Last Friday, May 24, OpinYon Laguna “officially” entered the 2025 election period by conducting an online survey on who Lagunenses currently prefer as their next governor. (Incumbent governor Ramil Hernandez is currently on his last term, so political analysts expect this next gubernatorial race to become much more intensely contested.)
As of the writing of this column, that poll has reached over 49,000 Facebook users and garnered over 5,000 reactions and over 400 comments.
But one of our senior editors here at OpinYon Laguna has spotted something that's not normal.
According to our editor, some of those who reacted on our polls came from places far removed from Laguna province, with a few apparently from Mindanao (!).
"Ready talaga for mind conditioning [si gubernatorial candidate], ha," was the editor's comment.
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As I’ve explained in this column (and this bears repeating, especially for the ordinary citizen who now almost exclusively relies on social media to get their dose of news, information, trivia, and tsismis), the problem with trolls has been compounded by social media companies' tendencies to push their Internet algorithms towards a person's specific interest – which becomes a problem when those algorithms push content that happens to agree with a social media user's political bias.
And that’s already being milked by local politicos and wannabe politicos who, this early, are now jockeying for positions for the people’s votes in 2025.
For instance, nagugulat pa ba tayo na may mga sumusulpot nang pages na kumukumbinsi kay ganito at ganyan na tumakbo sa 2025? O di kaya mga “news” at “trivia” page na kung bubusisiin mo e puro pagpapabango na sa mga pulitiko? Tapos bigla na lang silang nagsusulputan sa mga group na para lang dapat sa buy-and-sell o para sa isang specific na hobby o interest?
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Here’s a suggestion to Facebook users: if you suspect that a post on your group is from a troll (or from someone whose details are suspect, like, say, having less than a hundred friends or followers, has a weird profile picture, or was flagged as “New Facebook user”), you don’t have to report that account to Meta.
If you don’t want that hassle of having to explain to Meta that the account might be a troll one (and anyways, many are now complaining about how Meta seems to be “unequal” in their handling of disinformation), here’s what you have to do: click on the "..." button at the top of the post and then select "Hide all from user."
Problem solved. You won't see ANY of their posts again. And if these accounts sharing political propaganda are indeed trolls, that’s a huge loss to them (yes, page moderators can actually see how many are unfollowing you or hiding your posts).
If we really want to get rid of black propaganda and mind-conditioning, I daresay let’s start by starving these “trolls” of the capability to brainwash us – and that starts by removing them from our own feeds.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonColumn #ColumnbyJamesVeloso #UnCommonSense #OnlineTrolls #Elections2025