Pilipinas Today has the hallmarks of a typical digital news organization: a dozen regional pages, millions of followers on Facebook, and uniform, professional branding.
An investigation by Rappler, however, shows that behind this newsroom facade is a sophisticated political machinery run by a political consulting firm with a history of digital manipulation.
By co-opting the news format, Pilipinas Today is able to cascade political messaging on social media under the guise of journalistic reportage. Here are our major findings:
- From August 2020 to April 2026, around 31 pages with the Pilipinas Today name spent at least P138 million on ads about social issues, elections, or politics (shortened to political ads for the purpose of this story) on Facebook, some of the most expensive of which amplified politicians like former senator Francis Tolentino and former Makati City mayor Abby Binay. This excludes the ad spending on other pages linked to Pilipinas Today, which will be covered in later parts of this story.
- The group lacks adherence to journalistic standards — a Rappler analysis showed that around 25% of the network's posts on Facebook featured signs of PR content for public officials like former House speaker Martin Romualdez and Education Secretary Sonny Angara.
- The network is managed by Sartine IT Solutions, a political consulting firm connected to a group that was previously flagged by authorities for alleged foreign meddling during the 2018 gubernatorial elections in Guam.
This operation comes at a time when newsrooms across the country are shrinking, leaving gaps in local and national coverage that politically motivated outfits have begun to fill, often without disclosing their affiliations or adhering to journalistic standards.
Pilipinas Today's news empire
At first glance, Pilipinas Today mimics the operations of a digital news platform. Launched in 2023, it maintains a website and uses the slogan, "Balitang Pilipinas, Balita Today" (Philippine News, News Now).
But a Facebook search for "Pilipinas Today" reveals at least 36 pages sharing identical profile photos and display names. Together, they command a total of 13 million followers, averaging 360,000 followers per page.
The main page linked on Pilipinas Today's website, under username pilipinastoday.org
, leads the network with 1.5 million followers. It is supported by a fleet of regional counterparts, including Pilipinas Today Batangas (1.1 million followers), Pilipinas Today Davao (860,000), and Pilipinas Today Visayas (553,000).
Compared to some mainstream news pages on Facebook, ABS-CBN News and GMA have 29 million followers each, Philippine Star has 11 million, Inquirer.net has 9.6 million, and Rappler has 6.2 million.
While they present themselves as a unified media entity, Pilipinas Today pages are categorized inconsistently. About 20 are labeled as "media or news companies," while others are tagged as "community" pages, "social media agencies," and even "entertainment websites."
The network's massive reach was not primarily built through hard news and political content, either. Instead, many of the pages seem to have been rebranded from old fan pages and interest-based communities on Facebook.
For example, pages that once catered to K-pop fans, actors James Reid and Nadine Lustre (popularly known as JaDine), and local "secret files" (pages that act as anonymous bulletin boards) were converted into "news" outlets between 2022 and 2025.
64% of all these pages (23 pages out of 36) had their page name changed in 2023, the same year Pilipinas Today was founded.
This is not the first time this tactic of growing and then rebranding entertainment pages has been done. As early as 2018, Rappler observed a fan group that suddenly turned into a political group after getting thousands of followers. Showbiz channels on Facebook have also been previously used for disinformation campaigns, and malign actors have also used the pages of celebrities to distribute their content.
P138 million on ads, and possibly more
The main Pilipinas Today page is currently the top spender on political ads.
The political ads on this page alone cost a total of almost P38 million from August 2020 to April 2026, exceeding even the P27-million ad spend of the official page of Senator Camille Villar, the biggest spender on Facebook ads among those who ran in the 2025 elections.
But the main page was not alone. A total of 31 Pilipinas Today-named pages, defined in this story as pages listed on the Meta Ad Library that bear "Pilipinas Today" on their page names, have spent a total of P138 million on political ads in the same period. The millions-peso figure is 9.5% of the P1.46 billion total of disclosed political ad spends.
Pumping an average of P2 million a month into political ads on Facebook, the main Pilipinas Today page has used its financial muscle to amplify or defend specific political figures.
Rappler analyzed the political ads under the main Pilipinas Today Facebook page from August 2020 to April 2026 for any political figures mentioned. We then estimated the total political ad spend for each person by adding the minimum costs of all the political ads that mentioned them.
Here are the top five personalities, based on the estimated political ad spend:
The advertisements on both Sara and Rodrigo Duterte seem to have been focused on amplifying stories around the investigations into the drug war under the former president and the impeachment proceedings against the Vice President over alleged anomalous spending of public funds.
Interestingly, the two most expensive ads mentioning Romualdez did not spotlight him in particular, but rather, Sara Duterte's assassination threat against him, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos in November 2024.
One of these ads was run four separate times while the other ad was run thrice, around the same periods in the first half of 2025 and April 2026. Both ads cost between P25,000 to P30,000.
In February 2025, the House of Representatives impeached Sara Duterte for the first time. March to May 2025 marked the height of the 2025 election season. June to July 2025 saw the first articles of impeachment against the Vice President die at the hands of the Senate and the Supreme Court. In April 2026, the House of Representatives for the second time ran impeachment proceedings against Sara.
Tolentino and Binay ran for senator during the 2025 elections.
