Cool, awesome.

Just as a linguist, I’m excited you guys are doing that, so thank you. It’s been a fun adventure to learn a language in a state that isn’t standardized. It’s a new experience for me. As a threat actor, that would be a challenge to appear legitimate, but figure out ...

Right.

I hadn’t thought about the fact that Taiwanese isn’t really standardized in the writing system yet, or maybe it’s standardized to an extent, but there are three standards, or something like that.

That’s really cool. The reason I ask is, from the Twitter archives, we know that messaging in Hong Kong was quite localized. It was in Cantonese, but I guess the context is a little different.

When you say correct, you mean the Ministry of Education?

Yeah.

I just learned that one yesterday.

I don’t know, just I would be curious. Have there been any instances that you’ve seen of messaging, and disinformation messaging in particular?

Do you think that, I guess, mainland actors or cross-strait propaganda infiltrators would have the capacity to message and more localized messaging campaigns? I guess that’s at the heart of what I’m thinking about when I think about radio, or social media, it might be the case as well.

Is that something that the government’s thinking about at large or that you’ve thought about?

The past week, listening to some people talk at the post-election conference at TFD, I’ve been thinking about the influence of radio in Taiwan or whether or not disinformation, acquisition by Beijing, or anything like that would be an influencing factor in radio, maybe particularly in the South, but not ...

Interesting. Also, I’ve been curious about, we talked a little bit about traditional media few weeks ago, specifically more on, I think, the print media side.

Ehe expedition.

I’m curious if you’ve seen the same thing or if the government’s thinking about that at all as a problem. I’m just curious to get your thoughts.

I’m curious to know if you’re thinking a lot about online harassment as well. I talked to J. Michael Cole a few months ago, and he mentioned that a lot of people who were talking about anti-Han commentary online were getting viciously attacked en masse in a way that wasn’t ...

Do you think Taiwan benefits from, it seems to me this is something Taiwan’s been thinking about for a long time, even though it’s only cropped up in the online sphere recently? Do you think that’s a fair comparison to make, or do you think the context is extremely different ...

There have certainly been isolated cases of strong disinformation and harassment. Jessikka Aro, of course, being the main one. By and large, the government has responded pretty well and remained pretty resilient to disinformation.

Yeah, I’ve been toying with a comparison that I don’t know if is fair or not. It’d be interesting to get your opinion on it. I’m curious if you think Taiwan is comparable to Finland in the sense that Finland has been dealing with Russian disinformation for a long time ...

Do they have a team of fact checkers at Line?

Is this a website from Line itself?

And in line.

Sometimes, by hour.

I think me and Puma are on the panel after you.

I’m going to be there, too.

I’m excited to hear your view in the post-election period and get your thoughts on all this stuff. It’s good to meet with you.

…a few weeks ago more in-depth about disinformation…

I hope you’re not getting sick of seeing me. I know we talked…

…on the topic disinformation…

Bye.

Thanks again. It was a pleasure to meet you.

Definitely. I’ll look that over, and then if there’s any sensitive info, I’ll let you know. But I think it should be fine. I’ll send you the recording immediately.

Once again, I really appreciate the work you’re doing in promoting transparency at high governmental levels, and also making time to talk today. Thanks for your good, progressive work, and parting out a chunk of time.

I’m definitely interested in the social side as well. Those are good places to start.

If not, that’s fine. I’m just curious if anyone would come to mind.

I think it’s super logical and very revolutionary. The last thing I wanted to ask you is whether there are other people you think you could recommend about talking to the subject, automation, digital sphere in politics, the things we’ve discussed.

[laughs] It’s much more a team than a hierarchy, then.

One of the last things I’d like to ask you is you’re identifying as an anarchist while working in government, and trying to change it a bit. Could you talk a little bit about what seems to be that paradox on the surface?

Another thing I wanted to ask you about is your mission with transparency within the government. I saw that Simon Cheng brought Taiwan up to number one on the open data index, what you see as good about that, what the role of transparency is within government, and what their ...

I think it’s a really creative, new-age, and progressive idea. I’ve been really excited from everything I’ve read about it.

Another thing I wanted to ask you is to describe g0v a little bit. I’ve read a lot about it. What would you say either is g0v’s central mission, or the role of civic hacking in society to you?

I’ve been really excited reading up on Zhende Jiade. I actually just added it on my Line and have been messing with it a little bit. I’ll probably be talking to Johnson soon. That’s great.

Do you see any specific use for bots or messaging within the public that might be promising or bring potential benefits that maybe haven’t been used so far politically?

That might tie it a little bit to another question I was interested in asking you, which was, I asked you a bit about the negative role of automation and the idea of bots and propaganda, using tech for bad in that sense. What potential positive roles do you see ...

Have you found that your plan to reorganize the Linux kernel and do this horizontal communication structure has had tangible benefits so far?

That helps quite a bit. You talked a little bit just now about how this term changed during and after the 2014 election. That ties into something I was interested in asking about anyway, which is, how do you think the 2014 mayoral campaign impacted politics and the perception of ...

That’s very helpful. In the research, it seems like it might not entirely mean what it means in English, so it’s good to hear...

One question I’d like to ask is, within Chinese, what normal people understand under the word 網軍. Is it someone sitting behind a computer and posting their opinion freely, or is it people who are paid by politicians expressly to spread a specific message?

There’s the useful idiot situation, which is a dysphemism for it, about people who are joining in on the mobbing.

How would you characterize how widespread it is if you had to guess? I’ve talked to people who have claimed that they know people who are paid to propagandize for a certain candidate within Taiwan. Is that something that most people think is going on?