View previous stories
	Cambodia should scrap rights-abusing national internet gateway by International Commission of Jurists, agencies   The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and 31 other human rights organizations call on the Cambodian authorities to revoke the Sub-Decree on the Establishment of the National Internet Gateway (NIG), three months after its intended implementation date.   Since passage of the sub-decree on February 16, 2021, the government has yet to address the serious human rights concerns raised by civil society groups and tech companies. At the same time, the government has been wholly non-transparent regarding the infrastructure, implementation, financing, and cooperating companies, agencies, and organizations involved in supporting the NIG.   The NIG sub-decree paves the way for the establishment of a digital gateway to manage all internet traffic into and out of Cambodia. Provisions in the sub-decree allow government-appointed NIG operators to block or disconnect any online connections (article 6), retain traffic data for a year and provide other network information as requested by authorities (article 14), and issue overbroad penalties for non-compliant telecommunications operators (article 16).   The sub-decree states that the purpose of the NIG is to facilitate and manage internet connections to strengthen revenue collection, protect national security, and — in terms that are overbroad, ambiguous, and prone to misuse — to “preserve social order, culture, and national tradition” (article 1).   While the exact technical infrastructure and how it will be operated is still unknown, there is little doubt the NIG’s true purpose is to enable the Cambodian government to tighten the noose on what remains of internet freedom in the country.   In April 2021, three independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council expressed concerns that the sub-decree “poses risks to the fundamental freedoms of individuals, namely the freedoms of expression and opinion and the right to privacy and may expose individuals’ personal information without their consent, which would contravene international human rights instruments and Cambodian laws.”   They reiterated this call to the government on February 1, 2022, warning that the NIG “will have a serious negative impact on internet freedom, human rights defenders and civil society in the country, further shrinking the already-restrictive civic space in Cambodia.”   Cambodia is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 17 of the ICCPR protects the right of every individual against arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy. Article 19 of the ICCPR protects the right to freedom of expression. This right includes the “freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds.”   Any measures the state takes that would interfere with these rights must be provided for by law, be non-discriminatory, and be strictly necessary and proportionate to protect the rights of others, national security, public order or public health or morals.   The government has repeatedly rejected all human rights concerns about the NIG. The government has also refused to explain how the NIG’s restrictions on freedom of expression and access to information are necessary to achieve any of the legitimate aims, and failed to address the lack of proportionality of the measures.   Instead, the internet gateway is poised to restrict these rights in an overly broad manner, without any apparent limits. As UN experts, tech company representatives, and human rights advocates have pointed out, the sub-decree lacks procedural safeguards, independent oversight, and data and privacy protections.   There are grave concerns that the gateway will supercharge the government’s censorship capabilities, allowing it to scale up its website blocking. The gateway is also likely to have a chilling effect on online communications and generate self-censorship online among critical voices and independent media outlets who fear increased surveillance, harassment, and reprisals.   The sub-decree poses risks to data protection and data privacy, requiring government gateway operators to retain and share metadata. In the absence of a data protection law in Cambodia that would protect internet users from misuse of their data and provide certainty about where and how long data is retained, and who has access to it, the NIG will facilitate the authorities’ ability to identify users’ internet activities and habits, ultimately risking identifying the users themselves.   Data retention without sufficient protection for data security will increase risks to data security from third-party interference, or hackers. Centralizing internet traffic and data under the NIG also creates a vulnerability for malicious acts, without guaranteeing service providers’ capacity to adequately address the resultant increase in data security needs.   In a press statement issued on February 15, 2022, Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that it had conducted an “extensive study on infrastructure models from different countries around the world and found that most countries have internet gateways.”   