The subject of #CocoyGate: Shadowy social media ‘influencer’ Cocoy Dayao
Back in October 2016, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa wrote about how an army of trolls have “weaponized the Internet” and that she is the protagonist in a “propaganda war” waged by an enemy that is “chipping away at facts, using half-truths that fabricate an alternative reality by merging the power of bots and fake accounts on social media to manipulate real people.” Ressa’s fellow rapplerite, Chay Hofilena chimed in, writing in another article how many of these trolls are “sockpuppets” that “act according to how a puppeteer motions them.”
To give credit to Ressa and Hofilena, the grand conspiracy theory they laid out over those articles was quite prescient. Almost a year later, in an explosive exposé released recently by blogger RJ Nieto (a.k.a. Thinking Pinoy), a vast operation that fit Ressa’s and Hofilena’s conspiracy theory to a tee was uncovered revealing a Google AdSense money trail that seemingly leads to one staunch Liberal Party “Yellow” camp supporter Cocoy Dayao. And, thus, #CocoyGate is born. Dayao, as it turns out is also a former consultant of some sort of the administration of former Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III and, not surprisingly, has kept mum on the subject.
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So has Philippine mainstream media — also not surprisingly. It is quite interesting that the issue of “fake news” which Ressa and other rapplerites as well as other mainstream “thought leaders” have been screeching about over many shrill articles is made out to be such an important problem in one instance and is now, in this instance, evidently being deliberately buried. Why this is so is a no-brainer. The idea that “fake news” is an evil nation-destroying scourge is premised on the assumption that its purveyors are associated with the anti-disente camp of current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
A meme making the rounds summarising the premises of #CocoyGate.
Justification for the effort to bury #CocoyGate amongst this clique of like-minded “influencers” is encapsulated in a tweet fielded by the venerable social media personality Noemi ‘Momblogger’ Dado who asserts…
I stand by @cocoy. #CocoyGate is a distraction to critical issues like extrajudicial killings, @OmbudsmanPh investigation.
This is the same person who wrote at length about the scourge of ‘fake news’, offering tips on how ordinary netizens could prevent its spread in her own late-2016 article Tools and Strategies to Determine Fake News, Half-Truths, from Real News. That Dado would write at length in such detail about “fake news” attests to how important she considers the subject to be. Yet today we see the selectiveness with which she, like Ressa, Hofilena, and other “infuencers” who presumably “stand by Cocoy”, seek to brush aside what is otherwise one for the books. Indeed, #CocoyGate is a brilliant case study on the fall of a vast social media PR machine built upon a foundation of intellectual dishonesty — one that deserves an entire chapter in public relations textbooks to come.
Perhaps Dado and her ilk should learn to find in their pointed heads the intellectual humility needed to take on board the wise words of a commenter who responded to her tweet, suggesting that, “The fight against Fake News should hit purveyors of such whichever side they are.”
Suffice to say, the “truth” is not being killed by “fake news” per se but by those who have the power to highlight it but, instead, choose to bury it.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
I’ve been following Dado aka Momblogger. She is a one sided blogger and pro-Leni. She sees nothing wrong with Leni but she considered Pres. Duterte as threat to democracy. I really don’t understand the government why they keep on inviting her in ASEAN events. She’s a bitch and hypocrite and crazy social climber leftist.
I wanna ask her about how and why Duterte is a threat to democracy when he’s the one who is propagating it…?
Dado is a leftist bitch with an agenda….
Most Pinoy “journalists” are nothing more than glorified “usis” and self-important news readers with zero achievements in terms of actual sleuthing in the name of actual reporting. You go to ANY one of these “legitimate” new outlets’ sites and more often than not, you’ll see that lazy practice passed off as “reporting” in that NETIZENS REACT bullshit that has nothing substantive to add on an issue.
