We did already make some new internal policies this way using this new kind of discussion format.

We already did quite a bit of cases. The case with Uber, the case with closely-held company law, and so on, are all organized in this cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder kind of way of discussion. People are now generally aware of this motive. It’s not yet unknown, but at least I don’t ...

Yeah, it’s very useful. We got buy-in from all the ministries which all recommended one to three people as administration officer, and there is some real policies already being made this way. I’ve been doing this for many years now. Even with the Taiwan administration since late 2014, it’s two ...

Technology is what they call a recursive public or something like that.

The basic ideas are more or less the same. It’s just this newer organizational structure and the technology that informs it, which then shapes the generation of organization, which then shapes the next-generation.

For me, there’s no real difference. I think the main difference is to base participation is not much higher. You don’t have to own expensive computer, modem, or anything like that, anyone can just use this piece of glass to participate, expanse the base.

I don’t think there’s necessarily a difference between my role as a political worker, and my role as a citizen. For me, since I work on free software, free speech, and whatever movements, the original blue ribbon campaign. That was 1995 or something. It was always the same idea of ...

These kind of self-organized mobilization groups across departmental breaking out of silo kind of ways. That’s why we do weekly hackathons. I was just back from one. It was a very lively discussion.

One of kernel machines so that I can install Sandstorm and Docker clusters, and introduce the open-source collaboartion tools, all sorts of collaboration tools into the intranet so that people can collaborate in a way that they know are protected by our cybersecurity team, but nevertheless regain some organizational features.

As a political worker, what I’ve been doing is introducing career public servants to this kind of self-organization and horizontal communication structures. The first thing I did as digital minister, literally, is to recompile the Linux kernel.

The instrumental use at this became a lot of interest, both on the actual tools, like Hackfoldr and so on, that was used during the Sunflower Movement, and also the kind of organization, the multi-centered organization, the people want to start studying or even emulate.

Not just through social media, but also through ad hoc programmed networks that connects diverse groups together using a collaboration, rough consensus-like protocol. That’s been studied extensively, so I will not repeat the results.

I would say that the 2014, and the Sunflower Movement before that and 洪仲丘 Movement before that, demonstrates that the speed of communication and transmission is based on the idea of outrage, motivates people to communicate and form communication structures that are far more effective, at least, regarding their issue ...

We could say that originally, 網軍 had some meaning, and as I said, a security state style of hacker kind of meaning. But then because of its use in election, subsequently lose any meaning whatsoever, and then people just say 網軍 to mean anything, in a way.

It sounds like 網軍, but it also sounds like a person’s name. 婉君 is used sometime mockingly, and Wikipedia list astroturf as the first use of 婉君, but they’re clearly not politically motivated. They’re marketing people.

The idea of one, if look at Wikipedia’s 網軍 term, they actually redirects to 網路特工. That means government hired. There is also 婉君, which I don’t even know how state this in English.

This term currently doesn’t have any definite meaning.

During 2014, because, as you mentioned, Sean Lien and Ko Wen-je both accused each other of additional propaganda, they brought up this term in 網軍. Then afterwards, it lose any meaning whatsoever. Normal astroturfing are sometimes described as 網軍 as well.

Before the 2014 election, it’s mostly used as cyber-arming, which means people who disrupt security infrastructures and so on, which is much more serious. It’s like the cyber-arming kind of stuff.

All they have to do is crafting some memetic device, and then the viral nature of social media will take care of the rest. The people who then spread those news are incidentally 網軍, but they are largely unpaid.

On the other hand, if you classify it based on it must be politically motivated and paid by a certain politician to further their purpose, of course that reduces the amount of people. As I said, it doesn’t have to be a lot of people at the core.

Sure, but even unpaid 網軍 is commonplace. It’s difficult to characterize the nature of the practice, because if you say only people who use automated tools are 網軍, then anyone who even install a plugin is 網軍, right?

Yes.

I’m familiar with that research.

That became their main aim after a lot of back and forth. Because half a million people went to the street, there’s tremendous social support. Eventually, that demand is met, and cases like these are now tried in the civil court. So-called original discoveries that was posted during that time ...

