Rappler documentary reveals  YouTube role in pro-Marcos vloggers’ disinformation drive

CHEERS TO a Rappler documentary that revealed how the disinformation spread by pro-Marcos Jr. vloggers helped make him president. 

More than a dozen made themselves available for interviews and allowed reporter Rambo Talabong to follow them and record their different stories. 

How vloggers do their thing is inherently interesting. Mostly male, they discovered that they could earn a living by “vlogging.” Who are these people and how did they get there? 

But the report does more than answer those questions. It also reveals the role of YouTube in promoting widespread dis-information, especially during the campaign season. These vloggers get their compensation from YouTube, not from Marcos funds. Those who post and gain followers earn in the same way that “ratings” draw advertising. YouTube made vlogging for Marcos quite lucrative. 

Talabong as reporter-narrator of the 17-minute long Rappler video introduced the vloggers as an integral and key part of Marcos’ campaign strategy. The video showed them during events recording on their phone cameras whatever was happening on the campaign trail and milking every event for stories. 

The documentary differentiated vloggers from one another. One started vlogging by sharing the details of his personal life to viewers. Another is grateful that he can now stay home instead of working in Singapore; he can be with his family, and can provide them the basic necessities as well as some comforts. Yet another simply said that he discovered how popular Marcos was among people in the streets and decided that vlogging for him would assure him of followers. 

But everyone in the group agreed that earning money was their main incentive. 

They revealed that with ten thousand subscribers they can earn up to PHP25 thousand a month; with 100 thousand subscribers, this figure can go up to PHP400,000 monthly. Viewers can also directly donate to the vloggers when they initiate live streams, further incentivizing the production of as much content as possible around the clock. Concerned mainly with securing a reliable source of income, they now see vlogging as a lifetime occupation.

Talabong talked to University of the Philippines Professor Fatima Gaw whose research has focused on the spread of disinformation on social media. Gaw called YouTube the new radio and television, “immersive” in comparison to other platforms such as Facebook. She emphasized the importance of understanding its influence as a platform and its practitioners who are now regarded with almost the same attention and respect as journalists. The volume of their content, Gaw said, can create a “meta-narrative” that is difficult to erase or correct. 

“YouTube says it will support journalists and efforts to elevate quality information.” But, she concluded it is not doing enough to address the problem of disinformation. Its interest is the bottom line.

Talabong’s report showed how deeply connected the vloggers were to the massive  campaign of historical revisionism, embedding in the public mind the Marcos family’s version of its own legacy. Concluding with notes to anticipate what could be expected in the second Marcos era, Talabong presented a gallery of faces and personalities who can feed the public false tales for the next six years. 

More significantly, the report shared the truth about YouTube’s role in disinformation. Given the velocity and virality of its messages, the platform is a force that journalists should examine closely, and confronting with networked, fact-based reports the disinformation spread by those vloggers who value only money and are indifferent to the impact of their lies on Philippine society.

Responsible journalists cannot overcome the forces of disinformation on their own. But they must do as Talabong has done so the rest of society can be aware of how it is being manipulated by the forces of untruth and unreason.