No wonder these corporations shit their pants when the likes of TP, Sasot and even Mocha Uson began overtaking them in terms of engagement. These characters—especially TP’s RJ Nieto—had at least possessed journalistic sensibilities to conduct their own investigations without the benefit of some corporate twat dictating on what to report or omit.
Philippine mainstream media—as with almost every other Pinoy product—are mediocre at best.
We don’t need them.
What makes TP, Sasot and Mocha Uson so prevalent to most Pinoys is that they allowed themselves to be connected with others people and other groups. The mainstream media, unfortunately, only go for a select few to suit their own interests.
Glad that you make this article.
I pity my anti-Duterte friends of sharing posts from Change Scamming. Actually, I’m tempted to type a comment on their page but decided not to.
What the mainstream media is trying to do with this just tells how biased they were. It’s really funny that those sycophants try to tell us that we should ignore the likes of Sass Rogando Sasot, Thinking Pinoy, Mocha Uson Blog, and even GRP and go with the mainstream media since they’re far more ‘established’. I call it BS.
I care more on content than names or brand.
Yes, every one of us is only human and therefore the opinions we publish can never be perfectly sound — which is the whole point of comment sections and, stepping back further, the “free market of ideas” that is the broader social media landscape that is collectively supposed to keep all content producers (whether they be blog authors or commenters) honest.
Sites should not be simply “ignored”. People should actually be encouraged to read “fake news”. The more important thing to be cognisant of is to apply critical thinking to what one reads. And critical thinking works best when more (and not less) input is taken into account — which means there is wisdom in being a wide (in constrast to being a selective) reader.
Maria Resa, Cocoy Dayao, Noemi Dado, etc..are Propaganda Machines of the Aquino Cojuangco Political axis. They are good in Demonizing people , that write against the Aquino Cojuangco political axis.
Cocoy Dayao is one of those Paid Trolls, who has been Trolling me in my blogs, in the GRP Website. He has several aliases.
This is the tactic of the Propaganda Machine of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis. They are like pack of wolves, in their demonizing work, against people who write against the Aquino Cojuangco political axis.
They hack your blogs and website. They send viruses, malwares, script writers, etc..in your computer !
Looks like the politicians and businessmen who own media companies favor the “Yellow” interests even if they’re out of power. Make me wonder why. There’s something about that that screams, there’s something happening under the curtain, and they really don’t want it to be known. But all the effort to shush the issue on Andres Bautista both on Comelec and PCGG might be a clue.
While the enemies of the state hold key positions in govt, it’s going to be gridlock for the rest of the President’s term. By the end of it, they would’ve regained advantage, re-packaged and re-ordered themselves, including the covert ones within their ranks. As the President said, he doesn’t own the gov’t. The “ka-DDS” are too complacent and overly distracted. President Duterte may be strong in character and will, but he can’t make all the moves by himself.
“Rules for Thee, Not for Me” is the common argument, damage control and pathetic excuse by Leftist all over the world, it’s not double think or hypocrisy, it’s a self-made delusion they’ve created themselves where they truly think the World is Black and White, that they are Heroes and everyone against them are Villains, they don’t care about the entire collective, they care about their own Tribe with their impotent moral crusading that has not done jack shit for the 6 years they and their masters the Yellow Party were in power, they had their media sugarcoat and downplay all bad news and their own corruption with show trials against their political enemies, it’s a self made delusion when they refuse to admit fault or the reality of situation in the Philippines, the problems have been there for a long time, they had their change to fix it, now let Democracy do it’s work and let the administration get their programs and agenda to fix a broken and rotten system and culture
You can’t be consistent if you are intellectually dishonest. This is the fundamental problem of the Yellowtards. Their ideas float upon personal loyalties. It should be the other way around. Personal loyalties should shift while your personal principles remain relatively rock-stable and change only after being subject to a systematic process of critical evaluation.
Newspapers are not made any longer by news or journalism. They are made by sheer weight of money expressed in free gift schemes. They serve not the interests of the many, but the vested interests of the few.