In the national interest, the presidential hopefuls need to mutually call a total ceasefire to the utterly destructive misinformation and disinformation war being waged for them by their social media troll armies. Two such web pages of the troll commanders and lieutenants flaunt photo-and-illustration libraries with hundreds or so ready-to-use derogatory and combative material. So with this state of affairs in the major social media platforms, what can we expect the next three months of the presidential campaign to be like? The parties of the three other presidential candidates — they don't have the resources to get themselves directly embroiled in the five-cornered fight — can at best hope for whatever electoral advantage they could gain from the damage the two leading presidential candidates would be inflicting on each other. This disturbing prospect has prompted me to seriously reconsider my original goal of encouraging the major participants in the presidential campaign to do more truthful, rational, and responsible social media posts.

Source: Manila Times February 09, 2022 21:21 UTC