No information has been provided to back these sweeping assertions, such as which infrastructure models the authorities considered, what their benefits and disadvantages are, and whether the study was done with reference to Cambodia’s human rights obligations under various international human rights treaties.   In Cambodia, the government’s rushed adoption process of the sub-decree establishing the NIG was plagued by a lack of transparency. The authorities failed to hold any consultations, much less wide and inclusive ones, and did not invite inputs by experts, civil society groups, private actors, business groups, and other interested parties prior to the sub-decree’s adoption.   The NIG appears designed to function as an authoritarian tool that will facilitate the government’s efforts to curtail free expression, association and privacy online as well as offline, and facilitate targeting of online expression by members of civil society, independent media, and the political opposition.   On February 15, 2022, the government revealed that implementation of the NIG, set to start the next day, would be delayed. No new date for the NIG implementation has been set. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications told the news outlet Nikkei Asia on February 15 that the delay was due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, another ministry spokesperson told the news outlet VOD that technical difficulties in implementing the NIG was the cause of the delay, stating that “we have to prepare to install and order equipment in order to prepare and create the gateway. And we have to give licenses to any company that the government understands that has the ability to create the gateway.”   Cambodia’s internet gateway greatly risks restricting the free flow of information between Cambodia and the rest of the world while establishing a system that will cast a wide net of surveillance across the country. Foreign governments, technology and telecommunications companies, internet service providers, business groups, UN agencies and others concerned should come together to seek to halt this wholesale attempt at information control.   http://www.icj.org/cambodia-should-scrap-rights-abusing-national-internet-gateway http://www.equaltimes.org/the-intractable-problem-of-land http://www.icj.org/tunisia-president-should-reverse-decision-to-dismiss-57-judges/ http://www.icj.org/category/news/press-releases/   June 2022   Cambodia convicts opposition figures in mass trial. (AFP, agencies)   A Phnom Penh court has convicted some 60 opposition figures in a mass trial as long-serving leader Hun Sen cracks down on dissent ahead of national elections next year.   Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who has lived in France since 2016 to avoid jail for convictions he says are politically motivated, had another eight years added to his existing sentence.   Outside court, US-Cambodian lawyer and campaigner Theary Seng was dragged into a car by police after receiving a six-year jail term for treason.   "I am ready for a guilty verdict because this regime will not let me go free," Theary Seng said before her conviction. "It will be an unfair and unjust verdict because I am innocent, the others charged with me are innocent," the 51-year-old added.   Theary Seng is among scores caught up in a push to detain and arrest former members of the now-dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), human rights defenders, and any dissenting voices to the administration.   The CNRP was banned and its leader Kem Sokha arrested before a 2018 general election, allowing Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party to win every parliamentary seat, and prompting international alarm.   The current case is purportedly linked to Sam Rainsy's failed attempt to return to Cambodia in 2019 -- moves characterised by the government as an aborted bid to overthrow Hun Sen.   LICAHDO, a Cambodian human rights group, said that almost all the defendants had been tried in asbentia, and that “Facebook posts expressing support for the former opposition party or democratic principles” made up the bulk of the prosecution’s evidence against the group.   The charges faced by those convicted on Tuesday ranged from treason to incitement and conspiracy. Several defendants have already been jailed, while many remain at large or have fled Cambodia.   "The mass trials against political opposition members are really about preventing any electoral challenge to Prime Minister Hun Sen's rule, but they have also come to symbolise the death of Cambodia's democracy," Human Rights Watch spokesman Phil Robertson said.   "By creating a political dynamic that relies on intimidation and persecution of government critics, Hun Sen demonstrates his total disregard for democratic rights."   The prime minister is one of the world's longest-serving leaders, having been in power for 37 years, and is reportedly grooming his eldest son to take the reins.   Theary Seng was charged by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court with conspiracy to commit treason and incitement to commit a felony.   "We are living in a dictatorship," she said, claiming Hun Sen's government "uses the law as a weapon against its own people". She added that "this regime is imprisoning liberty and freedom".   Ahead of a recent local poll, the United Nations Human Rights Office said it was disturbed by reports of opposition obstruction in a "paralysing political environment".   Hun Sen's political party later announced a landslide win. http://bit.ly/3b1j9j9   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/08/un-expert-proposes-human-rights-reform-agenda-cambodia http://www.solidar.org/en/publications/economic-and-social-rights-report-cambodia-2 http://bit.ly/3Qisz9O Visit the related web page
