Media reports alleging that President William Lai (賴清德) used vulgar language during a news conference was disinformation intended to harm the president’s reputation, the Presidential Office said yesterday.
The rebuttal came days after Lai on Saturday evening at a news conference responded to a reporter’s request for comment on Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) calls to release Taiwan People’s Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) from detention, where he is being held as part of a corruption investigation.
Some social media influencers and pundits over the following days alleged that using lipreading Lai could be seen cursing away from the microphone.
Photo: CNA
Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said the office condemns the reports as fabricated with the malicious intent of damage Lai’s character.
Numerous reporters can testify that he did not curse in the news conference, which was broadcast live, she said.
A cybersecurity expert said the story was tailor-made to spread rapidly through social media with the objective of being reported in traditional media.
The source of the story originated from “zombie accounts” on the platform Threads, they said.
A user with the handle kbkbkb0404 wrote on Threads that Lai’s cursing could be discerned using closed-captioning generated with artificial intelligence, while another user with the account henrysnight wrote that Lai glared at the Television Broadcasts Satellite reporter who asked the question.
The kbkbkb0404 account had been silent for a year, while the henrysnight account had just 57 upvotes, suggesting the accounts were part of a manipulation campaign, the expert said.
TV pundits screenshotted and aired posts, they said, adding that Beijing-owned content farm TaiwanHot was notably among the first to share the report.
Multiple problematic accounts also boosted the story on Taiwan’s popular online bulletin board system Professional Technology Temple, in patterns suggestive of a coordinated campaign, they said.
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