[DECODED] Franco Mabanta, Senate shooting, and two weeks of chaos

It’s been a crazy two weeks since the last Decoded newsletter.

On May 6, news erupted with Franco Mabanta’s arrest the day before. The social media operator was nabbed in Pasig City with four other people, in an entrapment operation triggered by an extortion complaint from former speaker Martin Romualdez.

Rappler and The Nerve have been watching Mabanta even before he founded the Peanut Gallery Media Network (PGMN) in 2024. During the Duterte administration, he was a vocal loyalist who openly attacked mainstream media. He also proudly associated himself with the Dutertes, their allies, and the Marcos family. He was among the central figures of that era’s online propaganda machinery.

[READ: [DECODED] Franco Mabanta and PGMN’s business model]

In our latest Decoded piece, we dissected these details to show how a social media operator built an online following, scaled and formalized his operations through an online network branded with “free speech absolutism,” and called it “journalism” to hide a business model built on selling political outcomes.

We also tracked PGMN’s ad spending and identified the most-mentioned people in their boosted political content since their establishment in 2024. We found that PGMN has used paid amplification to back chosen candidates (even calling them “hand-selected” for the 2025 midterm elections), attack their opponents, and position itself as a political kingmaker.

Mabanta’s Instagram posts show him posing with known pro-Duterte bloggers, including Lorraine Badoy, Mark Lopez, Arnell Ignacio, Mocha Uson, Thinking Pinoy, and Sass Sasot.

Then, just when we thought Philippine political drama had peaked, the Senate had its own episode the week after Mabanta’s arrest.

Rappler reporters Patrick Cruz and Jairo Bolledo gave a rundown of the chaos that broke out on May 13 in the Senate, which was locked down following gunshots inside the building. At the center of it all was Senator Bato dela Rosa, now a fugitive who continues to evade an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity issued by the International Criminal Court for his involvement in the Duterte administration’s bloody drug war.

Chaos erupted online, too, and our researcher Christa Escudero documented how fast disinformation from Congressman Kiko Barzaga spread after the Senate shooting incident.

[READ: Barzaga falsely claims multiple deaths, assassination attempts after Senate shooting]

Barzaga, who has a history of online shitposting, falsely claimed that there were “multiple dead after gunfight” and that it was an assassination attempt against senators in the building.

He eventually deleted his false posts but not before Facebook and TikTok accounts, including Duterte propagandist Krizette Chu, had already screenshot and amplified them across both platforms.

Lorraine Badoy, another Duterte propagandist and notorious red-tagger, also falsely claimed that the incident was an assassination attempt “to change the [Senate] majority.”

[READ: Kiko Barzaga’s playbook: When shitposting becomes a political tool]

These two weeks were a reminder of how fast things move, especially online. It’s understandable if people consuming the news experienced it as a blur of one dramatic development after another, with little time to ask what connected them.

With Decoded, we document the patterns and remind you of the history that gets buried when the news moves this fast.– Rappler.com