Trolls for Sale by Jonathan Corpus OngMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's February 25 in my country and it isn't a holiday.
For as long as I can remember, the 25th has been a big deal. Growing up, it was "EDSA Day." It was the name of a highway, yes, but more importantly, it was the name of a bloodless revolution, the success of democracy and the people over a dictator.
But the Philippines in 1985 is no longer the Philippines of 2024.
To understand why, we need to look at what happened to the number one social media capital of the world.
This short book is a compilation of disinformation researcher Jonathan Ong's works, namely, a summary of a longer report ("Architects of Networked Disinformation" co-authored with Jason Vincent Cabañes), a transcript of a talk in Columbia University along with Sheila Coronel, and the article "Southeast Asia's Disinformation Crisis: Where the State is the Biggest Bad Actor and Regulation is a Bad Word."
It's a short but rage/grief-inducing read, tracing the social media campaign story of 2022 linked with that of 2016.
My key take-aways were the lack of ethics displayed by short-term contractual workers who managed to distance themselves from their devilry by being gainfully employed in legitimate PR firms or call centers during the day. The transference of responsibility in saying that "it's just a job" and "there are others worse than I."
It is this collective relaxation of morals that has led us to our situation today, so far removed from the ideals of 1985.
Removing history from the curriculum isn't helping any. Erasing historic dates from the list of state-recognized holidays adds to the national forgetting.
But only if we let it.
Ambeth Ocampo once said that history repeats itself only because we let it.
Thankfully, there are books like this one, as well as plays written, movies made by brave artists unbeholden to old sponsorship. For as long as there are those of us who read, and write, and remember, there is hope still.
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