On a sweltering Monday morning in Manila, Nic Gabunada is sitting at his laptop, working from home. Gabunada is a former CEO of Omnicom Media Group Philippines and currently executive director of his own communications and marketing company. Before this, he served for two years as the head of President Rodrigo Duterte’s social media team and played an integral part of his 2016 election campaign.

In March 2019, Gabunada was linked to a network of 200 pages removed by Facebook for “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.” This opaque charge is most commonly levelled by the company at foreign influence and troll campaigns. So far, Gabunada is the only individual to have ever been named by the platform as the organizer of such an operation.

Despite the actions against his network, Gabunada’s methods have changed politics in the Philippines, where troll farms continue to churn out pro-government messages and attack opposition figures.

What is more, Gabunada believes that global platforms face a losing battle in trying to stem the spread of fake news. “No one can control what people can say on social media,” he told me, during a telephone conversation.