Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by komali2 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

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…

That's why the free press is imperative. It sort of "lends confidence" to anything the government puts out. It keeps them honest, because they know they'll be torn a new one if they put out falsehoods.

The USA technically has this as well but the existence of entertainment shows billing themselves as news, such as "Fox News," has found a way around this system - foment distrust of everyone BUT "your side" for a full generation, and no amount of fact checking will unseat your viewers' biases.

Taiwan doesn't have this problem yet, but it is a very small place compared to the USA, and as the article indicates its free press is very young. I'm very curious how they'd handle the uprising of an organization like Fox or Breitbart.

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

#32

Post by komali2 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #28

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" propaganda (n.) information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. " If the Taiwanese government ministries were putting out information _of a misleading or slanted nature_ in their official capacity, the press and public would rightly call them out on it.

But the minister herself indicates the government did just that in the past Beside, if the press and public could and would call out government propaganda (which according to the minister is pretty much indistinguishable from disinformation) why would they need the government to pre-empt and counter it if it's easy to spot?

I think because the Taiwanese government is taking the "responsible for public safety and security" role to a natural conclusion for the 21st century - fake news is dangerous, the government is doing its role to combat that.

The free press still exists and can fact check away. And, since Taiwan is democratic, if a minister takes the piss, the press can report on it, and the public can elect someone else.

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

#33

Post by komali2 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

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

We're moving there soon so I'll preemptively put my hand up. Feel free to email me, or pop a link to some means of communication and I'll hop in!

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

#34

Post by nine_k » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #7

There's an attitude in the United States that any and all legal restrictions are "bad for business" and should be rejected out of hand. I think this article offers a counterpoint: even with the restrictions the article describes, these social media companies still find it worthwhile to be in the market and to invest staff and tools to work within the law. One of government's core jobs is to regulate the boundaries wi…

Any restriction, well, restricts the space of available business moves.

OTOH not every restriction is going to ruin a business, or even affect its bottom line materially. Certain businesses can even ask for a restriction if the restriction limits them much less than it limits their competition.

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

#35

Post by NotPaidToPost » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

w8vY7ER wrote: post #27

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would posit that this differs _significantly_ as it's being done with transparency and the motives for it are being clearly expressed by those pursuing the efforts. This stands in stark contrast to the assumed and obviously nefarious motives of those responsible for the disinformation. What better approach, I wonder?

You don't seem to really be contradicting my point. You're just assuming that the 'good guys' don't lie while the others are the 'bad guys' who obviously do lie.

There are indeed fighting propaganda with counter-propaganda, which is an age old strategy. They do seem to have adapted it for our era of instant communication and social media.

Now, working out the facts in any given situation is not always easy. Everyone tends to spin things, or to omit things, or to simply make things up...

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

#36

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #28

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" propaganda (n.) information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. " If the Taiwanese government ministries were putting out information _of a misleading or slanted nature_ in their official capacity, the press and public would rightly call them out on it.

But the minister herself indicates the government did just that in the past Beside, if the press and public could and would call out government propaganda (which according to the minister is pretty much indistinguishable from disinformation) why would they need the government to pre-empt and counter it if it's easy to spot?

> But the minister herself indicates the government did just that in the past

In that more autocratic era, the people who called out the government would have been arrested and imprisoned. That has now changed and that the public and press are now more freely allowed to challenge what is being said by their government.

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

#37

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

suiting wrote: post #2

Wiki page of Audrey Tang: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang She also has many very inspiring talks on slideshare about open source software.

One of her projects, EtherCalc, is my preferred spreadsheet software of choice. So it's a bit of a context shift to see political interviews! But her position on combating disinformation without censorship seems pretty on-point, and where I'd really like to see the conversation shift here.

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

#38

Post by dictum » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #22

komali2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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. Totally agreed. The sentiment appears on HN regularly and it's extremely annoying when there's such an obvious counterexample.

Interestingly, the sentiment doesn't appear only when China is discussed. There are a number of comments that boil down to "democracy has failed" or "democracy will fail in the next few years" (usually when automation is discussed).

My hunch is that it's a cornerstone of neoreactionary theory that is slowly seeping into public discourse.

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

#39

Post by komali2 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #35

w8vY7ER wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would posit that this differs _significantly_ as it's being done with transparency and the motives for it are being clearly expressed by those pursuing the efforts. This stands in stark contrast to the assumed and obviously nefarious motives of those responsible for the disinformation. What better approach, I wonder?

You don't seem to really be contradicting my point. You're just assuming that the 'good guys' don't lie while the others are the 'bad guys' who obviously do lie. There are indeed fighting propaganda with counter-propaganda, which is an age old strategy. They do seem to have adapted it for our era of instant communication and social media. Now, working out the facts in any given situation is not always easy. Everyone…

One difference is that they can be held accountable for their actions, something that doesn't apply to freedomeagle69.facebook any more than it applies to people working at the PRC ministry of "cultural well-being."

Doesn't that make a difference?

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

#40

Post by gdhbcc » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #21

> Once they do that, Facebook promises, by June, that this will inform the Facebook's algorithm so that it will stop being preferred to show on people's newsfeed, but it's not censorship. If you look specifically for that friend, that post is still there, but they have a warning that says it's already fact-checked as false. That'd be very interesting if the Taiwanese government was in direct communication with Facebo…

It is censorship though. Part of the job of the censor is to determine whether the likelyhood some information will be seen, justifies the censorship in question.

You can read the censor reports from the estado novo for example, and in many of them the censor declined to ban the book because even though it was objectively illegal, it would naturally be a book that wouldn't be sought after by the general public, and so only those who knew about it would look for it.

I'd say this is an even more pernicious form of censorship because you dont know what you dont know.