YouTube has emerged as a new battleground for opposing political camps to spread disinformation in the run-up to Jan. 11’s presidential election, said Wang Tai-li (王泰俐), a professor in National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Journalism.
In a letter to the editor published yesterday in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), Wang wrote that while Facebook and Twitter have closed accounts created to spread false information, YouTube has become the new battleground to disseminate false opinions and information.
The host of YouTube channel “Under the Foot of Yushan” (玉山腳下) was determined to be a China National Radio journalist by the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, Wang wrote.
Photo: Reuters
The host, “Sida,” spoke Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent, while his gestures and humorous take on politics made him appear to be much like other Taiwanese Internet celebrities, she said.
Even though the identity of the channel’s host was exposed on Oct. 22 and no new content has been uploaded to the channel since then, YouTube has not removed the false content, which means people can still access it, Wang said.
The channel is not an isolated case, as her research shows that more than 10 YouTube channels were created from August to last month that focused on attacking the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), she said.
Some of the channels, which have more than 10,000 subscribers, are actually content farms run by Chinese nationals and have simplified Chinese subtitles available, she said.
To make videos, the creators simply use photographs collected from news media and turn them into groundless accusations targeting specific politicians, Wang said.
People are more susceptible to information that is presented in audiovisual form, she said, adding that the popularity of such channels surged because they focus on major reports in the news.
“They combine false information and plausible images, repackage them and turning them into video clips. They take advantage of the myth that ‘to see is to believe’ by massively disseminating false information in the run-up to the election,” Wang said.
Even though international news media have extensively covered Beijing’s attempts to influence politics in Taiwan through false reports, most Taiwanese are unaware that it is happening here, she said.
Survey results show that many Taiwanese do not believe or are indifferent to the infiltration of false reports from sources outside the country, Wang said, adding that they think “fake news” is a tactic employed by politicians to hurt their opponents.
People’s indifference to the gravity of the issue has made YouTube a hotbed for rumors and a new battleground for false information about Jan. 11’s election, she said.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)