What is life like inside troll farms?

Among the major issues in recent Philippine elections, including the last one, is the use of troll farms to enhance the winnability of certain candidates. Allegations have been thrown left and right but not much has been proven. Trolling has been around since the ’80s and ’90s to describe individuals who would derail conversations with spam and harmful content. But far from the small, colorful and incessantly animated creatures we’ve seen on the big screen, real-life trolls work to provoke and manipulate others either for their own amusement or a specific political goal.

And as the Internet grew over the past few decades, so did they.

It has been said that outgoing President Duterte had been the biggest beneficiary of this social media phenomenon when he won in 2016. Helped along by his immense popularity and unorthodox rhetoric, the Davao City mayor surged phenomenally in the ratings at the homestretch of a campaign that saw him winning over more established rivals.

Since then, trolling has evolved into an elaborate industrialized and global art form, often coordinated in what we now know as troll farms.

These are sophisticated operations that involve groups of people whose job it has become to sow disinformation online in an effort to influence people and governments. Some work in physical offices, while others are paid on a per-day basis as freelancers.

Together, workers in these farms amplify key messages, using fear and anger in order to encourage real users to engage and believe in them.

If you spend any amount of time on the Internet, you’ve probably seen or heard from one.

Among the opposition allegations over the presumptive president Bongbong Marcos Jr. is his use of such since 2016, when he tested the waters with a run for the vice presidency. He may not have won that battle, but his critics believe he was helped along by such a platform all the way up to the last elections.

The son of the former president, however, was quick to deny those innuendos, challenging those making the allegations to show him even one troll. He asserted that troll farms in the country don’t exist.

In recent years, journalists, governments and platforms have had to take on the tall order of addressing the problem of troll farms. But uncovering the truth behind operations, specifically designed to manufacture and distribute lies, is no easy feat.

Investigative reports and testimonies have all tried to expose such an operation but, no one has yet to come up with really solid evidence that they exist.

What is life like inside troll farms and the world of networked disinformation?

Two authorities who have worked on fake news production in the Philippines have bared that behind the madness is an invisible machine. They have come to the conclusion, through their research, that trolling has become professionalized and institutionalized.

“It is industrial in scope and organization, strategic in its outlook and expertise, and exploitative in its morality and ethics,” they claimed.

Like the Russian troll farms that have been pointed to as having interfered with the US political and electoral processes, particularly in the 2016 American elections, recent reports have pointed to similar operations in developing countries where Internet use is growing much faster than jobs and wages.

They include countries like the Philippines, Nigeria, Venezuela, North Macedonia and Ghana, among others. But they’ve also made their way to America, and their operations have become globalized.

Could it be that troll farms have finally gestated and worked their way to the country’s electoral process?

Until perhaps, there is one solid proof that indeed certain candidates have used troll farms in the run-up to their campaigns, no one can say for sure.

But looking forward to future elections, we could only say, the use of such could prove to be a game-changer. Scary, indeed.

“Trolling has evolved into an elaborate industrialized and global art form, of ten coordinated in what we now know as troll farms. “Could it be that troll farms have finally gestated and worked their way to the country’s electoral process?