Vloggers and several netizen groups have denounced Rappler’s alleged deception for manipulating a survey on Facebook to influence netizens’ perception of support for presidential aspirants in the 2022 elections, according to a statement from the camp of former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
This came after Rappler launched a presidential survey on the said social media platform, assigning the different emoticons for reacting to posts to the presidential aspirants in the list to signify a vote.
The “wow” emoticon was assigned to Partido Federal ng Pilipinas standard-bearer Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. while the “heart” was assigned to independent candidate Leni Robredo. The “Laugh” emoticon, to Panfilo Lacson, “Like” emoticon to Isko Moreno and the “Care” emoticon to Manny Pacquiao.
Rappler’s alleged manipulation was discovered after a netizen uploaded on Tiktok, another social media platform, a video of him checking out the emoticons hit for each of the candidates.
In the video uploaded, the total number of votes cast for Robredo was already 161 thousand while Marcos only had 87 thousand.
Vlogger Kasangga Jay said that this was another attempt by the “biased” media outfit to deceive the public.
“It’s sad to think that this biased press, biased media is fooling us again because in their survey its content seems questionable or strange. If the truth will prevail, this nation will rise again,” he said.
Another vlogger Maui Becker, also known as “Princess Maui”, lambasted Rappler and expressed suspicion that, as administrator, the new outfit had access to inactive accounts and misused the authority by using those accounts to cast a vote.
The vlogger said that “most of the Leni supporters were accounts of Pakistanis, Arabs, poseur, fake accounts,” and claimed that “maybe this is a rehearsal of their planned fraud next year in the elections, a precursor of some kind, test pilot of their fraud.”