False news alert: Taiwan faces misinformation as COVID rises Social media news

Taipei, Taiwan – Rinse and swallow your mouth with warm water for 30 minutes to allow stomach acid to kill COVID-19. Regular hot baths will also prevent you from getting the virus.

Here are some tips given on it seven-minute audio clip Tsai Pi-ru is a Taiwanese lawmaker circulating on the LINE social media messaging app last week.

It comes with a note that accompanies traditional Chinese: “Very important! Listen to the whole thing! Tsai Pi-ru is sharing (information), I heard it twice, as your reference. “

The audio clip and tips have both been fake and Tsai, a trained nurse who has volunteered in pandemic hospitals, has quickly gone to discover them. But messages like this have abounded on Taiwan’s social media since the island was reported still the most serious occurrence COVID-19 began earlier this month.

“Since May 12 (the day after Taiwan declared community transmission) there has been a lot of misinformation trying to cause panic in Taiwan locally,” said Puma Shen, director of DoubleThink Labs, a Taipei-based NGO. monitors misinformation and digital surveillance.

Disinformation campaigns have taken on different appearances over the past month, he said.

They first appeared on Twitter accounts, then on individual and group chats on Youtube and LINE. After that, voice messages from members of Taiwan’s elite began to appear.

In recent days, fake messages from news sites such as the left-wing Liberty Times and the pro-democracy Hong Kong publication Apple Daily have also been posted on Facebook pages aimed at animal lovers and supporters of President Tsai Ing-wen, who secretly hired COVID-19 and other political elites. Shen said.

Along with the fake news, along with what Shen calls “propaganda,” there are claims like China has offered to sell its COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan, which has struggled to get enough doses for 23 million people in the past year. the home vaccine will open this summer.

Sowing discord and panic

While there are no new disinformation campaigns in Taiwan regularly targeted by Chinese oiled propaganda machines and local aides, the latest COVID-19 campaign has serious health consequences.

Over the weekend, Deputy Interior Minister Chen Tsung-yen said the president’s health messages were “really vicious fake news” that was a “cognitive war” against Taiwanese.

“Compared to last year, this year’s misinformation is worse and more serious and is one of the reasons to scare people,” Robin Lee told MyGoPen, an English name with an independent site for checking events in Taiwan, similar to the Taiwanese pronunciation of “Don’t Lie”.

Taiwanese society has been particularly fake over the past month, after a successful one-and-a-half years after the virus was successfully contained, undergoing its first national blockade.

Although daily cases range from 200 to 300 – low compared to neighbors like Japan – the incidence is the most severe and there has been a significant loss of morale in some cases.

Last year, Taiwan spent more than 250 days without a single local coronavirus case, and by the end of April, the number of local cases was about 1,200, roughly around 1,200 thanks to an aggressive contact tracing program and a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

However, the latest outbreak has been linked to China Airlines national carrier pilots – they must be in their forties – and the government has closed schools across the island for the first time since early 2020 and called on residents to work. from home when possible.

Fake island news

When the fast-paced resorts sprang up around Taiwan and came back to buy panic, as they cleaned up the instant noodle sections of many grocery stores, fake news also returned. This time, however, many of the posts and messages are more compelling.

Previously, fake news and propaganda messages from China were easily discernible: simplified Chinese (used on the mainland) would occasionally be introduced, or it would contain words that the Taiwanese themselves would find strange. This time, however, I found the new message cache to be much more compelling.

A new wave of audio messages funded by Chinese government agencies is rounding out. According to a 2020 report by the U.S. cybersecurity company Recorded Future, local Taiwanese are paid between $ 730 and $ 1,460 a month to produce social media posts — close to the average monthly salary in the city — to write and voice these scripts.

As Facebook struggles with misinformation and fake news, viral messages have migrated to LINE, YouTube, Instagram, and PTT, the Taiwanese version of Reddit. The latest messages have been directed at COVID-19, but they have also taken on Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election and then Tsai’s second term as president.

Zongchaik, the CDC’s Shiba Inu pet, reminds residents that they need to maintain social distance and wear face masks to control the COVID-19 epidemic.

Much, but not all, of this work has been linked to the United States Department of Labor’s work, the Communist Youth League, and an independent army of Internet trolls, according to the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Research.

Some of them are produced by Taiwanese, who may have close ties to China, who own the island, or who don’t like the Tsai administration, CSIS said.

Shen of DoubleThink Labs said the videos were found mainly on content farms exploited by ethnic Chinese in Malaysia.

Nice attack

MyGoPen and the Taiwan FactCheck Center are just two organizations working to scare off misinformation campaigns, uncover fake news on their websites and then share information on social media accounts.

The Centers for Disease Control offers live daily afternoon press conferences on multiple platforms to inform Taiwanese of the latest statistics and health protocols, but has also focused on humor and memes to address misinformation.

The campaign has been a success for Zongchai, a Shiba Inu pet dog from the Centers for Disease Control. Zongchai regularly appears in CDC posts about the latest case figures and practical advice, such as the correct length for social distance: that is, the length of three Shiba Inus aligned from nose to nose.

Despite the good news, the posts are appreciative of Taiwan’s nice memes, where Chiang Kai-shek, an authoritarian Taiwanese authority, gave him a cartoon treatment in his party’s Kuomintang, LINE posts.

Zongchai’s pigeon pet, which regularly announces changes in Taiwan’s travel restrictions, is part of the “2-2-2” response to misinformation: a 20-minute response with 200 words and a “pre-humorous” rumor ”.

# 卫 福 编 报 报 ⏲Writing time: 2021.5.24
❗The Internet Center continues to be the “alleged massive burnout of Wanhua pneumonia” on the Internet: people who intend to spread fake media websites ❗https://t.co/x41SBDNMyG pic.twitter.com/eDgODga5FV

– Taiwan MOHW (@MOHW_Taiwan) May 24, 2021

(Translation: Message of 21/5/2021. ‘Presumed burning of corpses due to Wanhua pneumonia’. False information has been published on the website)

The so-called “meme engineering” is about “sharing the message in such a fun way that you just want to share it,” digital minister Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister, told the French Foundation for Strategic Research in April last year.

But every time Shiba Inu is published by the CDC, another false message appears.

Earlier this week, MyGoPen spread the rumor that the U.S. had so many extra doses of vaccine where cats and dogs began to be inoculated. Another message is that Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is only 29.5 percent effective despite scientific data efficiency over 90 percent the original virus and newly created variants

One thing is for sure: while Taiwan fights furiously to thwart this latest wave of infection, it will work twice to punish fake memes.