MANILA — House leaders on Sunday expressed alarm over reports of "fake" accounts on social media praising former President Rodrigo Duterte following his arrest, saying the scheme was a threat to democracy as they urged candidates to play fair.

Reuters, citing research from Israel-based Cyabra, recently revealed that a third of accounts on social media platform X "mostly praising Duterte and lambasting the court" were "fake."

Detained at The Hague in the Netherlands to face charges of crimes against humanity over his drug war, Duterte is running for Davao City mayor in the 2025 midterm polls.

Cyabra's CEO noted that the "fake networks didn't just show up — they shaped the conversation," Reuters said.

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'THREAT' TO ELECTIONS

For Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr. of Pampanga, the findings pose "a serious threat to the integrity of the country’s electoral process."

"When bots, trolls, and fake profiles can reach millions of Filipinos and alter the truth with just a few clicks, democracy itself is under attack," he said in a release.

The use of coordinated inauthentic behavior to influence public sentiment has been observed since before the 2016 elections, with platforms like Facebook announcing the takedown of several networks over the years.

Gonzales urged educational institutions to launch a national digital literacy program to help students and the public identify and resist coordinated disinformation campaigns.

"It’s not enough to fact-check after the damage is done. We need to inoculate our people against lies and fake news—especially the youth who are most active online and most vulnerable to digital manipulation," Gonzales said.

Press freedom and freedom of expression groups have advocated media and information literacy over criminalization, citing how laws against "fake news" can and have been used in other jurisdictions to clamp down on legitimate criticism of government.

'WAKE-UP CALL'

Meanwhile, Deputy Speaker David Suarez of Quezon's 2nd District said that the deployment of fake accounts is a "wake-up call" that "the weaponization of disinformation to mislead, misinform and manipulate voters is one of the gravest threats to our democracy today."

"The growing scale and sophistication of such disinformation networks are drowning out legitimate voices online and eroding public trust in democratic institutions," he said in a separate statement.

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Suarez urged social media platforms "to take stronger, more proactive action to detect and remove coordinated fake accounts."

"The Filipino voter is smart, but we owe it to them to give them the tools to fight back against deception. Let’s raise media literacy, promote digital hygiene and ensure our elections reflect the people’s will—not the will of shadow operators," he said.

SARA DUTERTE'S SCORE IMPROVES AFTER FATHER'S ARREST

Approval ratings of Vice President Sara Duterte — who is widely expected to run in the 2028 presidential polls — inched up in a Pulse Asia survey released Wednesday and conducted late March.

Sara Duterte was "the only top official" who saw an improvement in her performance ratings, which rose to 59 percent in March from 52 percent in February, Pulse Asia noted.

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Some 25 percent meanwhile said they approved of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s performance. This was 17 points lower than his 42 percent approval score in February.

Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes noted that "there are narratives being circulated that the administration has failed to address" crime and corruption — which are among respondents’ top concerns in the survey — and was instead supposedly engaged in political persecution. 

"It might be baseless, but it’s something that has resonated in a large segment of the public, most especially in the Duterte bailiwick in Mindanao, where we see basically the trust and approval of the President in the single digit," he said.