Angry netizens unleash wrath over Rappler’s deceitful survey vs BBM

Vloggers, along with other netizen groups, unleashed their wrath over media entity Rappler, after it was exposed to have manipulated a survey on Facebook to influence netizens’ perception of the support for presidential aspirants in the 2022 elections.

Rappler, the administrator and fact-checker of Facebook Philippines, 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 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.

However, the video showed that upon checking the pages, the actual Wow emoticons far outnumbered the heart emoticons, which were only few and far between.

Vlogger Kasangga Jay slammed Rappler’s deception, saying that it was another attempt by the “biased” media outfit to deceive the public.

“Nakakalungkot isipin na niloloko na naman tayo nitong biased press, biased media na ito sapagkat sa kanilang survey ay tila kwestiyonable o tila kataka-taka ang nilalaman nito, mga kasangga….Tila may mali kasi binabalandra na si Leni ang nangunguna, with heart reactions pero nung inusisa nung Tiktok uploader ay ang nangunguna ang mga Wow reactions na para kay Bongbong Marcos. 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.

“Epic fail ng Rappler, napahiya sila. Purveryor ng fake news or biased magbalita. Lahat na lang ba ng balita nyo fake, Rappler? Hindi kinaya ng inyong technical maneuver, pagmamani-obra ng survey. Hindi nila kinaya ang dami o buhos ng followers ni BBM. Hindi nila kakayanin dahil hindi lang naman ang mga ito ‘yung mga netizens na namumulat na at naa-appreciate nila si BBM,” Princess Maui said, adding “Di ko kayang tanggapin na nangunguna ka sa survey sa akin,” in parody of an April Boys song.

“Hindi kinaya ng sistema Ninyo, hindi kinaya ng program niyo Facebook and Rappler kung tinambakan man nila agad si Leni ng 100k o 150k para mahirapan si BBM…Baka may access sila sa mga FB accounts na dormant na at ginamit sa survey…most of the Leni supporters were accounts of Pakistanis, Arab, poseur, fake accounts,” he added.

Princess Maui also expressed suspicion that the survey debacle was a pilot test of plans to rig the presidential elections in May next year.

“Pwedeng this is a practice of the balak nilang pandaraya next year sa elections, precursor of some kind, test pilot ng kanilang pandaraya,” he pointed out. ###