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

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

#111

Post by f00_ » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #46

I don't know if it's the same person, but I believe I may have spoken to Tang about a draft of work she did in the POSA book about EtherCalc. I can understand from just that interaction how she became digital minister. I have never had someone parse and respond to an email so thoroughly or had a better technical discussion in my life. And the work she did on that project scaling EtheCalc with Node and LiveScript, and…

>making it easy to flag propaganda in apps and then blocking it as she describes is in fact building in a type of censorship.

Devotion, a small Taiwanese horror game, is an example of people abusing these types of control on steam

>Devotion, which came under fire over the weekend because of the presence of a piece of art that appears to mock Chinese president Xi Jinping. That quickly led to a massive review-bombing campaign (that has now bled over into Devotion's predecessor, Detention)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18239937/taiwanese-horror...

https://www.pcgamer.com/taiwanese-horror-game-devotion-has-b...

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

#112

Post by siruncledrew » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #77

komali2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fair, "entertainment as news" covers the spectrum— The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight are absolutely in that category as well. Of course, those are also a few hours a week rather than a 24hr barrage, and I suspect that a greater proportion of their viewers understand that their mission is to generate laughs, if necessary at the expense of a total commitment to the facts.

"Entertainment as News" fits a lot of what people consume.

News Business contains overlapping elements of Show Business. Production, post-production, dramatization, acting, advertising, storytelling, actors, agents, a whole lot of money, etc. Both are sometimes owned by the same networks and parent corporations too. There's a difference between "news as a business" and just "news".

If a news business were to broadcast plaintext news with only raw pictures, videos, and audio, and bare-minimum graphics to the masses, then their broadcast would be super boring to the layperson and not grab people's attention the same way explosions, special effects, and hypothetical opinions would. As the saying goes, "it's just business". (Imagine a content comparison of 'weather.gov' vs. 'The Weather Channel' for context).

Entertainment is the sauce businesses add on top of the pasta that is the news to make their product more appealing to consumers.

Now, politics is the most popular flavor addition to news (and has been for the last few years). News Businesses have self-politicized their news products because that is the "entertainment" trend of news that is a hot seller. This is more than just "news" - it's finding ways to innovate facts and opinions to sell a particular "product" to a particular demographic.

Whether it's the government or a corporation, someone in a suit sitting in an armchair at the top is going to favor pushing the version that benefits themselves the most. Don't just hate or like sources blindly because they say "we are the good guys!"[1]

[1] "Are we the baddies?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU

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

#113

Post by chatmasta » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

laughinghan wrote: post #89

ilaksh wrote: post #46

I don't know if it's the same person, but I believe I may have spoken to Tang about a draft of work she did in the POSA book about EtherCalc. I can understand from just that interaction how she became digital minister. I have never had someone parse and respond to an email so thoroughly or had a better technical discussion in my life. And the work she did on that project scaling EtheCalc with Node and LiveScript, and…

> However, communications from the government to counter other communications identified as disinformation are government propaganda. If they are not identified as such, then they have the same problem as the original disinformation. Yes, that's why you need an independent media, as mentioned in the article: "The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narratives and then do a balanced report." > maki…

Would any of this be a problem if social sites would restore chronological news feeds?

99% of these “problems” stem from newsfeeds that are algorithmic rather than simply chronological.

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

#114

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

autarch wrote: post #94

laughinghan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion?

I know Audrey personally from the FOSS community. I had dinner with her in Taiwan a couple years ago and we talked about her new job a bit.

Thanks! That's exactly what we wanted to know.

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

#115

Post by jamesclyeh » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

XuMiao wrote: post #85

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…

In fact, Taiwan has suffered from DPP for many years. The president Tsai has spent quite bit of funding to control the social media. They organize and spread rumors to attack other political figures. Double standard has become the new standard for the government. The laws, the judges, the elections, are controlled by DPP. People in the government, in the media do not care about the truth. They only care about the ide…

Why do you say the laws, the judges, the elections, are controlled by DPP?

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

#116

Post by mistermann » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

turk73 wrote: post #15

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: Sadda…

I'd love to hear as many details about this as you have.

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

#117

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #113

laughinghan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, communications from the government to counter other communications identified as disinformation are government propaganda. If they are not identified as such, then they have the same problem as the original disinformation. Yes, that's why you need an independent media, as mentioned in the article: "The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narratives and then do a balanced report." > maki…

Would any of this be a problem if social sites would restore chronological news feeds? 99% of these “problems” stem from newsfeeds that are algorithmic rather than simply chronological.

First of all, there's a known, deadly problem of disinformation spreading via WhatsApp forwarding [1], and I'm pretty sure WhatsApp notifications are chronological.

But in any case, definitely none of this would be a problem if we got rid of the Internet. What's your point?

Algorithmic newsfeeds benefit social media companies enormously (by increasing engagement) and at least some consumers (I'm not denying they also hurt some consumers). They'll never voluntarily give them up, and banning them would be an extremely oddly specific measure that's probably unconstitutional and definitely has lots of loopholes ("we're not an algorithm newsfeed---we just prioritizing your notifications, like Gmail's Priority Inbox").

They're here to stay. We can fix them or come up with something better that eclipses them, but there's no banning them.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191455/whatsapp-forward...

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

#118

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #102

laughinghan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, communications from the government to counter other communications identified as disinformation are government propaganda. If they are not identified as such, then they have the same problem as the original disinformation. Yes, that's why you need an independent media, as mentioned in the article: "The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narratives and then do a balanced report." > maki…

The problem is you have an authority deciding what supposedly is fact and what is not fact.

And who is that problematic authority? The social network defers to the fact-checkers, of whom there are multiple independent ones, and who should be corroborating the government's story not taking it at face value.

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

#119

Post by chatmasta » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

laughinghan wrote: post #117

chatmasta wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would any of this be a problem if social sites would restore chronological news feeds? 99% of these “problems” stem from newsfeeds that are algorithmic rather than simply chronological.

First of all, there's a known, deadly problem of disinformation spreading via WhatsApp forwarding [1], and I'm pretty sure WhatsApp notifications are chronological. But in any case, definitely none of this would be a problem if we got rid of the Internet. What's your point? Algorithmic newsfeeds benefit social media companies enormously (by increasing engagement) and at least some consumers (I'm not denying they also…

I never suggested banning anything. I'm merely asking questions. But sure, to play devil's advocate, is there some precedent here? Maybe with cigarettes for example?

Nicotine cigarettes benefit tobacco companies enormously (by increasing addiction). They'll never voluntarily give them up, either. Yet we have approaches for dealing with addictive consumables; taxes, health warnings, education, etc. I wonder if similar approaches might work when applied to social media.

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

#120

Post by Zak » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

f00_ wrote: post #111

ilaksh wrote: post #46

I don't know if it's the same person, but I believe I may have spoken to Tang about a draft of work she did in the POSA book about EtherCalc. I can understand from just that interaction how she became digital minister. I have never had someone parse and respond to an email so thoroughly or had a better technical discussion in my life. And the work she did on that project scaling EtheCalc with Node and LiveScript, and…

>making it easy to flag propaganda in apps and then blocking it as she describes is in fact building in a type of censorship. Devotion, a small Taiwanese horror game, is an example of people abusing these types of control on steam >Devotion, which came under fire over the weekend because of the presence of a piece of art that appears to mock Chinese president Xi Jinping. That quickly led to a massive review-bombing c…

Anything that's crowdsourced and likely to be manipulated needs to have a plan for handling coordinated inauthentic activity. I imagine Steam's existing measures are designed more around preventing game developers from using fake positive reviews to promote their games rather than fake negative reviews as a form of censorship.