I think there’s a lot of rumors, but there’s a factual basis, which is there is no clarifications and no room for clarifications and for due process if this kind of case is being court martialed instead of tried on the civil court. Eventually, the protesters solidified their ideas, and ...

It’s a bit of both. The main protest was about the lack of transparency because it was a martial court. It happened as a misconduct in the army, so there was a martial court. CCTV sent their related information by the much more confidential martial court law. There’s no need ...

For original gossips, no, there’s no need to prove anything. Of course, people would try to come up with pictures, or with videos, and so on, but if they don’t, it’s considered a norm. The moderators won’t do anything.

It’s the same with gossiping board, is that there’s no need to prove one way or another. The exception is, of course, people would talk around a social object like a news article and provide their own 卦點, which means other things that the reporter did not write. There’s also ...

The original organizers, who didn’t know each other, are all PTT users who eventually met in a café somewhere, but most of the organization on PTT without knowing each other before. It’s not the exception, it’s a norm that there is a lot of these civil society activities that just ...

For example, the quarter-million demonstration back in August, 2013 was started on PTT by a 洪仲丘 case about a military misconduct, a lack of trial, and lack of transparency information of Hung Chung-chiu’s service, an "accidental murder" in the army, and became a quarter million people protest by the sheer ...

A lot of those propagandas start as so-called 爆卦, which means original discovery, original gossip. I would say, by far, the original gossips are the sources as much of the political discussions.

There’s also much more uplifting public issue boards. There’s the PublicServan board, who are career public servants, actually. Then there’s of course always the gossiping board, which is gossiping.

Yeah. There’s forums dedicated to political discussion, like the ironically named HatePolitics board, which comprises of people who hate politics, but that’s all they talk about. I guess it’s an identity too.

Basically, anything that you have seen that’s done in Reddit, maybe there’s its counterpart on PTT. It’s pretty well known here, actually. It’s not a secret or anything.

It’s pseudonymous. It’s a mix between 4chan and Reddit in some places. It’s normal to be pseudonymous. As I said, I think there are accounts in PTT that are semiautomatic controlled. They are bots in the sense that if you post something, they will automatically upload it, download it, or ...

PTT is text-based. It’s by far the easiest according to your categorization than the most limited form of expression. You can’t just ask the person you talk about on PTT to reveal anything about their real identity, start a live broadcast, or anything like that.

You can’t do that as easily on Line or Facebook.

That is to say, the discussion forums in PTT already comprises of people who already self-identify as some kind of sub-continent in the memetic sphere. People engage in PTT discussions deliberately to try to formulate some meme that they know will resonate with this core group. It makes further spreading ...

I wouldn’t say it’s the top used, but we see a lot of propaganda starts as PTT-originated content and repost out to Facebook and to mainstream media. PTT start a very active net. It’s a little bit like Reddit in this sense, in that you can very quickly gauge your ...

Of course. It’s the main. It’s the core. Facebook is the peripheral.

And PTT.

It isn’t used much. It’s like tenth place or something.

That is to say doesn’t try to masquerade as human but try to augment humans’ online behavior is much more efficient both in my own experience, and in my observation of use of social media here in Taiwan.

For me once we pass the Turing test in a convincing way most of the time, then there is much more use for people-masquerading bots to appear. Whereas at this moment, if you want to be really effective, I think putting a lot of effort in making bots appear like ...

Right. Because it’s pretty easy at this moment to tell a bot’s behavior, versus a human behavior, given a sufficient long observation time. That is to state your intentions not being conclusively asked. Maybe in a few years’ time that will change.

For an automated program that lets me find out, for example, like Google Alert, if my name is being mentioned on the media. Then it lets me know about it. Does that qualify as a bot in your study?

Which masquerades, to a certain degree, as a normal human user. At least it uses the same mechanism the human users use to interact. Is that the idea?

...on the same public sphere.

Because bots is, broadly speaking, anything that automates human work, right? You mean bots, roughly speaking, in social media...