	Disinformation, fake news on social media during elections undermines Democracy by Global Witness, France 24, agencies   Sep. 2022   The scourge of fake news in Brazil’s presidential election. (France 24)   Just a few weeks ahead of the presidential elections, authorities in Brazil are trying to limit the flood of disinformation circulating online. Although the country is better prepared to deal with fake news than it was during the 2018 campaign, which saw Jair Bolsonaro win the presidency, certain types of content and platforms continue to evade control.   Supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro turned out in large numbers on September 7 to mark the bicentennial anniversary of Brazil’s independence from Portugal. On Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, a sea of individuals clad in green and yellow clutched smartphones as they frantically took, shared and reposted photographs.   Sonia, a 50-year-old from Rio, is one of them. “I share everything I receive, with WhatsApp groups it’s instant,” she says, typing furiously. She has already sent the day’s videos and photos to all her contacts, even though she only knows a fraction of them personally.   These messaging groups are the primary vehicle for fake news in Brazil and consist of an endless flow of menacing messages written in all-caps. “Urgent, Lula is planning Bolsonaro's assassination,” reads one. “A pro-Lula enthusiast criticises Brazil's flag,” says another. Fake polls predicting Bolsonaro’s victory circulate widely: “These voting intentions are updated every four hours. To guarantee a non-fraudulent vote, share this with five friends!”   Since 2018, social media has been Bolsonaro’s favourite means of communicating with his support base, while traditional media is portrayed as an enemy that must be defeated. “Journalists are all corrupt, they’re Leninists, Trotskyists,” say some of the president’s supporters in Copacabana.   A huge banner has been hoisted above the beachside promenade. “The real press,” read the words emblazoned above headshots of pro-Bolsonaro bloggers and influencers. Some of them have over one million followers on social media and readily use their online platform to attack journalists from Brazil’s mainstream media. “You’re an embarrassment to the country,” is a recurrent slur.   Brazil is the second-largest market in the world for WhatsApp, behind India – and the app is one of the main channels for receiving fake news. Six out of every 10 Brazilians use the messaging app daily. A 2019 study commissioned by the Brazilian Congress found that 79 percent of Brazilians get their news primarily from WhatsApp.   Bolsonaro successfully exploited this during his 2018 campaign. A former paratrooper, he was on the political fringes at the time, a member of a small party with little influence and few resources – so he bet everything on instant messaging services. Photos, memes, video clips, all shared through millions of messages on WhatsApp, served as his campaign ads.   A year after Bolsonaro’s victory, WhatsApp – which belongs to Facebook’s parent company Meta – conceded that some companies had violated the messaging platform’s terms of services and used fake numbers to mass message political content. Following a backlash, WhatsApp set limits on how many times a message can be forwarded and caps on the number of participants in a group.   Despite this, the messaging app continues to play an important role in Brazilian politics – and has fundamentally changed how election campaigns are run in the country. As the first round of the presidential election approaches, more and more disinformation is spreading. “The amount of fake news circulating is so prevalent and concerning, it’s hard to quantify,” says Fernanda Bruno, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinator of MediaLab UFRJ.   A Poynter Institute study found that four out of 10 Brazilians receive disinformation daily, and that some topics crop up again and again. One of the most widely spread pieces of fake news questions the Superior Electoral Court's role and the reliability of Brazil’s electronic ballot boxes.   “This questioning of the reliability of the electoral process is similar to the 2020 election campaign in the United States,” says Bruno, who is an expert on the effects of social media. “Several studies see similarities between the disinformation strategies used in the United States and Brazil.”   In Brazil, a federal police investigation suggests that the president’s family itself is behind this disinformation strategy. In 2020, the investigation uncovered the existence of a “hate bureau”, supposedly run by Bolsonaro’s politician sons. Its objective is allegedly to spread fake news and attack the traditional media and journalists.Bolsonaro’s sons have always denied the existence of such a bureau. However, they regularly share fake news on their personal Instagram accounts..   