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Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

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Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#11

Post by NotPaidToPost »

mc32 wrote: post #9

Tang speaks of propaganda and disinformation and how historic propaganda by the government is more or less indistinguishable from disinformation at least by a significant segment of the population. ...But she says that to combat disinformation campaigns the government ministries are in charge of pre-empting disinformation by disseminating their version of information... But that seems like a contradiction. Government…

Absolutely, it is simply fighting the adversary's propaganda with your own.

Plus ca change...

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#12

Post by eric_khun »

is anyone interested in an hn meetup in taipei? found it hard to like-minded tech focused people, talking English, that dont mind a beer from time to time, and would like to talk about the last google cloud downtime or it's current side project

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#13

Post by cryoshon »

>Each of our ministries now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, they're in charge to make within 60 minutes an equally or more convincing narrative.

a very interesting approach that seems to be working for taiwan. i think that European countries may be able to implement something similar with good results. of course, it relies on the government ministries being uniformly oriented against disinformation -- something that we in the US cannot manage, as many elements in our government benefit from certain kinds of disinformation.

notably, for all its merits, the taiwanese system still positions the government in an information vetting capacity, which may lead some to think that it is merely another system of propaganda or quasi-censorship. i don't have enough context to tell whether this is the case or not, but at the core the entire taiwanese plan relies on the ministries as being able to tell the difference between disinformation and facts. in other words, it's fundamentally a critical-thinking based system.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#14

Post by rocky1138 »

eric_khun wrote: post #12

is anyone interested in an hn meetup in taipei? found it hard to like-minded tech focused people, talking English, that dont mind a beer from time to time, and would like to talk about the last google cloud downtime or it's current side project

I wish I was in Taipei to come hang out. I love it there. Actually, Hualien is my fave but shhh don't tell Taipei!

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#15

Post by turk73 »

iamnothere wrote: post #6

> First, before a propaganda campaign or disinformation spreads, we usually observe that there is a point where they are doing some kind of limited testing or A/B testing, and that's before it became really popular. It's just testing the meme, the variation, to see whether it would go viral, so to speak. I have definitely seen this happen in real time. Suggest it publicly and you'll be accused of being Alex Jones, bu…

I can tell you all about how the propaganda campaign to justify the Iraq invasion was pulled off. They had agents on message boards and all over the Internet even back then. They even drafted the comedian, Dennis Miller, to go on late night tv shows multiple times and push the propaganda there. I was astounded that very few people were talking about what a sell job it all was.

Just to refresh everyone's memory: Saddam didn't have WMDs. It was a total put up.

We need to somehow get these intelligence agencies and their deep state buddies put back in a box.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#16

Post by komali2 »

dominicl wrote: post #3

Great approach, and a smart minister. Living in Taipei I can only congratulate the country for this lively and young democracy. If you consider moving to Asia, Taiwan is the most forward, fair and open society.

I'll second that.

I was there during the sunflower protests. Student activist sat in the parliament building for a couple days. The entire country rallied to their cause. Restaurants sent food, small shops (Taiwanese equivalent of Bodega) donated water, businesses sent pillows and blankets.

If you tried that in China,you'd be sent to a xinjiang reeducation camp. At the very least.

A common PRC propagandic trope is that the ten thousand years of Chinese history doesn't lend the culture to democracy. That the culture is simply incompatible with the concept - the people need autocracy. Taiwan is a shining and obvious example otherwise.

Not to mention the absurdly low cost of living, one of the best public transit systems in the world, socialized healthcare, strong education system churning out competent professionals, and mountains... My partner and I are preparing a semi permanent move in the next few years.

Edit: if anyone is curious, I documented my cost of living there back in 2014. Fair warning, I did so as a much younger, relatively naive dude, but the data's there anyway: http://ablate.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-does-it-cost-to-live...

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#17

Post by aianus »

eric_khun wrote: post #12

is anyone interested in an hn meetup in taipei? found it hard to like-minded tech focused people, talking English, that dont mind a beer from time to time, and would like to talk about the last google cloud downtime or it's current side project

I will be in Taipei in the second half of June and would be happy to meet up. My email/keybase are in my profile.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#19

Post by eric_khun »

dominicl wrote: post #3

Great approach, and a smart minister. Living in Taipei I can only congratulate the country for this lively and young democracy. If you consider moving to Asia, Taiwan is the most forward, fair and open society.

Taiwan, is trying really hard to attract foreign talents. If you're interested, check their Golden Card Permit. It's a visa+redisent card allowing you to stay and work for anyone there up to 3years. The only requirement is to justify of a salary of 160k NTD/month(~USD 5210/month), anywhere in the world, if you don't earn that, try the skills application[1].

I'll not talk about all the positive things about Taiwan, just read the other comments.

[1] https://foreigntalentact.ndc.gov.tw/en/

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#20

Post by CharlesColeman »

For a very brief time, late in the Cold War, the US State Department had a very shoestring team called the "Active Measures Working Group" who worked to investigate and counteracting disinformation. They had some success, such as uncovering the Soviet origins of the lie that the US created AIDS in a military lab, but the effort was wound down after the Soviet Union fell:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Measures_Working_Group

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-d... (very good video series, highly recommend for anyone interested in disinformation)

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-long-history-of-russia...

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