THE Presidential Communications Office (PCO) on Tuesday night denied that it is paying hundreds of trolls and at least 76 vloggers to support the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in online discussions.
Secretary Dave Gomez told the hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations on the PCO’s proposed P2.5 billion budget for 2026 that they do not hire “reactors or vloggers.”
“We have organic supporters of the President who comment on our posts. We don’t retain any of those vloggers or reactors as you may put it,” Gomez said. “Those are organic, real people commenting on our posts, commending the activities, the program of the President. And they are no means employed by us,” he added.
Gomez was reacting to the statement of Rep. Paolo Marcoleta (PL, Sagip) Marcoleta, a son of Sen. Rodante Marcoleta who is a known supporter of the Duterte family, that a PCO source has supposedly told him that the Executive’s communications office are paying reactors to social media posts and news stories about the administration.
“Ang trabaho ng reactors, 100 or 200 or so reactors, ang trabaho po nila ay magbigay ng positive reactions sa mga post ninyo, magbigay ng positibong comment sa mga post. ‘Yun po ang trabaho (The job of the reactors, about 100 or 200 or so reactors, their job is to give positive reactions to your posts, give positive comments on your posts. That’s their job). Aside from maintaining around 76 vloggers. Is that correct?” Marcoleta asked Gomez.
Marcoleta said that based on the information he received, each social media reactor is paid P7,000 month for leaving positive comments and reactions, such as like and heart emojis.
Despite the PCO’s statement that the reactors are organic, Marcoleta continued to ask Gomez why the administration needs to pay reactors and vloggers, to which the PCO chief said: “With all due respect your honor, hindi po namin sila binabayaran (We do not pay them) and we can check that in the line item of our budget.”
“Wala po kaming binabayaran na ganun (we don’t have such items). As I’ve said and I will reiterate: these are organic, real people who support the President,” he also said.
Gomez likewise said during the hearing that out of the PCO’s proposed budget, P16 million is set aside for the fight against “fake news” and P252 million for advertising expenses.
The Communications Secretary said his offices does a “significant amount of work in terms of combating fake news and misinformation, from the digital front to coordination with other government agencies for data on these fake news sites.”
Despite the meager budget of P16 million for the purpose, Gomez said the PCO continues to “educate our people against fake news.” “When we see something in social media that is obviously fake and is obviously based on misinformation, we counter that with content that would clarify the misinformation, correct the misinformation, and outright dispute that fake news. It’s content versus content,” he said.
“It it’s really more of maximizing and leveraging all the social media platforms available to our disposal, not only at the PCO main office, but through our attached agency system. That brings me back to my earlier point that we need to have synchronized, consistent messaging across all our platforms to drown out or even silence the fake news,” Gomez said.
It was during the Duterte administration that fake news and social media vloggers who propagate government propaganda were weaponized to hit government critics, including members of the media.
The proliferation of fake news was too rampant that it prompted the House of Representatives in the 19th Congress to investigate the matter because of the threats it poses to the country’s democratic system.
Gomez also explained to lawmakers why the PCO’s proposed advertising budget for 2026 increased by a whopping 5,800 percent from only P4.24-million this year to P252 million, saying that most of it will be used when the country hosts the ASEAN Summit next year.
“And that’s why we need to advertise not just locally, but in some international outlets as well,” he said in response to a question of Rep. Antonio Tinio (PL, ACT).
He said another endeavor that requires a huge advertising budget is the country’s bid to be a non-permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, which, he said, would “require a lot of lobbying, a lot of projecting our country externally, on why we deserve to be nominated and elected.”
“We need to produce in-house marketing content materials that we need to showcase in certain international roadshows. And those materials are really classified under advertising,” he said.
