MANILA, Philippines – A Senate hearing on Tuesday, July 1 examined how online extremist networks recruit vulnerable young people following the fatal Tacloban school shooting, with experts describing a multi-stage grooming process that extends far beyond violent video games and into encrypted messaging platforms and online communities.

Senator Risa Hontiveros named a group called “764” that has links to grooming, leading to at-risk children committing violent crimes or being lured to sextortion schemes. It has been designated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation as a “national security threat,” and a “terrorist group” by Canada. In the Philippines, it potentially could be one of the groups that influenced the school shooting in Tacloban.

This was the first time that the government or authorities identified a specific group to online grooming tied to nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), a loose online ecosystem that authorities say exploits children through psychological manipulation before encouraging acts of violence — an ecosystem that includes 764.

During the hearing, lawmakers heard testimony from psychologists, law enforcement officials, cybersecurity experts, and open-source intelligence researchers, and also explored possible legislative responses, including stronger age regulations for games, improved platform accountability, and broader measures targeting online grooming rather than violent content alone.

While NVE was a focus, psychologist Dr. Liane Alampay told senators that youth violence develops through multiple, interacting factors rather than a single cause. “There is a pathway to violence… it’s not one time, one cause. There’s a backdrop, there’s a history, there are developmental issues, there’s context before they commit the violent action,” she said.

While she said age restrictions and game regulations “have some merit,” Alampay warned they cannot replace active parental involvement. “We could ban at some level or regulate games… but we have to do a better job as adults and as parents to engage with our children as best as we can in what they do online,” she said.

The Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG) said investigators have conducted 17 rescue operations involving 24 minors since October last year. According to police, all of the rescued children identified themselves as members of what authorities called the “True Crime Community,” where violent content is shared and discussed online.

Police said they have identified the “True Crime Community,” “No Lives Matter,” and the “764” network as interconnected online subcultures characterized by coercion, self-harm, exploitation of minors, and glorification of violence, and motivated by NVE.

Groomers, investigators said, first befriend vulnerable children through gaming communities before moving conversations to encrypted platforms such as Discord, Telegram, Instagram, and Snapchat, where manipulation intensifies.

Three layers of risk

Cybersecurity expert Angel Redoble described what he called three “layers of risk”: initial contact through online games or social media; recruitment into private communities; and then psychological manipulation involving coercion, blackmail, and escalating violence.

The groomers know who to target. Redoble said that aside from online games, they lurk in group chats in mental health communities, and in TikTok subcultures such as so-called “e-girl” communities — young women that combine anime, kpop, goth and emo fashion.

Echoing popular sentiment from gamers online, Redoble stressed that the games themselves are not the principal driver. “It’s not the game… it’s the perpetrators or the predators in the game that’s really changing our children,” he told lawmakers, describing the phenomenon as “cyber-enabled cognitive grooming.”

Redoble also cautioned that banning a single game would have limited impact, noting that tech savvy users can merely circumvent bans. Groomers could also just switch to different platforms to reach targets.

Open-source intelligence researcher Bret Morales claimed he had infiltrated the 764 network, describing how recruiters in Roblox and Minecraft would establish contact by techniques such as offering cheats, in-game items, or friendship to catch a target’s attention, before moving conversations to Discord or Telegram, where grooming continued. Morales also claimed his investigation found both foreign and Filipino participants operating within the network.

The cybersecurity advocacy group Deep Web Konek likewise described what they said were initiation processes recovered from conversations with alleged members, involving criminal acts such as home robberies as a form of initiation. The groomers would require a video recording of the crime, which would then be used as blackmail once the groomers coerce the target into committing an escalating series of crimes.

The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) also defended its temporary blocking of the game GoreBox as a way to pre-empt further violence, saying the decision was not based on the belief that violent games directly cause violence.

“We cannot simply focus or isolate games as being the culprit,” CICC Executive Director Aboy Paraiso told senators, explaining that authorities instead feared that there may be other members of the same extremist network within the game that could use the platform to coordinate further attacks following the Tacloban shooting.

Protective mechanisms

The hearing also turned to possible legislation. Lawmakers discussed strengthening age-rating systems for games, requiring better parental controls, and exploring measures that would compel online platforms to respond more aggressively to extremist grooming and recruitment.

Committee chair Senator Risa Hontiveros said the framework presented during the hearing could help lawmakers determine where government interventions should be placed to set up “protective mechanisms at each layer or in each stage” to keep children’s online and offline spaces safe and not used “by malign actors as pathways to violence or scenes of crime, instead of the safe spaces they were originally meant to be.”

At the hearing, it came to be understood that NVE has considerable influence in pushing children to commit violent acts, and that these networks are already operating in the Philippines. It also does acknowledge that the shooting was also the result of many other factors such as mental health concerns, parental guidance, and the protections, or the lack thereof, in our digital spaces. – Rappler.com