Tolentino and Binay were mentioned in the two most expensive ads in the whole dataset, costing between P175,000 to P200,000. Running from March 21 to April 21, 2025, both ads featured the senatorial aspirants on their respective campaign trails.
Notably, in our analysis, political ads under the main Pilipinas Today page spiked — both in terms of volume and estimated political ad spend — in the lead up to the 2025 midterm elections.
Ron Jabal, chief executive officer of public relations agency PAGEONE Group, said the "highly unusual" ad spends of the Pilipinas Today network "almost rival or even exceed those I have seen from political campaigns."
Organizations that typically spend such amounts, he said, are usually those involved in political campaigns, advocacy or lobby groups, or large corporations engaged in policy issues.
"With a 138-million spend, it really looks like an operation of huge scale with sustained strategic intent; almost bordering if not an actual political communication campaign."
— PAGEONE Group CEO Ron Jabal
"And if this were the case, we know that any political communication worth your salt is rarely exercised through a single page or platform. Instead, influence is developed and built through networks — networks that may consist of multiple pages, audiences, communities, creators, content streams, and advertising campaigns reinforcing messaging from one another," he wrote to Rappler in an email interview.
The expanded ad network
Network analysis
Mapping the Pilipinas Today Facebook ad network
Pilipinas Today is among the biggest spenders on Facebook ads on social and political issues in the Philippines — a sprawling network of pages and ad funders connected by millions of pesos in ad spending.
This visualization maps the connections between the pages and the entities that paid for their ads, as disclosed through Meta's Ad Library.
Scroll to exploreStep 1 · The named pages
At least 31 Pilipinas Today-named Facebook pages have run ads on social and political issues
Meta's Ad Library shows ad activity across regional editions — Batangas, Davao, Bicol, Visayas, Ilocos, QC, Laguna, Pangasinan, Mindanao, Bulacan — and special-interest pages like PT Tweets, PT Club, and PT OFW. More named pages exist beyond these.
social issues
Step 2 · Follow the money
One entity paid for most of the ads: WFPH
According to Meta's Ad Library, an entity called WFPH is listed as the declared funder behind ads on most Pilipinas Today pages. It is the single biggest ad spender in this network.
Step 3 · Beyond the brand
WFPH also paid for ads on 25 other pages not bearing the Pilipinas Today name
These include exactly 25 pages: Peoples Tonight, Pilipinas, Wanna Fact PH, Larry De Costa, About Metro Pacific, Bagong Ngayon, Breyalex, Brian Lim, Buddy, and others like PNOY and Rudy Farinas Blog.
The shared ad funder connects these pages to the Pilipinas Today network, even though they don't carry the specific name.
Step 4 · The other ad funders
20 more entities also paid for ads on Pilipinas Today pages
Entities like Gino Asos Samuel, Mico Chan Arevalo, John Paul Misina Reyes, Miguel Alto Arnaiz, Ricardo Jr. Dela Cruz Flores, and organizations like The World Tonight and Sartine also appear as declared ad funders on PT-named pages.
Their overlap with WFPH's pages suggests a highly coordinated and sophisticated ad spending network.
Step 5 · The extended reach
The same ad funders also boosted political and niche pages
The same entities paid for ads on pages like Defend Duterte PH, Fight For Digong, Davao Secret Blog, Better Makati, and even the official Sonny Angara page — revealing a web of interconnected ad activity that extends into political advocacy.
Also connected: Iphone iOS Blog, Funny Juan, and Bisexual's — seemingly unrelated pages linked by the same ad funders.
Full network · Ad spending
The Pilipinas Today ad network
31 named pages that ran ads
47 pages sharing the same ad funders
21 ad funders · 77 Facebook pages · Ads on social and political issues per Meta Ad Library
Tap any node to explore its connections. Use +/− or pinch to zoom.
By default, Meta only provides public information on political ads. Only authorized pages are allowed to run political ads on Meta platforms, and when they do, they must disclose their funding source, tagged on the Meta Ad Library as disclaimers.
Disclaimers show that ads under Pilipinas Today-named pages were mostly funded by an entity called WFPH, whose Facebook page, Wanna Fact PH, is also run by Sartine IT Solutions, according to the page's transparency section.
Rappler looked for pages on the Meta Ad Library with ads that were paid for by WFPH, and found that WFPH also funded ads for 25 other Facebook pages that did not bear the "Pilipinas Today" name:
Who are the other disclosed funders? Looking again into Pilipinas Today-named pages on the Meta Ad Library, Rappler found 20 more funding entities aside from WFPH:
Rappler also looked for pages on the Meta Ad Library where these entities paid for ads. We found that they also funded ads for other "news" pages, political and entertainment pages, and the following:
In total, this whole network of funders linked to Pilipinas Today has spent at least P189 million on political ads since August 2020, spread across more than 40,000 Facebook ad campaigns.
Jabal flagged not only the amount spent but also the scale and capability of Pilipinas Today-linked activity, which he said, requires sophisticated systems and resources in place including data, infrastructure, strategies, and manpower that "suggests a professional communications operation rather than a casual social media presence."
"This is not something that emerges organically. It reflects careful planning, massive resources, and long-term execution," he said.
(To be concluded) — with reports by Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com
Coding for this layout was done with the assistance of AI.