The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has identified over a hundred Facebook pages presenting themselves as media outlets but are actually running political ads for national and local candidates in the 2025 elections.
These pages have been paying Meta to boost Facebook posts that appear to promote local and national candidates or attack their rivals.
From January to March 2025, the pages identified by PCIJ collectively paid over P48 million on political advertising, based on Meta’s Ad Library.
One of these pages, Pilipinas Today, has been flagged by several media organizations for promoting Charter change initiatives last year. While it provides regular news updates, its boosted promotional materials are mixed in with the rest of its content.
The other pages identified by PCIJ exhibited the same behavior.
Many of the pages are also characterized by frequent name changes, the absence of proper author attribution on linked websites, and management by advertising agencies, which pay Meta to boost the Facebook posts.
The beneficiaries of these news-like pages include senatorial candidates such as Senator Francis Tolentino and Makati Mayor Abby Binay.
Other pages focus on local races. Several Manila-based news-like pages have boosted the reelection bid of Manila City Mayor Honey Lacuna, while others target specific regions like Calabarzon and Mindanao. Politicians like Dumaguete City Mayor Felipe Remollo have also benefited from these news-like pages.
Media scholar Fatima Gaw likened these efforts to astroturfing or the orchestration of a seemingly grassroots campaign.
“It’s meant to create a semblance of… momentum (or) community support for this particular politician. So basically, you’re manufacturing popularity and manufacturing preference even,” she told PCIJ.
This tactic, Gaw argues, has become increasingly sophisticated, with pages humanizing their content to better engage audiences.
Unlike crude disinformation, these operations focus on manipulating the source rather than the message, making them harder to detect.
Meta requires these pages to disclose advertiser information, but PCIJ’s attempts to verify these details revealed a murky picture.
Some individuals listed as page owners were unaware their contact information had been used, while others denied any political connections.
This opacity would make it challenging for regulators like the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to trace the true sources of these ads.
It has critical implications for electoral integrity, as voters increasingly rely on politically influenced platforms for their information.
Experts warn that without stronger transparency measures from Meta and more stringent oversight from Comelec, these influence operations will continue to shape public opinion and electoral outcomes, potentially skewing democratic processes.
PCIJ will release the complete report after the elections. — PCIJ.org