Silencing victims through disinformation

When former president Rodrigo Duterte was flown to The Hague last month to face charges for crimes against humanity, many believed that this moment would finally bring justice and closure to the families of drug war victims. Instead of relief, however, they now find themselves being bombarded with expletives, hate speech, and even death threats.

Since Duterte’s arrest, the victims’ relatives and their advocates have reported an alarming increase in online harassment. Among them is Sheerah Escudero, whose 18-year-old brother Ephraim was discovered lifeless in 2017 with his hands bound and head wrapped in packaging tape. After expressing her willingness to testify against the former president, Escudero has been subjected to a daily barrage of hateful comments, with some users even telling her that she deserves to be beheaded. She has also become a target for disinformation. One of her photos was doctored and then circulated, falsely accusing her of fabricating stories. According to Escudero, one post has reached at least four million views.

Last week, International Criminal Court (ICC) assistant to counsel Kristina Conti joined the families of drug war victims in filing a formal complaint before the National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) Cybercrime Division. Conti, who is also being constantly harassed on social media, urged the NBI to investigate the origins and operators of the accounts behind the attacks. She noted that the repeated messaging, similar timestamps, and the rapid spread across platforms suggest a coordinated campaign rather than an organic one.

Whether these attacks are being carried out by paid actors or loyal supporters, it appears that disinformation is being used aggressively to silence the victims’ families through fear, paralysis, and submission. The messaging of these posts does not just distort the facts surrounding the deaths of the victims, it also seeks to discredit the pain and question the credibility of their loved ones. Although the campaign against survivors and advocates is not marked by any form of physical violence, it doesn’t make it less damaging. More importantly, escalation is always a possibility because the dehumanizing rhetoric could eventually breed real-world harm. One can only imagine the immense psychological toll that the victims’ families are currently experiencing. Apart from the grief that comes with losing a loved one to injustice, they are being retraumatized by all the online harassment and persistent denial of their experiences. The NBI must take these threats seriously and urgently provide the victims’ families with proper protection.

Experts have long warned about how coordinated disinformation campaigns successfully exploit how our brains process emotion, meaning, and truth. Apart from confirmation bias, there’s also the illusory truth effect. This is when repeated exposure to a particular statement increases the likelihood of a person believing it because the familiarity of an idea starts to feel like truth. For instance, if you keep encountering the same false messaging about Escudero—in your feed, the comments section, and across different posts and users—you’re more likely to eventually believe it even if you initially doubted what was being said.

Another intended outcome is public fatigue. Unlike traditional propaganda, where the goal is always to persuade, coordinated disinformation campaigns do not necessarily aim to convince others. Instead, the goal is for people to grow weary, cynical, and less willing to critique and engage. When citizens feel unsure of what or whom to believe, they may just choose to turn away from civic participation altogether.

Given this landscape, authoritarian influence no longer depends on formal power or institutional control. To shape public discourse, radicalize supporters, and intimidate dissenting voices, all they need is a loyal digital base, a few high-traffic influencers, and an endless stream of manipulated content that will sow confusion. As long as disinformation remains unchecked, anyone with ample resources can easily rewrite history or reframe the truth as just one opinion among many. This is how the memory of the drug war and the suffering it caused could easily be distorted as fiction.

Strengthening media education and literacy in the country remains crucial, so the public can better distinguish between credible information and deceitful narratives. However, these efforts will be insufficient to address the problem if the “supply side” is just allowed to proliferate. The disinformation ecosystem must be exposed and dismantled. Going after bloggers who deliberately spread falsehoods was a step in the right direction. The NBI must now act on the victims’ families‘ requests to investigate and prosecute those behind the fake accounts as well as those who are orchestrating and funding these campaigns.

The struggle against disinformation must be recognized as a core component of the broader movement for justice and accountability. If not, democracy will always be vulnerable to anyone with the financial means and ideological intent to manipulate the truth.