The 1970s saw the start of the Information Age, which is still ongoing today. People were able to easily obtain information and knowledge throughout this age. The millisecond access, production, communication, and sharing of information all underwent significant advancements at this time. There are undoubtedly advantages to using the media that helped establish this era, but they have also exacerbated a problem that has the potential to permanently alter the Philippines: the spread of news with poor scientific rigor, false information, or rumors that can misinform readers. The alarming inclining amount of disinformation these days now poses a severe threat to our democracy and jeopardizes the lives of many.

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     Disinformation is used to pose a powerful peril to Philippine democracy. Social media is a potent political tool in the nation; it serves as the main distribution channel for stories that make up the massive disinformation campaign beginning even before the Philippines' national elections on May 9, where Marcos Sr.'s son , current president Bongbong Marcos, ran for office. There are hints that these deceitful operations are part of a long-term strategy of the Marcoses to get back in power. In 2014, a rise in the development of pro-Marcos pages, many of which were created by troll farms and bogus identities, was seen, and widely circulated disinformation aimed at whitewashing the Marcos regime were rampantly propagated. Such a scheme mocked our democratic system where people should have the opportunity to openly deliberate and elect leaders without any intervention, making it harder and harder for many voters to tell what is true from what is untrue and harder for them to cast an informed ballot.

 

     Disinformation threatens the lives of many Filipino people, of all ages or statuses in society. Not all disinformation efforts that are spread are as relatively harmless as the fallacious story portraying the Marcos regime as the Philippines' "golden age." As documented by the regional group ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), disinformation campaigns, where the target could be anyone, have alarmingly increased. These efforts that erroneously link the victim to the New People's Army's communist insurgency are referred to as "red-tagging" in the Philippines. The results of these kinds of efforts are frequently disastrous. According to a 2020 United Nations assessment of the Philippines, in addition to having a considerable influence on the elections, they were also accountable for harassment, attacks, disappearances, and even fatalities.

 

     The main social media platforms' business structures, which build content curation algorithms for clicks and attention in order to sell user data to advertising for significant profits, are the root cause of this issue. However, it seems that anger and sensationalism, rather than information based on facts, are what grab our attention, allowing false information, extremism, and polarization to exist. Social media must be subject to a new set of regulations and norms that forbid them from benefiting off of public harm and instead safeguard the public interest in order to counter the threat that these campaigns represent to democracy. As difficult as it may seem, disinformation operations need to be comprehensively tackled for democracy to survive and for people’s well-being, both in the Philippines and worldwide.