A tragedy named RJ Nieto

it is his kingdom. He has at least a million followers, and a coterie of enablers from among the social blogging elites. He has cultivated an alliance with two other social media giants, Sass Rogando Sasot and PCOO Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson. They are a formidable trio, an enormous asset to the President, and a terrifying adversary to his enemies.

Unfortunately for Nieto, social - lable and transparent medium. Much as he wants to sequester its power to his advantage, he could never monopolize it, as no one can. When he trained his guns on other bloggers like lawyer Bruce Rivera and We Are Collective ( WAC), his own vulnerabilities began to unravel. After all, he may be RJ Nieto, but not all people in the social media universe fear him. And not all social media netizens could just sit back as he turns his ire on other pro-Duterte bloggers.

He may have reached his pinnacle of fame when he defied the opposition senators and defiled Sen. Leila de Lima’s office door. But his painful descent into infamy may have started the moment he began devouring his political allies in the Duterte social media community.

Nieto loved to flaunt his power through his numbers. This is how he impressed us about his might. He posted graphics of how he out- engaged all bloggers except Mocha Uson, and every major mainstream media network. He also used the power of numbers to instill fear in his adversaries by ordering his minions to unfollow their accounts.

But Nieto’s numbers may prove to be his undoing. An initial quantitative analysis on the number of likes and shares of his posts before a randomly selected date reveals a disturbing pattern when compared to most bloggers with Facebook Pages. An initial interpretation of the results indicates a possible preponderance of inauthentic and inorganic likers. Compared to most bloggers, his number of likes is weakly correlated to his number of shares, even as only six percent of his likers share his posts. There is only one other pro-Duterte blogger whose data behaved similarly, that of Sass Sasot. And between them, the only other blogger that performed worse is that of an obviously troll opposition account characterized by near zero correlation between likes and shares, and extremely low shares relative to likes.

The mighty Nieto may thus be betrayed by his numbers, the us who displeased him.

Right now, the voices of displeasure towards Nieto is increasing. An increasing number of bloggers, with WAC taking the lead, are now exposing his political dealings. And ordinary netizens are beginning to be more open in their condemnation of his excesses and flaws. Angry emoticons are beginning to fly onscreen.

Nieto would have been a perfect asset to society, and we would have had no choice but to be grateful to him, had he simply used his enormous talent to build support for the President. It is tragic that he used it to harm even people who are the President’s allies.