[flagged]
> fight (i.e. censor)
Where are you getting this definition?
Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
101–110 of 146 posts
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#102I 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…
The problem is you have an authority deciding what supposedly is fact and what is not fact.
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The people of anywhere should get to decide what they want. I don't dispute this. I dispute people in their comfy first world homes pontificating about how China should have democracy, when they haven't been to China and experienced: 1.) the kinds of problems China faces and 2.) the difficulties facing solving those problems in China It smacks of arrogance and youthful naivety. Yes we have a democracy in the US and…
What are a few specific issues that are unique to China?
Honestly I could name a few things but it's such a massive, complicated place that it's hard to say anything about it. Certainly if you go there and travel around a bit you will learn a lot. You will only scratch the surface but it's a start.
One big issue unique to China is related to fallout from the cultural revolution, which affected a huge number of people. Read this section of the Wiki about education to get some idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Education
Another is the lack of a separation of powers. The geography of China carries a lot of challenges as well. One of the advantages the US had was being able to develop in an extremely protected place in the world. China has had pressure from a wide variety of neighboring states for almost its entire history.
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#104The comparison of disinformation to a virus and proactive counter-messaging to a vaccine understandable. It's also interesting because the words "virus" and "vaccine" only make sense in relationship to the host. In this case, are the people of a country the "host" or just the government in charge?
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would prevent a federal system from working in China?
For one, you'll get the same problems as all the homeless pouring into California, or poorer Central Americans pouring over the border, and the subsequent backlash. Democracies will not support the sort of development model that China has pursued of massive wealth transfer and development of the hinterlands. Developed areas will want to wall themselves off but less developed areas will want populist policies. Add on…
Homeless people aren't pouring into California. Most of the homeless are natives.
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#106>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. why wait? In many situations/events it is very predictable what fake news and disinformation will appear in say the next hours, so it is possible to do totally preventive Truth…
I believe the 60 minutes is the 'max' time to respond, not the 'min' time.
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#107The real nugget in here is their solution for dealing with fake news spreading on private social networks: it needs a centralized list just like with email’s spam problem!
> Back in the early 2000s we, the Internet community, convinced each and every mail operator to add that flag button to its interface so that when you flag that as spam you're essentially donating the signature of this message. It's not involuntary. It's a voluntary donation to a global system called the Spamhaus, the Domain Block List, and so on.
> There's a whole system for that. It's like the email's immune system so that after sufficient people flag it they do a correlation. After they correlated the sender of the spam, once the sender sends another email it still reach the recipient, it's not censorship, but it goes to the junk mail folder so it doesn't waste people's time by default.
> We're developing a very similar system here where people online and other instant message systems, they can forward a suspicious disinformation to a bot. Currently the most popular bot for that is called CoFact, for collaborative fact, but very soon, in June, LINE will build that as its core functionality so all you have to do is to press a message, or a long tap, and then you can flag it as disinformation.
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#108>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 rel…
It's an interesting approach and a good start, but I wouldn't say it is 'working' yet.
I think it would be better if more emphasis was placed on the independent non-government fact checking organizations.
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#109Wiki 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.
omg her omni-talks with civil society groups are amazing. So long but SO CHOCK FULL of information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tc_5bM0zSM
Transcript in case that's quicker: https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Fork-the-government-CES--AeVW9...
She was talking about this article's tactics at Open Government Partnership Summit last week, but mostly emphasized the feline nature of some of the counter-propaganda :) https://twitter.com/audreyt/status/1134532549957394432
And for a look at how she's rockin transparency in gov, check out her log of ALL convos she has with ANY non-gov stakeholders: https://pdis.nat.gov.tw/en/track/
Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship
#110Tang 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…
I don't agree, I think this approach is completely legitimate. Because it is prominent politicians who are spreading this message, it is clear where it is coming from and what the motivations are. It isn't manipulation, like seeding articles with a subtext of some idea or another. It is just, here's the governments view of this issue. And then it seems like the idea is for people to think about that, and they will compare to the other idea.
So everyone, including government leaders, get to share their thoughts, people get to choose what is best. If what was described is actually what happens. In the past, the government ideas would be the only ideas shared.