Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest online bulletin board system, announced over the weekend that it would stop reviewing new user applications to the system, because of a problem that the system administrator referred to as a “loose registration process.”
Made late on Friday night, the announcement added that halting registrations would not affect those whose applications were under review.
Another announcement would be made when the bulletin board was once again accepting user applications, the system administrator said.
Netizens speculated about what the reasons for the move were.
Some said the suspension was intended to prevent political candidates from using the bulletin board system to spread their agendas for the nine-in-one elections in November.
Others said it had to do with Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), director-general of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, having committed suicide on Friday, allegedly because of harsh criticism over how the branch handled tourists stranded in Osaka following Typhoon Jebi.
Those accusing PTT articles of spreading fake news were themselves spreading fake news, PTT founder Ethan Du (杜奕瑾) said on Facebook on Saturday.
The Chinese media were the first to report that Beijing sent 15 tour buses to Kansai International Airport, he said, adding that the Chinese-language Apple Daily and Sanlih TV News picked up the story of the alleged event, highlighting it with sensationalized headlines.
Netizens exposed the report as fake news within two hours, with the Apple Daily’s follow-up story being forwarded to the PTT forum on Japan travel, Du said.
Forum user “GuRuGuRu” criticized the report based on personal experience, he added.
“The media then claimed that the PTT forum discussion was the source of the fake news. Consequently, we took the report down the day it was published,” Du said, adding that the PTT users who had actually exposed the fake news had been condemned as its perpetrators.
“I am more curious as to why this fake news persists without anyone coming forward to update or revise it,” Du said. “Is it because they want people to reread the report and blame the PTT system all over again?”
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to