Part four of seven. Edwin Espejo published this series on Facebook in June and July 2021. It is republished here in full and lightly copyedited; the introduction below is mine, not his. I am a subject of the series as well as its publisher. It concerns the 2016 campaign and not subsequent events, including the proceedings now before the International Criminal Court. Full editorial note and series index →

Introduction by Nic Gabunada

After 2016, most of the people I worked with went into government. I did not. I went back to building a business — advertising and reputation management — on the strength of the goodwill the campaign had generated.

What I underestimated was how those networks would keep growing without anyone directing them, and how being associated with them would eventually be read as controlling them. I stayed in touch with many of those groups. Sometimes I was added as an admin or an editor or their Facebook pages. They made me a member of their FB chat groups. That turned out to be enough.

The hardest part was never the ban itself. It was the asymmetry. A finding could be published in a morning, travel for years, and require nothing of anyone. Answering it required me to prove a negative.

Edwin lays out that sequence here, including the caveat most of the coverage left out.

— Nic Gabunada

Decapitating the ‘Trolls’ of Duterte

Fourth of a series

By Edwin Espejo | June 29, 2021

Gabunada was one of the few members of the Duterte presidential campaign team who did not seek position in government after the Davao City mayor won the elections.

He was nonetheless appointed board of director of the United Coconut Planters Bank a year later.

Gabunada went on to also establish his own public relations company, buoyed by his success and the goodwill he generated in the 2016 elections.

Meanwhile, the throng of Duterte online supporters also morphed into a formidable social media force.

After the 2016 elections, their social media presence took lives of their own. Many politicians and marketing firms have since sought to enlist the growing community of social media influencers as among their enablers and amplifiers.

Gabunada maintained relations to many of these Duterte social media denizens, either by him seeking out to them or others inviting and including him either as admin or editor.

Because of his perceived ability to marshal many of these accounts and pages, a target board was placed over his back and he became the object of malicious scrutiny. Several times, he was banned from Facebook and his account remained suspended on allegation he was linked to over 150 pro-Duterte pages and accounts spreading unverified reports and news stories and branded as purveyors of fake accounts.

This came after Facebook was flooded with complaints from Duterte critics who claimed it is being used as platform to spread disinformation and foster hate campaign.

Inevitably, putting one and two together led to Gabunada being declared as a pariah on Facebook.

But in a report by The Straits Times in October 2018, it could not be ascertained whether the administrators of many of the pages taken down were actual supporters of the president or were just profiting off his popularity, although some have been traced to the Philippine military or police.

(To be continued)

Edwin Espejo is a journalist based in General Santos City who has written for Asian Correspondent and MindaNews and shoots for Agence France-Presse. He chaired the General Santos City chapter of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, and in 2012 was sued for ₱75 million by then-congressman Manny Pacquiao over his reporting. He served as a commissioner of the National Commission of Senior Citizens from January 2021 to April 2026, including when this series was written. Fuller biographical note →

Notes:

Decapitating the ‘trolls’ of Duterte — Edwin Espejo’s seven-part series

Part 1 — Decapitating the ‘trolls’ of Duterte: A 7-Part Retrospective

Part 2 — The Anatomy of a Disconnect: Why the ‘Troll’ Narrative Failed to Explain 2016

Part 3 — The Unseen Momentum: Rewriting the Rules of Engagement

Part 4 — A Target Board Over My Back (you are here)

Part 5 — The Story That Comes Back Every Election Season

Part 6 — The Ad Men Can Only Be as Good as the Product

Part 7 — Beyond the ‘Troll’ Label: A Reality Check for the Opposition

This post was published on March 22, 2024. My introduction has been revised. The original text has been lightly copyedited for typographical errors. No argument, characterization or judgment in Edwin Espejo’s original has been altered.