Philippines' 'troll-in-chief'? Duterte admits hiring defenders during polls

Pro-Duterte trolls were engaged in flooding social media with pro-government comments

A University of Oxford study has caused uproar in the Philippines for examining the administration of Rodrigo Duterte's efforts to manipulate social media through trolling and fake accounts. The findings confirmed what government critics have long suspected while stirring harsh denials by the president's supporters.

Duterte himself, however, later said in a press conference that he had in fact hired online commenters during the election.

Entitled “Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation”, the July 2017 study by Samantha Bradshaw and Philip N. Howard focused on the use of cyber troops