Unavoidable is the suspicion that those concerned are merely paying cynical lip service to following official rules and regulations for a clean, fair and orderly election.

Insincerity aside, the development neither describes the true picture, especially the challenge from a shadowy and mercenary industry now in high gear this election season.

To cut to the chase, I’m referring to 13,723 political aspirants and partylist groups meeting last week’s deadline for registering their respective online campaign platforms for next year’s midterms.

Formally, the Commission on Election’s (Comelec) new registration rules cover all official social media accounts and pages, websites, podcasts, blogs, vlogs and other internet-based campaign platforms — the campaign machinery of choice of most of the candidates.

Comelec’s rules came after earlier prohibitions on the use of artificial intelligence and internet technologies like “false amplifiers,” coordinated inauthentic behavior and “deepfakes.”

The rules also came after mounting public concerns about online disinformation wreaking havoc on our democracy.

While it’s good that Comelec is finally sort of regulating and setting limits to official digital campaigns, the body nonetheless admits it’s helplessness against the unofficial but potent political weapon now employed in campaigns: trolls for hire.

Nothing better illustrates this helplessness than the poll body removing a key proviso requiring private individuals visibly supporting a candidate to register. The removal was made on “constitutional” grounds since a private individual’s support of a candidate or political group is covered by the freedom of speech and expression.

“That’s where influencers come in,” says Comelec Chairman George Garcia, referring to social media mavens who, in the hierarchic levels of the multi-million-peso unregulated troll industry, are mostly found in the middle.

“There is no law defining who these social media influencers are,” Garcia says, making it impossible to determine if they are being paid to support a candidate or they are merely expressing their support.

Constitutional cover aside, going by past investigations and scholarly studies of the Filipino troll industry, these so-called social media influencers have been exposed as providing “just for the money” content for candidates.

And who channels the “money” to these mid-level influencers with unique skill sets in translating, as one study says, “conceptual strategy into actual posts, actual memes, comments that’ll become viral?” Well, masterminds who never seem to get caught.

In fact, these masterminds — identified years ago as working in advertising, public relations (PR) and even journalism — nowadays still presumably freely pursue their infamous trade.

But why are the masterminds getting a free pass? It’s largely because, as one mastermind proudly confessed in 2022, “there’s no need for us to approach certain politicians. It’s the other way around. They need us more than we need them.”

The monies involved isn’t peanuts either. In 2022, an investigative report showed these masterminds charged P300,000 to P500,000 monthly for a local politician’s “minor social media engagement.”

“Moderate” operations for a “national client,” meanwhile, ranged from P800,000 to a million pesos a month. Rates presumably have gone up this year.

After masterminds and digital influencers, we are left with your common troll, those whom you daily encounter on many social media posts and who usually employ emotional triggers or pick an online fight.

Earning a pittance, these thousands of common trolls engaged in such gig work all over the country are nothing but your digital lumpenproletariat for hire.

Such, in a nutshell, are the formidable challenges the undermanned Comelec is up against, thus it issued the new social media registration rules.

But whether or not Comelec’s new rules prove to be a deterrent to the well-entrenched troll industry remains to be seen.

This early, however, the Comelec is hedging against future blame by stating the bare fact there are no laws regulating social media or curtailing its pronounced abuses.

Recently, a congressional bill was filed to hold accountable disinformation peddlers, troll farms, vloggers, influencers and political candidates for targeted disinformation.

But the bill’s reception so far seems lukewarm, indicating that we individually will need to protect ourselves.