http://www.france24.com/en/americas/20220918-the-scourge-of-fake-news-in-brazil-s-presidential-elections   Aug. 2022   Digital Threats. (Global Witness)   Brazilians take to the polls on Sunday 2 October 2022 to elect their President – the first general election since Jair Bolsonaro has taken power.   The choices of the world's major tech companies have had a big impact online before and after high-stakes elections around the world, and all eyes are on Brazil this year. Disinformation featured heavily in its 2018 election, and this year’s election is already marred by reports of widespread disinformation, spread from the very top: Bolsonaro is already seeding doubt about the legitimacy of the election result, leading to fears of a United States-inspired January 6 “stop the steal” style coup attempt.   And up for election this year is the climate. Bolsonaro’s record on climate has been described as inadequate and his climate commitments as “lip service”. There is very little transparency into just how much social media platforms are fuelling the disinformation problem in Brazil, but what researchers have been able to identify is that social media ‘filter bubbles’ are fuelling climate denial messaging and hate towards climate activists – while also pushing messages that undermine Brazilians’ trust in its democratic systems.   Online election disinformation in Brazil   Disinformation in high-stakes elections, particularly on social media, has been highlighted with examples stemming from 2016’s Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election through to today. In Brazil’s 2018 elections, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) – Brazil’s highest election authority – became the target of disinformation campaigns that aimed to undermine confidence in its electronic voting system (a system that has been in place since 1996). Since then, there have been ongoing campaigns attempting to delegitimise the electoral process in Brazil..   http://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/facebook-fails-tackle-election-disinformation-ads-ahead-tense-brazilian-election/   Ahead of elections in Kenya which are expected to be tightly contested and bitterly fought, we decided to test Facebook’s ability to detect and remove violent and hateful language from its platform. Unsurprisingly, Facebook failed miserably.   In partnership with legal non-profit Foxglove, we submitted 10 real-life hate speech examples as test adverts, in Kenya’s two main languages English and Swahili. These ads contained dehumanising language and advocated ethnic-based violence, in clear violation of Facebook’s Community Standards. Yet none of this was flagged by the platform’s automated software which is supposed to keep users safe.   Our previous investigations tested the social media giant’s ability to detect hate speech in Myanmar and Ethiopia, and found that their systems to monitor hate speech in Burmese and Amharic – the main languages of the respective countries – were woefully inadequate.   Was Facebook’s automated system any better in detecting hate speech written in English? To our surprise, our English-language ads were initially rejected, but not for the reasons we expected. They were found to have violated Facebook’s Grammar and Profanity policy – but once we made minor corrections, the hate-filled ads were approved without exception.   As in Myanmar and Ethiopia, reports of online hate speech and disinformation have been growing in Kenya in recent years, as more and more people become active on social media. Over 20% of the Kenyan population are now Facebook users.   As social media increasingly takes on the role of the public square where political discourse takes place, these platforms have a responsibility to ensure that they are not facilitating the spread of harmful and divisive speech.   Yet this is a responsibility which Facebook seems to have neglected. In 2020, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was going to do much more to tackle hate on its platform. But our repeated findings – in Myanmar, Ethiopia and now Kenya – raise serious questions about whether these commitments were followed through, particularly in all parts of the world.   http://www.globalwitness.org/tagged/digital-threats/ http://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/ethiopia-hate-speech-press-release/ http://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/hate-speech-kenyan-election/ http://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/new-investigation-shows-facebook-approves-ads-containing-hate-speech-inciting-genocide-against-rohingya/   May 2022   Philippines faces stark election choice – dictator’s son or human rights lawyer? (Guardian News)   Voters in the Philippines will go to the polls for a presidential election that pits frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, against a human rights lawyer who has promised a transparent government.   Marcos Jr, known as “Bongbong”, whose authoritarian father plundered billions of dollars from the state and presided over rife human rights abuses, has maintained a strong lead in opinion polls in the run-up to Monday’s vote. If elected president, it would mark an extraordinary rehabilitation of one of the country’s most controversial political families.   