Spreading disinformation to influence public opinion is wrong, and yet it has always been a part of the politician’s toolkit. Vested interests benefit by it, but its overall effect is to harm democracy.
Disinformation also hurts individuals, often with tragic consequences, such as in the suicide last year of Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), then director-general of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Japan.
When Typhoon Jebi hit Japan on Sept. 4 last year, it forced Kansai International Airport to shut down, stranding thousands of passengers. A fabricated report spread online said that the Chinese embassy in Tokyo sent buses to evacuate Chinese from the airport, and some Internet users criticized the Osaka office for not giving Taiwanese similar assistance.
Su committed suicide only eight days after becoming the target of criticism and Chinese-language media at the time linked his death to the online furor.
Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如) has been accused of directing the spread of false information in defense of Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), which fed the criticism against Su, and the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office has charged Yang with insulting a public official in the discharge of his duties.
It is important to investigate those who spread disinformation — and their handlers. The conflation of disinformation efforts and the suicide, and specifically the opposition’s political weaponization of the tragedy, are deeply problematic.
Asked on Tuesday about Yang’s direction of an “Internet army,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that everyone should condemn such operations, but suggested that all political parties make use of them.
Ko has no mental filter, so it is worth listening to his take on this.
He added that the crucial issue is finding out who was paying Yang in the first place.
It seems that, since the prosecution was announced, people from all parties have entered an orgy of finger-pointing, with allegations of links between Yang and major political figures of all colors and stripes flying around.
Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, immediately posted a video criticizing the use of cyberarmies.
The same day, his running mate, former premier Simon Chang (張善政), said that “to his knowledge,” the Han campaign did not use cyberarmies, and that influencing public opinion to the extent that it drives a man to suicide should be held to moral scrutiny.
Chang said he heard that Yang approached the Han camp last year ahead of the nine-in-one elections, offering her services to sway public opinion, but that she was turned down, as the NT$5 million (US$163,891) cost was deemed “unacceptable.”
After all, Chang said, to maintain an Internet army, you need to replenish “provisions.”
Does this mean that the decisive factor in whether to maintain an “Internet army” is the moral standard or the cost of keeping the “troops” happy? If the Han camp is better financed in the presidential election than it was in the mayoral, would it be more “acceptable” to pay people to distort public opinion?
If there is anything more depressing than a politician resorting to underhanded tactics, it is a politician, from whom the glare of suspicion has momentarily shifted, who says that they would never stoop to such depths.
However, the most egregious example of an attempt to eke political benefit from a personal tragedy was the KMT’s protest in Taipei following the announcement of the case on Tuesday, when KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆), former Taipei deputy mayor Lee Yong-ping (李永萍) and KMT New Taipei City Councilor Chen Ming-yi (陳明義) carried a mock-up coffin emblazoned with Su’s name.
Even for politicians, that was low.
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) took the stage at a protest rally on Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei in support of former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption and embezzlement. Huang told the crowd that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) had sent a message of support the previous day, saying she would be traveling from the south to Taipei: If the protest continued into the evening, she had said, she would show up. The rally was due to end
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
RSS