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At a glance:
- Many of the pages that Facebook had read in the Philippines, and had also spread false news and had been fact-checked by Rappler.
- Almost all of these websites are newly-created and lack details to establish authenticity and accountability.
- These Facebook pages seem to be part of a "network" that extends reach and amplifies messages.
MANILA, Philippines – On Monday, October 22, 2011, 09:54 AM
Facebook had initially made public the names of 12 pages and accounts, many of which had shared political content. The social media platform pointed out that all were sharing links from Facebook to the same advertising click farms.
Facebook, however, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Based on a social media monitoring tool called Sharktank, these pages are part of a "network" that shares the same partisan content from the same websites.
While some of the Facebook pages in the network have been taken down, there are others that remain online. Facebook has not revealed how it is decided what to take and what to retain. It has also been categorized by the takedowns to the third party fact check partners.
Wider network
A map of the websites and the Facebook pages that share them shows the interconnections that extend reach and magnify messages.
The blue dots represent the websites, while the red and pink dots represent the pages already taken down or are now inaccessible. The red dots are also the pages that have been identified by Facebook. The green dots represent pages still available and not included in the Facebook list.
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Maria Lourdes Sereno in May 2018 and the debates in mid- 2018 on supposed 2016 election irregularities.
Of the 12 pages identified by Facebook, Duterte Media and Duterte Phenomenon the most times false. (LIST: False news shared by PH-based pages taken down by Facebook)
Duterte Media and Duterte Phenomenon, along with 23 other pages – almost all riding on the name of President Rodrigo Duterte – have been observed in different times. Many of these had been checked by Rappler.
Multiple combinations of these 25 Duterte-named pages shared the false content of websites kantonewsph.xyz (from May 12 to June 17, 2018), du3onews.info (June 21 to June 25), aboutdu30.info (June 26 to July 2), kantonewsph.info (July 5 to 19), onelinebalita.xyz (July 21 to September 10), and balitaonline.xyz (September 11 to 30). In general, the content shared were pro-administration and anti-opposition.
The site kantonewsph.xyz, for instance, figured in many detained Senator Leila de Lima, ousted chief justice Sereno, Senate President Vicente Sotto III and his "endorsement" of Presidential Daughter Sara Duterte, and the ongoing 2016 vice presidential election recount.
The website onelinebalita.xyz also posted hoaxes or misleading articles, such as the Philippines among the world's fastest-growing economiesopposition senators allegedly being part of poll fraud in 2016, the supposed "entry" of a third telecommunications firm when the government's bidding process was still in progress, and actress Kris Aquino allegedly wearing a necklace from a collection of Marcos family. It also posted wrong information about Naga City's crime volume.
Meanwhile, kantonewsph.info published a false article about the government's "anti-tambay" operations.
Among the 6 websites, only 3 remain up: aboutdu30.info, onlinebalita.xyz, and balitaonline.xyz. However, their last posts were one to 3 months ago.
Twelve of the Facebook pages in this network are still up to date and continue to share content from dubious websites. The rest are now down or inaccessible (see network graph below).
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New websites
Starting October, different combinations of these Facebook pages todaystopnews.xyz, latestnewz.xyz, and casterph.xyz.
This group of websites is very new, as determined by domain information obtained via Whois lookup searches. Whois is a service that provides information about a registered domain or website, like its creation date and the domain name service provider. (RELATED: Facebook blocks websites believed to be peddling fake news)
Of the 3, the website todaystopnews.xyz was registered on September 27, followed by casterph.xyz on October 13, and latestnewz.xyz on October 18.
The 3 sites also carry the ".xyz" top-level domain (TLD). Because it is a new TLD, it is Cheaper than the usual .com, .net or .org endings of websites, and thus easier to buy from. Armed with this, websites become easier to set up.
A combined 26 Facebook pages, in different subgroups (see network graph below), shared content from the 3 websites alone over certain periods in October. Most of these pages used Duterte's name.
The 1st website (todaystopnews.xyzstarted on October 8, on average 6 times a day; the 2nd (casterph.xyzstarting October 15, on average 6 times a day for 8 straight days; and the 3rd (latestnewz.xyzstarting October 18, the same day it was registered, once every day.
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The first-ever articles posted on these websites were also published on the same day, except for casterph.xyz, which posted for the first time on October 10. All domains were created through the domain registry website namesilo.com.
The 3 websites are full of online ads, and have very similar layouts. These articles are only to be taken in English by the President and the President.
Except for casterph.xyz which has recently become inaccessible, the other two sites are still up as of this writing.
Screenshot of casterph.xyz as of October 27, 2018
Video too
The websites also do not have an "About Us" page, where staff members or office address should be seen. Their posts also do not have a byline or author. Only todaystopnews.xyz contains a disclaimer for each of its posts, but even then, it's only a generic one that says it does not own the copyright of the audio or video embedded on the site.
Many of the embedded videos are from the YouTube account, Tokhang TV. As seen in the past, this is an example of how to do this.
Screenshot of YouTube channel Tokhang TV
Another Facebook page, Duterte-News-Update-339448673234955, shared by casterph.xyz 19 times but seems to have been taken down a week ago.
Two more pages – bonggoofficia and imeemarcosofficial – shared latestnewz.xyz daily in the past week and are still active.
The Facebook pages Duterte Media, Duterte Phenomenon, and 13 others that shared content from casterph.xyz also each shared the Facebook page IMEEParaSaMasa 31 times. This page does not contain any links to other websites but rather contains graphics with quotes (insta-quotes) and other photos.
The pages that have been shared by these sites and have been shared by propaganda groups and pages on Facebook since 2016.
To date, Rappler's Sharktank – a database that monitors and comments on public and private groups on Facebook – has monitored over 4,000 unique sites and blogs.
While these sites include websites of key news organizations in the country, a vast majority of them have unknown authors or owners.
A significant number have been fact-checked by local Facebook partners third-party fact-check groups, or they exhibit similar features as the spammy sites promoted by the pages that Facebook took down. – Michael Bueza, Wayne Manuel, and Gemma B. Mendoza / Rappler.com
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