Marcos is trailed in the polls by Leni Robredo, the current vice-president and a human rights lawyer who has advocated for marginalised groups. As vice president – a position elected separately from the president – she has frequently clashed with president Rodrigo Duterte, and has condemned his so-called “war on drugs’, which has killed as many as 30,000 people according to some estimates, and prompted an investigation by the international criminal court.   Marcos, whose backers have used social media to rebrand the family and whitewash history, has a significant lead in opinion polls, according to a recent survey by Pulse Asia.   However, analysts say it is possible such surveys have overestimated Marcos’s lead, pointing to the large turnouts at Robredo’s rallies.   “The reality could be that it is a very close race,” said Ronald Mendoza, the dean of Manila’s Ateneo school of government. “Hopefully [the result] will be settled sooner because that lends itself to a more stable transition.”   On Saturday, the last day of campaigning, Robredo supporters filled the streets of Makati, in the national capital region, with a sea of bright pink, the campaign’s trademark colour. “We have the right to a future with dignity, and we have the duty to fight for it. We have learned that nothing is impossible,” Robredo told crowds of supporters.   Robredo is up against two of the country’s most powerful political families: the Marcoses, and the Dutertes. The president’s daughter, Sara Duterte, is running alongside Marcos Jr for the vice-presidency, though Duterte has not endorsed a presidential candidate.   The Marcos camp has shunned TV debates and avoided questions from media outlets it deems unfriendly. Instead, the family and its backers have used social media to reach voters, especially those who do not remember martial law, a time when thousands were killed, tortured and arrested. A network of accounts portray the Marcos period as a time when the country was prosperous and order, inundating news feeds with false claims about the period. Marcos Jr has denied the presence of any coordinated online campaign.   Robredo’s camp, by contrast, has been driven by volunteer activists who have gone house to house trying to win over undecided voters. It is a strategy that is not usually applied on such a wide scale in presidential elections in the Philippines, and its impact is unclear, say analysts.   “It’s something of a puzzle for us political scientists and observers of elections, whether this new thing in this campaign – that voluntarism, the house-to-house campaigns will matter in the final results of the elections,” said Prof Maria Ela L Atienza, who teaches political science at the University of the Philippines.   People are swayed not by loyalty to a political party, but by other personal factors, including the extent to which they feel a connection with candidates.   Atienza said the level of engagement among supporters of candidates is comparable to 1986, when Marcos Sr called snap elections – an attempt to prove his mandate amid growing pressure at home and abroad. His claim to have won, amid reports of cheating and fraud, led to the People Power Revolution, which overthrew his rule.   It put the Philippines on “the imperfect road to democracy”, said Atienza. The small gains since then could be threatened by the prospect of another Marcos presidency, she added.   * Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, has won the presidential election.   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/rappler-maria-ressa-sec-orders-shutdown-cyber-libel-conviction/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/dispatch/maria-ressa-journalism-democracy-philippines-re-release/   May 2022   The Marcos makeover: How history was rewritten to place a dictator's son on the cusp of power, by Bonny Symons-Brown. (ABC News)   On a rainy day in April, the man favoured to become the next president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, stood before thousands of adoring fans in Tacloban and invoked a name once considered political poison. It was the name of his own mother.   "You know I am quite sure that my mother is watching the live stream," he told the crowd, as a legion of vloggers beamed the rally to their Facebook followers. "Let's say hello Imelda. Hello Imelda!"   The mention of the Philippines' notorious former first lady, Imelda Marcos, drew rapturous cheers from the audience, as they relayed their greeting to the 92-year-old watching at home.   During the reign of her late husband Ferdinand Marcos Sr, Imelda became a global pariah for raiding the public purse to fund her extravagant lifestyle, enduringly symbolised by her vast collection of shoes.   In 1986, a popular uprising forced the Marcoses into exile in Hawaii, but not before they looted up to $US10 billion from state coffers over two decades in power, much of which has never been recovered.   For some in the Philippines, the Marcos name is a byword for brutality, corruption and theft, while others remain fiercely loyal to the family.   