Officials should look into the source of funding for pro-China Taiwanese online streamers and content creators, to reduce the amount of propaganda and disinformation they produce for Beijing, a researcher said yesterday.
China targets young people and the grassroots level of organizations through key opinion leaders, who are funded indirectly by Beijing through donations to their online streams, National Taiwan University assistant professor Puma Shen (沈伯洋) said.
The streams generally discuss socially contentious issues from a pro-China perspective, Shen said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Time
Streaming platforms operating in Taiwan should be required to disclose the sources of donations, particularly if they come from other countries, he said.
“China’s mindset is certainly that it is better to buy Taiwan, rather than to attack Taiwan,” Shen said.
Chinese officials would prefer to see Taiwan sign a peace agreement or surrender, which would be the lowest-cost option for them, he said.
In the past, China would spread disinformation through traditional media platforms, but now favors social media, and has been known to fabricate footage using audio dubbing, he said.
“In the past, Beijing had a team of writers who would spread fake news on China-based Web sites, but that had little impact, because Taiwanese would not visit those sites,” he said.
“After Facebook became popular, Beijing bought Taiwanese Facebook pages, but that also had little impact, so in the past few years it began hiring Taiwanese to spread content for it,” Shen said.
“From the perspective of freedom of speech, it is difficult to limit such content through legislation, but some foreign countries require YouTube to disclose the source of donations to live streams,” Shen said.
“This way it would at least be transparent and viewers could see that the money is coming from China,” he said.
If the source of funds is considered too sensitive, the platform could at least display the currency used to make the donations, he added.
“However, even if that information is revealed, some Taiwanese will question why getting information from China is a problem,” he said.
“This is a problem of insufficient self-awareness and insufficient awareness about who the enemy is,” he added.
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