How YouTube Can Rewrite the Past and Shape an Election

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as Bongbong, seemed certain to win the race against Leni Robredo as the Philippine elections drew to a close on May 9. Despite the Marcos family's history of corruption and violence, Marcos Jr. has benefited from a consistent disinformation campaign.

As of April 30, 92 percent of fact checks about Marcos were false or misleading, according to a report from Tsek.ph, a fact-checking collaboration between 34 news and civil society organizations.

According to the head of marketing in the Philippines, Facebook remains the country's most popular platform, but that it saw a 50 percent increase in watch time during the Pandemic.

The Philippine Media Monitoring Laboratory co-leads by Fatima Gaw identified pro-Marcos networks on YouTube in 2020. Her current work focuses on political channels.

I talked to Gaw about how a lack of action by platform governance has allowed misinformation to flourish. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

Many say that it was instrumental in the win of the President of the Philippines in the 2016 election. What made you focus on the video sharing site?

The second largest platform has flown under the radar. All eyes will be on Facebook because it is linked to malicious actors. People from the grassroots might start their campaigns on the video sharing site. It is a sleeping giant.

After he was elected president, the administration used YouTube. He had a lot of partners who were interested in the issues he wanted to advance. The mainstream media has always been against the administration, so maybe he realized he needed to create a media environment where his own issues could be amplified. A lot of channels are pushing for his agenda. He has been using it to push anti-media sentiment, while there were also a lot of anti-media policies happening at the state level.

How did you end up with Marcos?

They were allies until last year. Marcos was the vice president in 2016 and did not win. There are two roles that are elected. A lot of the channels had the same content. It isn't clear if there is a clear distinction between Marcos and Duterte, because some would post about both and some would not. Marcos Jr. tried to distance himself from his father, but the Marcos family realized they needed to change tactics.