But as the country's presidential election campaign enters its final days, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr, the only son of Imelda and Ferdinand Sr, is poised to complete an extraordinary rehabilitation of the family's political brand.   The 64-year-old is a front-runner in the race to succeed strongman president Rodrigo Duterte when the country votes on May 9.   Marcos Jr and his running mate Sara Duterte, the outgoing president's daughter who is standing for vice president, are campaigning on a message of national "unity". A recent poll put Marcos Jr well clear of his nearest rival, vice president Leni Robredo.   Driving the resurrection of the country's most divisive political dynasty is a calculated recasting of the ruthless Marcos dictatorship as a "golden age" of the Philippines.   "How can history have been changed so drastically?" journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa asked. "With the help of social media platforms."   A torrent of disinformation   Last year on September 11 – the 104th birthday of the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr – a video began circulating on Facebook, which has since been viewed over 4.7 million times. A montage of smiling well-wishers hold handmade signs reading "Happy Marcos Day" and "#Marcos Real Hero", before the video cuts to Marcos Jr making a lengthy tribute to his father's vision for the Philippines.   Set to upbeat music, the eight-minute clip is peppered with photos of the bridges, power lines, specialist hospitals – even a nuclear power plant – built under Marcos Sr's rule.   For Marcos Jr's 10 million social media followers, videos like this feed the narrative of a lost era of economic greatness.   It is this revisionist history that Marcos Jr has put at the centre of his campaign, which experts say is key to his rising popularity.   The true legacy of Marcos Sr's infrastructure binge was a mountain of debt that ballooned from $843 million when he took office in 1965 to over $39 billion by the time he was deposed.   For decades after Marcos Sr was driven into exile by the "People Power Revolution", the Philippines was known as "the sick man of Asia" due to its struggling economy. The nuclear power plant – also funded by foreign loans – has never become operational.   Pro-Marcos propaganda dominating platforms like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok is helping to rewrite the past for many who did not live through the dark reality of that era.   Around half the country's 67.5 million eligible voters are aged between 18 and 42. Many don't know the brutal years of martial law that began in 1972, when thousands were killed and tortured, or how the Marcoses accumulated billions in ill-gotten riches at their citizens' expense.   Indeed, on social media, the Marcos era is basking in a moment of sunny nostalgia. In one viral TikTok trend, users took up a challenge to film their older family members' reactions as they played March Of The New Society, an anthem associated with the period of martial law.   "Based on the stories of my grandmother … it was good in those days," Chemmy Rivas, a young Marcos supporter from Tacloban, told Foreign Correspondent on the day Marcos Jr visited town.   One falsehood gaining traction online claims no arrests were made during martial law, despite Marcos Snr himself admitting to Amnesty International in 1975 that 50,000 people were arrested.   It is deeply concerning for Tina Bawagan, who was tortured during martial law after joining the underground resistance to the Marcoses.   "The young ones, they don't know that this happened, and they believe that the Marcoses had a good government," she said. "It's essential that we continue to tell the story so that it doesn't happen again."   But telling the story is increasingly challenging in the Philippines, where social media networks have come to dominate the information landscape.   Sidelining the mainstream media   Throughout the election campaign, Marcos Jr has mostly avoided journalists. He rarely gives interviews and last month refused a public debate with his top rival, claiming he wanted to stay out of the mudslinging and focus on running a "positive campaign".   According to Aries Arugay, a political scientist from the University of the Philippines Diliman, the strategy has not hampered his ability to get his message out.   "Their disinformation game is top notch," Arugay said of the Marcos Jr campaign. "They're resting comfortably in that disinformation infrastructure that has been quite important in their campaign."   A recent study found Facebook was the number one driver of disinformation in this election campaign and most of it was benefiting Marcos Jr.   "Facebook is our internet," said Ressa, co-founder of the independent Filipino news website Rappler. "One hundred per cent of Filipinos on the internet are on Facebook."   According to Ressa, social media is likely to prove the decisive factor in the election. Her team has been investigating the growing influence of disinformation networks on social media like those used to amplify President Rodrigo Duterte's message, with devastating effect, during the 2016 election campaign.   The team found that, since 2016, social media has come to dominate the centre of the Philippines' "information ecosystem", while news organisations that "thought they had tremendous power were essentially pushed to the side," Ressa said.   