information about our history” before next week’s election.
The Philippines was once described by a Facebook executive as “patient zero” in the global disinformation epidemic, but over the years, the government has done little to stop the deluge. Voices like Mr. Agravante’s have flourished as more people have flocked online for news. And now researchers fear voters have become inured to the problem, readily seeking what they think is the truth from TikTok and other social media sites.
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