Then each and every media will already frame the narrative so that any clarification will look like a very weak attempt, but if we respond within the same news cycle, then it is actually a pretty fair coverage. That’s our first line of defense. Truth to be told, it is ...

The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narratives and then do a balanced report. What we have witnessed is that if we don’t come up with this counter-narratives and ready videos or films, or at least picture cards, then after six hours, that’s after a news cycle, it’s ...

Each of them has a large number of followers, and so they basically ask their followers to spread the clarification so that it reaches their friend and families before the disinformation does.

At once glance, you can see each and every clarification in real time, and we measure how long each ministry takes to respond, kind of like a scoreboard. They do compete with each other in that kind of friendly rivalry, and so they all respond faster and faster until they ...

They did multiple ways of responding to various events. The COA, I think they initially got someone speaking Taiwanese Holo, and livestreamed on their Facebook page. They also, of course, rolled out a press release, and we have a dedicated press release section, dedicated to clarification right in the front ...

The Council of Agriculture responded within 60 minutes, and with a really convincing way, and so I think...

That protects them against the onslaught of disinformation. This is particularly useful during the pomelos incident, where during the last MP election for Tainan or something, there was a disinformation campaign about the fruits, pomelos, being dumped into a water reservoir, and it is entirely fabricated.

There’s a large selection of modalities, [laughs] but within 60 minutes there’s something that is viral, that could go viral. Our observation is that if we do that, then most of the population reach this message like a inoculation before they reach the disinformation, and so that protects like a ...

That could be a short film, that could be a media card, that could a social media post. It could be the minister herself or himself doing a livestream. It could be our president going on a standout comedy show. [laughs] It could be our deputy premier watching a livestream ...

Each of our ministry now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, they’re in charge to make within 60 minutes a equally or more convincing narrative.

In any case, what we’re rolling out is threefold. First, before a propaganda campaign or disinformation spreads, we usually observe that there is a point where they are doing some kind of limited testing or A/B testing, and that’s before it became really popular. It’s just testing the meme, the ...

Important clarification. [laughs]

In disclaimer, my father resigned before China Times got bought by pro-PRC owners.

Both of my parents were professional journalists, and they were operating at the brink of the martial law. Their boss, the head of "China Times" at the time, Yu Chi-Chong, had to constantly navigate the KMT censorship versus the press freedom, and it’s not pretty. Nobody really want to go ...

It was really bad.

Nobody who remember the martial law would want to go back. It’s really bad old days. That’s the premise...

Especially around Taiwan lots of jurisdictions, not just the PRC, now use disinformation as an excuse for state to do censorship, for the state to do general correction order, and things like that. We don’t want to go there, because we still remember the martial law.

It has to be harmful to the society as a whole for it to be qualified as disinformation. We have three -- broadly speaking -- strategy to counter disinformation, and all three has with its core value that we don’t sacrifice the freedom and openness of our society, especially because ...

Yeah, of course. My slides is publicly available. Disinformation is a threat especially for urban societies. We do have a legal definition of disinformation, that is to say intentional harmful untruth, and most importantly, harmful is to the public, to the democratic system, not harmful to the image of a ...

That’s right.

That is a long answer, but I think the immune system is in the civil society and in its broad selection of information sources.

We do rely on people’s general access. We have broadband as human right in Taiwan, so no matter how rural, indigenous, or remote the places are you’re guaranteed to have 10 megabits per second. If you don’t it’s my fault. Because of that, people generally have a handheld smartphone device ...

I’m the last generation that remembers martial law. If you ask anyone who is younger than me, then they say of course that you need a second opinion on every information sources. They don’t grow up blindly trusting the authority, or even their teachers. They learn to fact check, even ...

We have had, since ’96, a long time to have a educated civil society, so that people generally can take a more critical thinking attitude when it comes to media sources.

For people who are born or educated after the lifting of the marital law, which is after the ’80s, they have a broad swathe of information sources to choose from. Our democracy, with the first presidential election in ’96, coincides with the World Wide Web, so people associate democracy with ...

