'Belle Mariano stan' accounts, 0 followers: The bot accounts attacking Comelec

MANILA, Philippines — Dozens of suspicious social media accounts that bear the markings of coordinated and inauthentic behavior have sought to amplify allegations of corruption against the Commission on Elections and its chairperson, George Garcia.

Philstar.com has identified at least 28 accounts on X (formerly Twitter) that bombarded media outlets’ posts with similar replies that either demanded Garcia’s resignation or urged media outlets to shift their focus away from voting technology company Smartmatic’s cases to Garcia’s purported offshore bank accounts. 

The bot-like accounts spammed media organizations’ X posts with near-identical messages in the wake of two news events: 

While there are several posts online critical of the Comelec that are legitimate, Philstar.com’s monitoring from August 1 to August 16 shows that these same 28 accounts were deployed to flood the mentions of the X accounts of at least four news outlets: Interaksyon (Philstar.com's sister publication), ABS-CBN News, Manila Bulletin and The Daily Tribune. 

These accounts appear to be part of an influence operation that Philstar.com is tracking across all social media platforms, groups and spaces on the internet. 

The bot-like accounts showed multiple indicators of coordinated and inauthentic behavior, including overlapping account creation dates, similar naming conventions and near-identical wording of posts published within minutes of each other.

Of the 28 social media accounts, at least 20 also appear to have branded themselves as "stan" accounts of Filipino actress Belle Mariano through regular reposts of the actress.

All accounts either have single-digit followers or none at all. At least 10 accounts were created in May 2024, while the rest were set up in 2016 or earlier. Most accounts have less than 1,000 posts.

Based on Philstar.com’s monitoring on X, these bot-like accounts spammed the X accounts of Interaksyon, ABS-CBN News, Manila Bulletin and the Daily Tribune from August 1 to 16. 

The coordinated campaign to flood Interaksyon's mentions with posts criticizing Garcia unfolded in three distinct waves on August 14.

These posts targeted an X post made by Interaksyon on August 12