The National Communications Commission (NCC) should propose a draft bill on digital communication to ensure that social media platforms have transparent mechanisms to review online content, legislators and media experts said on Tuesday last week.
The call came after the official YouTube channel of the Golden Horse Award-winning Hong Kong documentary Revolution of Our Times (時代革命), which tells the stories of the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and 2020, was shut down for six hours the day before the film’s premiere on Feb. 25, due to an alleged influx of complaints over its content.
The documentary’s official fan page on Facebook was reportedly suppressed and not appearing in searches of the film’s title.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) said that social media companies often claim they have no way of verifying the authenticity of the content on their platforms whenever they are asked to remove disinformation, allowing it to spread on the Internet.
However, they also often block content without disclosing the standards they use, he said.
“We ask social media companies to disclose the standards they use to review content on their platforms,” he said.
The NCC last year unveiled the legal framework of a draft act, which would require Internet service providers to disclose their review procedures, but it did not set a timeline for its completion, he said.
Platform operators have the power to control speech freedom, raising questions of whether politicians or political parties can take advantage of the situation to manipulate public opinion, said National Taipei University of Technology associate professor Christy Chiang (江雅綺), representing the Taiwan Law and Technology Association.
Professional Technology Temple (PTT) founder Ethan Tu’s (杜奕瑾) Facebook page was banned for using a profile cover picture of the Ukrainian national flag, said attorney Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎), representing the Taiwan Forever Association legal reform group.
A US court ruling required Facebook to make public its content review standards and offer users a series of remedial procedures, he said, adding that Taiwan does not yet have such regulations.
“Companies have corporate responsibilities, and the government is obligated to oversee them and ensure that speech freedom is protected,” he said.
Facebook censors speech, as witnessed in the case with the documentary, DPP Legislator Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) said, adding that this fuels social division.
“The soon-to-be-established Department of Digital Development should help rectify these problems, whether preventing the spread of disinformation or making Facebook’s algorithm open and transparent,” he said.
Free speech is important to democracy, and Facebook’s censorship must not exceed domestic laws, DPP Legislator Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵) cited Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as saying, adding that Su has instructed government agencies to make legal revisions soon.
The Fair Trade Commission should support consumers by requiring platforms to disclose their suppression algorithms and not apply them arbitrarily, Lin said.
Facebook has such great power in Taiwan because the country has long allowed overseas digital platforms to benefit from regulations without taking responsibility for their actions, said Shen Jung-chin (沈榮欽), an assistant professor at the School of Administrative Studies of Atkinson Faculty at York University in Canada.
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that Beijing was trying to “annex” Taiwan, while China said its recent series of drills near Taiwan are aimed at combating the “arrogance” of separatist forces. The Ministry of National Defense earlier this month said that it had observed dozens of Chinese fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, operating nearby. The increased frequency of China’s military activities has raised the risk of events “getting out of hand” and sparking an accidental clash, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said last week. Asked about the spurt
Noting that researchers have found that 85 China-based blogs and accounts were spreading a conspiracy theory that a US “meteorological weapon” had caused recent fires in Hawaii, political observers in Taiwan said the nation also needs to be vigilant of Beijing employing similar disinformation campaigns against Taiwan. The untrue content concerning Hawaii was written in 15 languages and disseminated across a myriad of platforms including Facebook, YouTube and X, a report published in Gizmodo said, citing NewsGuard, an online news content ranker. The effort represented the most expansive Chinese informational operation to be uncovered by NewsGuard to date, Gizmodo said. The conspiracy theory
RSS