For some Filipinos, Facebook is their only source of news. Residents of Manila's poorer neighbourhoods may not have electricity, TV or radio, but most have a mobile phone.   Those who run out of phone credit are still able to browse the Facebook newsfeed, which means they get the headlines but are unable to dive deeper.   "Our minds are being poisoned by fake news, wrong history," community political organiser Jaja Fugoso told Foreign Correspondent.   Most people in the community where she works get their history lessons from TikTok and YouTube, she said.   Some social media content originates from the Marcos campaign, but a large portion is produced by an army of online acolytes, who can generate revenue from popular posts.   Video bloggers Ruben Gelio and Jay Cho don't work for the Marcos campaign but they make a living live streaming campaign events on Facebook and posting positive content about Marcos Jr.   Gelio, 24, believes vloggers like him have become more powerful than the mainstream media. "Some of the media is so biased about Marcos and they never show anything that Bongbong Marcos does a good deed," he said. "As vloggers, we show the other side of the coin to the people. This is the real Marcos, not the one that mainstream said."   'Lies spread faster than facts'   In an effort to push back the tide of disinformation, mainstream media organisations have teamed up with tech companies to create fact-checking collectives like tsek.ph.   Rappler has launched its own fact-checking operation, debunking claims including that the Philippines was "the richest country next to Japan during Marcos' term".   Social media networks are also cracking down on the disinformation flooding their platforms.   In January, Twitter suspended more than 300 accounts and hashtags promoting Marcos Jr, for violating its policies against spam and manipulation. Then in April, Facebook suspended a network of over 400 accounts, pages and groups in a move designed to crack down on hate speech and misinformation.   But while some pro-Marcos disinformation networks have been taken down, many have regenerated and stand poised to "help pave the way for a [Marcos] win", according to Ressa.   "You cannot have integrity of elections if you don't have integrity of facts," she said. "And what social media has done is not only make facts debatable, but to actually spread lies faster than facts."   Of all the contested facts about the Marcoses, perhaps the most astonishing is that some now doubt whether they stole money at all.   The Marcoses' extravagant theft of state riches has been well documented, not least by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), a body set up by former president Corazon Aquino as one of her first orders of business in 1986 to recoup the family's hidden loot.   The PCGG estimated the Marcoses amassed somewhere between $US5 billion and $US10 billion of assets, including jewels, gold, real estate, famous artworks and cash stuffed in Swiss bank accounts.   "Children were dying of malnutrition, but the Marcoses went on shopping, stealing, hoarding ill-gotten wealth," said Filipino lawyer Ruben Carranza, who was part of the PCGG investigation.   The commission has recovered about $US3.3 billion and another $2.4 billion is under litigation.   In 2018, Imelda Marcos was sentenced for graft, but has never spent a day in prison and is currently free on bail appealing the decision. Her seeming impunity has helped fuel perceptions that the Marcoses are innocent, a claim that finds a willing audience on social media. A myth claiming Ferdinand Marcos Sr inherited an enormous amount of gold during his time as a lawyer has been doing the rounds for over a decade.   Disillusioned by the failure of successive governments to tackle the poverty and corruption that continue to dog daily life, many Filipinos appear willing to overlook not only the late dictator's massive theft and human rights violations, but Marcos Jr's own 1997 conviction for failing to file tax returns, which some opponents have argued should disqualify him from the presidency.   Many fear a Marcos Jr presidency would spell the end of any further investigation into the family's corruption.   Aries Arugay said a Marcos in the presidential palace would also ensure Imelda Marcos continues to enjoy impunity for her part in fleecing the country for her own personal gain. "The conventional wisdom is the dynasties are good for dynasties, but they're really bad for governance and the people."   http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/12/philippines-marcos-memory-election/ http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61339293 http://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220503-marcos-heir-to-oversee-hunt-for-loot-if-he-wins-philippines-presidency http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/philippines-election-marcos-fortune/ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/08/philippines-election-voters-marcos-jr-dictator-son-leni-robredo-human-rights http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/8/why-the-2022-philippines-election-is-so-significant http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/who-will-succeed-the-philippiness-duterte-5921/
	View more stories