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CAVITE, Philippines — Arnel Agravante, a YouTuber in the Philippines, told his followers last October that he knows how rich his presidential candidate and his chosen candidate, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is.

He said the story was simple: Mr. Marcos’ dictatorial father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., did not steal money from the government as is widely reported. On the contrary, tons of gold were given away by a secret royal family in the Philippines. “They call it ‘unearned wealth,'” said Mr. Agravante, mocking those who criticized Mr. Marcos.

The golden story was debunked by multiple verifiers as well as Mr Marcos, but that didn’t stop Mr Agravante from repeating it. According to him, he is part of the “alternative media” that opposes the mainstream press “spreading stupid and false information about our history” before next week’s elections.

“The Philippines is paying the price for not having regulatory oversight and making sure the general population has the necessary cognitive resilience to such brazen and blatant lies,” said Richard Heydarian, a political analyst at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

Most of the disinformation is sold on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. The violent Marcos era is being reshaped as a period of strong economic growth and infrastructure projects. Leni Robredo, the country’s vice-president and chief rival of Mr. Marcos, is portrayed as a communist who has accomplished nothing in office.

In a video, Jovalyn Alcantara, known as Mami Peng to her 24,000 TikTok followers, falsely claims that the Philippines’ debt has more than doubled to $50 billion under Corazon Aquino, who became president after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

“And what if it’s wrong?” He said it when a New York Times reporter stated he was wrong. His video has been viewed more than 27,000 times.

President Rodrigo Duterte won the election in 2016, in part because his allies flooded Facebook with false news about his rivals. But Mr. Marcos’ supporters chose a different approach to social media: livestream video.

YouTubers live stream Mr. Marcos’ rallies as he mirrors the candidate’s election narrative. They spread misinformation about her wealth and repeated allegations that Ms. Robredo cheated to beat her in the 2016 vice presidential race.

Analysts speculate that this army of broadcasters is so large and devoted that Mr. Marcos will likely turn to him – rather than the traditional news media – to get his message across as president.

“All candidates, all political parties are dealing with disinformation,” Benjamin Abalos Jr., Mr. Marcos’ campaign manager, told The Times.

Publishers say they were not paid by the Marcos camp, despite being officially accredited as “vloggers” and roaming freely at their rallies. According to a review by The Times, a dozen of his channels have a total of 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube and more than 500,000 followers on Facebook.

A YouTube spokesperson said the company removed more than 400,000 videos between February 2021 and January for violating its policies on hate speech, harassment and election misinformation. A spokesperson for Facebook’s parent company Meta said that an account flagged by The Times repeatedly posted false content and was banned from monetizing such posts.

But false claims cannot be easily checked or removed during a livestream, and the growing prevalence of apps like TikTok has made it difficult to weed out bad actors.

“If this election is won using disinformation, it will become a tried and tested formula to be used in every election,” Robredo warned in a speech to the Catholic Church, and urged people in the Philippines not to believe the lies on the internet. .

Yvonne Chua, who leads Tsek.ph, an independent fact-checking project in the Philippines, said in an email that confirmations from her partners mostly point to Mr.

“You also see misinformation from certain candidates, but they are rare,” said Professor Chua, an associate professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines.

Supporting the debunked theory about Mr. Marcos’ wealth, Mr. Agravante was a call center agent before deciding to become a full-time YouTuber producing amateur videos for his 109,000 subscribers last year. Mr. Marcos, a long-time supporter of Mr. Marcos, knows that the candidate has denied the gold claim. Still, Mr. Agravante does not apologize.

“Why should I change my mind just because he denied it?” said.

The power of amateur videos like those produced by Mr. Agravante “seems to be real or organic,” said Jonathan Corpus Ong, a disinformation researcher at Harvard. “Compared to the professionally produced commercials and music videos of the Robredo campaign, it sounds like the language of the streets or ordinary people.”

Pro-Marcos videos often use bold letters, color graphics and photographs of Mr. Marcos and his daughter Sara Duterte, who is running for vice president. One such video included an interview with a Marcos aide who claimed that the People’s Power Revolution of 1986 that overthrew the Marcos regime was the product of “brainwashing” by the Aquino family.

Vincent Tabigue, who produced the video, contested the various lawsuits against the Marcoses, noting that no one in the family was ever jailed for stealing money from the government. “It’s just a political attack,” he told The Times.

Mr Tabigue, 27, said he quit his sales job in 2019 to become a full-time YouTuber, earning close to $10,000 a month.

While no one in the Marcos family went to jail, Mr. Marcos’ mother Imelda was sentenced to up to 11 years in prison for establishing private foundations to hide her undisclosed wealth. Paid bail in 2018; his appeal is pending.

The Senate acknowledged the misinformation problem in the Philippines when it held a series of hearings on the crisis in 2018. But no concrete steps were agreed upon, and individual lawmakers struggled to contain the problem.

In February, Senator Francis Pangilinan, who ran for the vice presidency to support Ms. Robredo, urged the Senate to review criminal laws to curb misinformation and proposed a bill to address the issue. His efforts went nowhere.

In a recent convoy with Mr. Marcos’ presidential campaign, TikTok influencer Ms. Alcantara held a phone in her left hand while helping another supporter set up her livestream. With the other hand, he pointed to the peace sign, the trademark of Mr. Marcos’ father.

“Marcos always!” yell.

Ms. Alcantara, 44, said her TikTok account was temporarily banned several times after Ms. Robredo’s supporters complained about it. “Why is it only us Marcos fans?” she asked. “It’s the same as what supporters of other candidates are doing. They also post misleading claims, right?”

She wept as she remembered “all the good things” Marcoses had done for her community. “Here comes the moment we’ve been waiting for,” he said.

Sui Lee Wee and Jason Gutierrez contributing reporting.