That’s right. A lot, especially the elderly, have a difficulty telling disinformation apart from truly journalistic work, simple because the state-run TV media at the time were the only permitted channels and there was, frankly speaking, lots of propaganda around, so it’s not very easy to tell.

In Taiwan we essentially rely on the society itself to tell disinformation. That is to say intentional, harmful untruth, versus a journalistic work. It’s not always easy because just 30 or 35 years ago Taiwan was where the PRC is. [laughs]

I do agree with your assessment that recently the PRC has been really narrowing down.

You see a lot of Internet automated censorship. These were originally only deployed around October, or something like that, but now it’s years-round.

So I’m not saying that PRC was always a opposite influence, but especially in the past four years or so, with the rapid closing of the media and speech freedoms, and censorship not only after the speech, but before the speech too.

The PRC wasn’t always going the opposite direction. For a while it seemed like it would get better, but then comes a new regime and everything goes backwards.

They’re doing a lot of work in Australia, and so on.

Sure.

I don’t have anything after this, so feel free to just ask me anything.

Thank you for the editing work, because English is like my fifth language, so I would appreciate a lot of editing work.

...and we’ll publish this transcript.

As you quoted Sir Tim Berners-Lee, we are here to rediscover the purpose of the web and let the web to be the connecting force that connects the forces together.

I would just like to quote one of my favorite songs from Leona Cohen, that says, "There is a crack in everything. And that is how the light gets in." While the current digital world has a lot of gaps, a lot of inequalities, injustices, those are actually the lights, ...

They don’t even say email anymore. I think dropping the "e-" prefix, I think, is really the key to digital transformation. Only when we stop saying e-government or e-participation, it’s just governments, it’s just participation, then we can truly realize the dreams of digital transformation, which is let us re-understand ...

I think these next 10 years or so, where the digital transformation happens, is that we will stop attaching like e-whatever. It used to be fashionable in an email to say, "Oh, it’s nice to e-meet you." It’s not fashionable anymore. People just meet each other. Email is just one ...

I do think that maybe in a decade or so, there will not be a role of digital minister, because other ministers will finish the digital transformation and reimagine their relationships in a co-creative future. Maybe we will still have analog ministers, [laughs] to talk with the analog world.

We’re not using technologies to say, "Hey, everybody here has to install some web browser, install an app," or things like that. We’re bringing ourselves, the technologists, into whatever the people are feeling comfortable with. That’s an ethnographic approach, or in plain language, just hanging out with people. I think ...

People can continue to have town halls, to have the tribal gatherings of village elders and so on, where just a digital minister, that’s me, is participating as one of the facilitator in using 360 live stream and other technologies, so that they can summon the people here in the ...

It has to be new in only that local sense. It’s not new in the global pattern sense. Just by making sure that we apply whatever the appropriate technology is on the local level, we can bring the technology to people.

It could be automated teller machines or ATMs. The idea of appropriate technology or social innovation is not really that it has to be new globally, that you can file a patent on it. It just has to be new to the particular segment of society, that they can feel ...

That’s right. I think the answer is not bringing them into technology. It’s bringing technology to these people. I think if you have a good social design, it should feel natural to the people involved. If people are not used to, for example, using smartphones to do participatory budgeting, you ...

I think this part is missing in many "tech for good" narratives. Again, if you just have technologies for the people, you tend to forget about the technology with the people, but it’s the "with the people" part of this important.

When we say "tech for good," I think we overemphasize the ends, the goals part, while making it not so clear the idea of open innovation -- it really allows everybody, even empowering the people who don’t even know that they could be impacted, to first let them understand through, ...

No. I think social innovation, of course, is about the common good in the goals, but it’s also about wide participation in the means.

What is really wrong is to take one social norm, and through digital platform agenda setting or amortization, to expect every part of the world to subscribe to the same value system.