Taiwan fights fake news with focus on seniors
TAIPEI, Taiwan, April 1, (AP): Their days often began at the crack of dawn.
They’d head out to a church, a temple, a park and set up a stall. They’d seek out seniors in particular, those who are perhaps the most vulnerable citizens of the information-saturated society that has enveloped them. To get people to stop and listen, they’d offer free bars of soap - a metaphor for the scrubbing that they were undertaking.
They’d talk to people, ask them about their lives and their media consumption habits. They’d ask: How has fake news hurt you? They’d teach techniques to punch through the static, to see the illogic in conspiracy theories, to find the facts behind the false narratives that can sometimes shape our lives.
Nearly six years later, with just one formal employee and a team of volunteers, Fake News Cleaner has hosted more than 500 events, connecting with college students, elementary-school children - and the seniors that, some say, are the most vulnerable to such efforts.
Its people are filling up lecture halls and becoming a key voice in an effort as pressing here as anywhere: scrubbing Taiwan of disinformation and the problems it causes, one case at a time.
Like any democratic society, Taiwan is flooded with assorted types of disinformation. It touches every aspect of a person’s life, from conspiracy theories on vaccines to health claims aimed at promoting supplements to rumors about major Taiwanese companies leaving the island.
Thrives
Despite its very public nature, disinformation has a deeply personal impact - particularly among Taiwan’s older people. It thrives in the natural gaps between people that come from generational differences and a constantly updating tech landscape, then enlarges those gaps to cause rifts.
“They have no way to communicate,” says Melody Hsieh, who co-founded the group with Shu-huai Chang in 2018. “This entire society is being torn apart, and this is a terrible thing.”
Taiwan is already home to several established fact-checking organizations. There’s Co-Facts, a well known AI-driven fact-checking bot founded by a group of civic hackers. There are the Taiwan Fact Check Center and
port earlier this week that two drone strikes in northern Mali killed at least 13 civilians, including seven children aged 2 to 17. A pregnant woman who was injured in the bombing miscarried days after the attack, it said.
Human Rights Watch has said the Turkish-supplied
MyGoPen. But such organizations presume that you’re at least somewhat tech-savvy - that you can find a factcheck organization’s website or add a fact-checking bot.
Yet many of the people most affected are the least tech-savvy. Fake News Cleaner believes addressing this gap requires an old-school approach: going offline. At the heart of the group’s work is approaching people with patience and respect while educating them about the algorithms and norms that drive the platforms they use.
At a community center hosted by Bangkah Church in Taipei’s Wanhua neighborhood, a crowd of seniors listen to 28-year old Tseng Yu-huan speak on behalf of Fake News Cleaner.
The attendees, many of whom come daily to the church’s college for seniors, are learning why fake news is so compelling. Tseng shows them some sensational headlines. One: A smoothie mix of sweet potato leaves and milk was said to be a detox drink. Another: rumors that COVID-19 was being spread from India because of dead bodies in rivers. He used mostly examples from Line, a Korean messaging app popular in Taiwan.
With just one formal employee and a team of volunteers, Fake News Cleaner has combed Taiwan’s churches, temples, small fishing villages and parks, spreading awareness. While they started with a focus on seniors, the group has also lectured at colleges and even elementary schools. Early on, to catch their target audience, Hsieh and her co-founders would get to the hiking trails near her home by 5 am to set up a stall while offering free bars of soap to entice people to stop and listen.
Now the group has a semester-long course at a community college in Kaohsiung, in addition to their lectures all across Taiwan, from fishing villages to community centers.
Fake News Cleaner avoids politics and takes no funding from the government or political parties. This is because of Taiwan’s highly polarized political environment, where media outlets are often referred to by the color of the political party they back. Instead, the group focuses lectures on everyday topics like health and diet or economic scams.
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drones in Mali are capable of delivering precise laser-guided bombs. The group has also documented how drone strikes have killed civilians. In one example, a drone strike in central Mali’s Segou region killed at least seven people at a wedding, including two boys, it said. The following
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During the talks held Saturday in the northeastern Chinese city of Japanese officials provided “sciencebased” explanation of how the discharges have been safely carried out as planned, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
Japanese Prime Minister and Chinese President at their summit meeting in November agreed to hold scientific talks by experts, and the countries have since held a number of informal meetings.
Kishida Jinping China, ❑ ❑ ❑ Dalian, Fumio Xi
ISLAMABAD: The bodies of five Chinese nationals who were killed last week in a suicide bombing in northwestern Pakistan were flown to Beijing on a special plane, Pakistani officials and state media said Monday.
The bodies were sent to Beijing overnight from a military air base in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
The development came a week after the Chinese, along with their Pakistani driver, were killed when the suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into their vehicle in the volatile northwest as they were heading to Pakistan’s biggest hydropower project, where they worked.
On Monday, Prime Minister
was also visiting Dasu Dam to meet with Chinese engineers and workers. Pakistani officials will brief Sharif on the project’s progress.
Chinese and Pakistani investigators are conducting separate probes into the attack, which drew nationwide condemnation. China has also asked Pakistan to ensure the protection of its nationals working in various parts of Pakistan on projects in the ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor.
Authorities say the Chinese bombing victims were heading to the project site amid tight security.
Other Chinese working on CPECrelated projects have faced similar attacks in recent years.
Sharif Fukushima Daiichi Dasu Dam, Shehbaz
day, a second drone strike targeted a funeral held for those killed in the previous day’s strike.
The juntas ruling Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso earlier this month announced a joint security force to fight the worsening extremist violence in their Sahel region. This follows steps taken by the juntas to step away from other regional and Western nations that don’t agree with their approach and rely on Russia for security support instead.
Although the militaries had promised to end the insurgencies in their territories after deposing their respective elected governments, conflict analysts say the violence has instead worsened under their regimes. They share borders and their security forces fighting jihadi violence are overstretched.
Mali was once part of three extremely powerful and wealthy West African empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade: the Ghana Empire (for which Ghana is named), the Mali Empire (for which Mali is named), and the Songhai Empire. At its peak in 1300, the Mali Empire was the wealthiest country in Africa and one of the wealthiest on earth, with its 14th-century emperor Mansa Musa believed to be one of the wealthiest individuals in history. Besides being an economic powerhouse, medieval Mali was a centre of Islam, culture and knowledge, with Timbuktu becoming a renowned place of learning with its university, one of the oldest in the world still active. The expanding Songhai Empire absorbed the empire in 1468,[not verified in body] followed by a Saadian army which defeated the Songhai in 1591. (Agencies)