As you know, here at All Source China we’ve been doing an investigation into what we suspect is coordinated activity to push pro-China narratives in the Philippines. This activity also seems designed to dampen criticism of the actions of the Chinese state, especially the China Coast Guard, in the recent flare-up of bilateral tensions in the maritime domain.
A quick recap
Last time [see PART ONE here], we’d provided a sample of:
- Inauthentic accounts found on X, pushing a pro-China narrative and counterattacking those Filipino and international voices expressing concern about the ongoing tensions, such as the EU Ambassador and the Armed Forces of the Philippines accounts.
- Inauthentic Facebook accounts seen repeatedly liking and commenting on Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines‘ posts, and also criticising statements put out by various countries such as New Zealand, the EU and the US (see more about the practice of Astroturfing here)
We’d established the coordinated nature of the accounts by demonstrating their sloppy tradecraft. They were posting the same content, using similar wording across several posts, having little (if any) authentic content, and even in one case had a poorly-crafted profile pic that was easily reverse-searched using Google Lens.
What has happened since Part One?
We put out our expose on these two account sets, and spent time on X and Facebook getting the word out that these were inauthentic accounts. Well, recently, we’ve noticed some of the main trolls we’ve been pursuing (@anne011morales, @RMonzano20727 and @MallariAl88521) have taken notice, and taken steps to avoid scrutiny!
BEFORE: Anne Morales, with Chinese Embassy content front-and-centre and a more human profile pic. AFTER: Now meet ‘Queen’ with an avatar and an innocuous boy-band vid- note the @ handle is still the same but the Chinese Embassy content is gone.
So, that’s Anne out of the way (incidentally, if you miss her old picture, you can see it here on Facebook) Now onto Richard Monzano, in his new guise as Mondie!
BEFORE: Richard Monzano (you can still find this old profile here on Facebook). AFTER: Meet Mondie with no Embassy posts but a pretty scary looking avatar!
Alfredo (now Freddie!) exhibits the same coordinated behaviour here. Something else noteworthy with these three is that where they’ve been called out by me previously (see here), they’ve since deleted their comments.
Any other suspicious accounts? Why, yes!
We’ve also noticed that some other accounts we’ve been suspicious below and have called out have also been taking the same action, either with a cartoon avatar or a low-grade human picture! Also note that every single one of these X troll accounts (above and below) has a start date of July 2023.
- @Maryrose429207 is now ‘Beauty’
- @revillarose503 is now ‘Love’. Here she is in her previous guise as ‘Rose’. Check out what her account looks like now!
- @santi06ruben is now ‘Pogi’- here’s how he used to look- posting on the same day as Rose, in the same comments section!
- @Bernie269097771 aka Antonio, @Aileen138499631 aka DonnaLyn, @santos09milag was Milagros and is now ‘Rossie’. They’ve cleaned their walls or ‘posts’ tab, but just head to their ‘replies’ tab to find out whose interests they are really serving! You’ll find some commonality of posts they have commented on!
More to come!
One final note connecting the group of trolls on X to the Facebook ones- here is a post from the Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines, talking about talks held between the two sides on the recent maritime tensions. Our old pal Richard Monzano is there, with the old profile pic from X, spamming the comments section with praise. And who else appears in that comment section? Erika Abacan who we exposed in our first investigation. We need to dig deeper into some of the accounts who are regularly astroturfing Chinese government or state media comment sections, and we’d be unsurprised if many of the other regulars in these comments sections aren’t also part of the same organisation!
To conclude, if you are going to try to hide sloppy tradecraft, at least do it in a non-coordinated way!
James- All Source China https://x.com/JpmCopaOSINT