Goodbye.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

That’s a great way of putting it. I’m going to start using that phrase.

Thank you especially for your suggestions about working with some of the middleware providers. That’s an excellent suggestion. I appreciate it.

Before we decide one way or the other, I might try to get another little bit of your time just to update you.

I’m just delighted that Taiwan is in the position that it’s in. Thank you very much for your time.

Exactly. Minister, I want to thank you very much for taking the time. I also want to thank you for protecting free and open journalism in Taiwan. It is depressing what has happened to the once-vibrant news media in Hong Kong. Such a sad situation.

Even before the Internet, politicians would spread disinformation, it’s always been part of the trade. We did some reports on the German elections recently. It wasn’t as bad as the US election, but it surprised the Germans.

Very impressive. When you think about misinformation problems in Taiwan, at this point are you more concerned about COVID and health topics, or more concerned about disinformation from Beijing or some other area of concern?

Minister, I think you’re right about Japan. Wall Street Journal did a joint venture with Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei. I was amazed at the difference in standards. We thought we had high standards–they had truly high standards.

We’re considering Japan as well. As you know, Japan is a great and large market, but on the other hand it’s a difficult market. I think Taiwan might be a little bit more open.

Yeah, why not. I think Trend Micro, in particular, is also quite active in North America and Europe.

Got it. That’s fascinating. I think we would add to reasons to have a presence in Taiwan that we would be better able to work with the development community there.

Correct. Minister, do people in Taiwan use some of the SMS systems in order to learn whether a particular claim is true or not true?

It’s quite a change for me to have a conversation with a digital minister, giving me technology tips.

Thank you. That’s a wonderful suggestion. I appreciate that. You mentioned Trend Micro earlier and we have worked with them on their messaging apps. I think it’s only in the English speaking markets, where if you have a question about a source, you can send the name of the source. ...

Is your sense that if we were to operate in Taiwan that we would be able to add another meaninful layer of protection for people there?

We think about Taiwan not because we think it has a big misinformation problem. We think about Taiwan because it has a robust and free press, where we could operate freely and where there is, of course, the problem of disinformation targeting Taiwan by Beijing.

Right. That’s a great way of thinking about it. Could I ask this?

It’s almost positioned as if it were spam or a virus software.

The advertisers are beginning to see that they have a problem with the platforms and with programmatic advertising. That realization is putting pressure on the platforms and ad-tech companies, the same way pornography led the ad-tech companies to take new steps to ensure that programmatic ads didn’t reun on pornography ...

We do have a product for advertisers to enable them to make sure their programmatic advertising appears only on appropriate websites. We track very closely whose advertising is appearing on which websites. One of my favorite examples is the US Centers for Disease Control: The CDC has an advertised on ...

Way below.

Somewhere between would be a big advance.

I don’t want to appear cynical at all, but I think the advertisers were very firm. They never wanted their ad against sexual images.

We hope that the pressure from the UK government will encourage the platforms to be more open. You’ve put your finger on the main issue, which the biggest platforms, at least so far, have been reluctant to open up to safety tools like ours.

I hope that will change. As you’re probably aware, in the United Kingdom, the Online Safety legislation is designed to create a new duty of care by the largest digital platforms. The British Government has published a list of about 80 middleware solutions in different areas — bullying, harassment, sexual ...

So far, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube have been reluctant — maybe that’s the best word — reluctant to open their platforms to middleware integrations.

Yes, you’re absolutely correct. There are different design choices that platforms can use, but the general idea is the same. There should be a red or green icon, an easy way for a user to get more information. The challenge is not really a technology challenge. The challenge is persuading ...

This integration enables people getting their news in the mobile device also to have access to the ratings and labels.

On Mobile Edge, the Microsoft mobile app, there is an integration. It’s not as user friendly as the browser extension that we built, but it does show that it can be done. We’re working with a new social media company based in the UK and a new search company based ...

You’re absolutely right, of course. Most people will get their information from mobile devices and usually, of course, within a walled garden app or another. We’re working as hard as we can to try to persuade the platforms to integrate us as a middleware solution, to be opt in or ...

If you go onto Facebook, you’ll still see COVID 19 hoaxes with no warning label, made by what look like authoritative sources. I don’t know the situation in Taiwan, in…

Fact checking alone is not enough. It doesn’t scale well. The digital platforms, while they work with the fact checkers, do not do a very good job of integrating fact checks into their products in such a way that users are truly empowered to know trustworthy sources versus untrustworthy sources.

We collaborate with all the fact checkers. We actually have a separate product for defense ministries and intelligence agencies, which is we call our Misinformation Fingerprints, which was created at the request of a unit of the US Pentagon and a request by In-Q-Tel, the US intelligence venture firm. This ...

One example we give is, before COVID 19, there were a number of websites, mostly in Europe, that claimed that the 5G technology caused cancer. We had rated several of these red because they published many hoaxes. When COVID 19 began, they began to publish the false claim that 5G ...

But when false information and hoaxes come with a red icon in a person’s newsfeed, they’ll know if the claim is from an unreliable source. They’ll know to proceed with caution.

In effect, what we do is we pre-bunk false claims. An extraordinarily high percentage of the most popular misinformation is spread by news or information sites–or sites claiming to be news or information authorities. Individual social media accounts then pick up misinformation and spread it, but they almost always cite ...

From a user’s point of view, Facebook and others may include fact checks, but again, only after the fact. The difference is what we do is we rate at the domain level, the source level, rather than the article claim. By seeing a red icon or a green icon and ...

Our relationship with the fact checkers is we act as an amplifier of their work. When we do our ratings of news sites, one of the criteria that we use is, does this website repeatedly publish false content? We often cite the work of the fact checkers. On the other ...

Thank you for that question. To your earlier comments, we strongly agree with you that it’s much better to give people more information rather than censoring something or taking down accounts. There’s persuasive research that says if untrusted digital platforms take down information, many people will think there must be ...

Minister, maybe I should stop there and just ask if you have any questions about our rating system, how we go about our process, or if you have any other questions based on what I’ve said so far?

Eventually we hope that the leading digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others, will give their users the choice to have our ratings embedded in their products, as a middleware solution. So far, the only technology company that has done that is Microsoft. We remain optimistic that eventually ...

We do have a browser extension that consumers can sign up for directly, for which we charge the equivalent of US $3 a month. That’s a small part of our business. Our core business is finding technology companies, Internet service providers and dozens of other partners that use our ratings ...

Almost one thousand public libraries have downloaded our browser extension onto the computers that library patrons use. We’re used in many universities and schools as a news literacy tool. Likewise, hospital systems license us for their patients and staff.

In some countries like the United Kingdom, Internet service providers have licensed our ratings for their subscribers. These internet providers tell their customer households, “We didn’t create misinformation on the Internet, but we’re bringing broadband into your homes, so here’s a tool that you can use to protect your family ...

Our core business model is to work with third parties interested in providing a safer internet. For example, Microsoft has licensed our ratings and labels for everyone that uses its Edge browser. Microsoft also uses our ratings to help to improve the quality of Bing search results and a number ...

So far, we operate in the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy. We’ll launch later this year in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We’re looking to now to other potential launches.

Each website gets a point score from zero to one hundred and a rating through red or green icon, plus a Nutrition Label explaining in detail the nature of the site.