Written by Billion Lee.
Image credit: 20240106_124307 by g0v.tw 零時政府/Flickr, license CC BY 2.0 DEED.
Cofacts, a civic technology community, has been using technology to combat disinformation since 2016. Disinformation is not a new issue, and throughout history, during regime changes or even world wars, incorrect intelligence has led to flawed decisions. Disinformation serves as a motivation to “change decisions,” sometimes leading to self-detrimental choices. For example, believing there is a profitable opportunity, but ultimately suffering significant losses due to failed investments. In international negotiations and international relationships, disinformation becomes a weapon to manipulate public sentiment and decision-makers, influencing significant changes in military and national policies.
As 2024 is an election year for many countries, in this article, we will share the phenomena we have observed before and after the 2024 Taiwan elections and hope that these experiences can assist our friends.
The Genesis and Evolution of Cofacts
Cofacts were established during the amendment of the Marriage Equality Act, when the Constitutional Court ruled that the existing marriage system did not guarantee the rights of non-heterosexual individuals. False information spread widely on the internet during that time, leading to discrimination and prejudice against sexual minorities. Incorrect information, such as “my child’s same-sex partner will inherit my estate” or “homosexuals do not contribute any kid or profit to society,” had a significant impact on human rights by emphasizing differences and promoting harmful actions.
Cofacts recognized that even with accurate information on the internet and journalists’ fields, ordinary people find it challenging to access trustworthy knowledge. Simultaneously, people rely on social media platforms for news information, and the inability to distinguish between legitimate news media and self-media, as well as content farms, results in extensive exposure on private websites. The experience of repeated article appearances in zero-cost content aggregators leads people to believe that disinformation is true. To address this, Cofacts developed a fact-checking chatbot along with a media literacy platform that mimics people’s knowledge acquisition habits. When users share suspicious information with the Cofacts bot in private groups, the bot will quickly respond to verify the accuracy of the news they have seen.
Disinformation about marriage equality had a lasting impact on subsequent local and presidential elections. During the 2018 local elections, half of the referendum proposals were related to marriage equality, while in the presidential elections, a significant amount of disinformation targeted candidates, linking President Tsai Ing-wen to false claims such as being a lesbian supporting same-sex marriage. This disinformation fuelled tensions at the local level, tearing apart religious and generational divides, reflected in the election results.
As a civic technology project aiming to safeguard digital rights and internet freedom, Cofacts spends significant time in weekly meetings and holds physical gatherings every two months to conduct physical fact-checking workshops. Through these tangible connections, we hope to empower people to feel the energy of collaboration and mutual assistance. The AI automatic classification system assists scholars, think tanks, and journalists in quickly sorting out their research topics of interest and writing important reports and articles. The open fact-checking platform allows for immediate reporting and verification, ensuring that misinformation can be countered as soon as possible. This can be validated by the rapid decline in the spread of misinformation, as shown by data charts.
Over the years, engineers have continued to develop the program not only for simple text verification but also for multimedia fact-checking capabilities. Now, whether it’s images, audio, video, or text, reliable information can be obtained through swift comparisons. We openly share the design logic and underlying decision-making processes in bilingual format on the internet, hoping to assist research teams worldwide in similar developments for combating fake news. In recent years, more and more fact-checking organizations have implemented reply-bot functionalities, all of which Cofacts has consistently contributed to by advocating for open-source code.
Disinformation in Taiwan’s 2024 Election
Disinformation not only affects election results but also has significant negative consequences for national security and international relations. Public mistrust in the internal systems of a country, dissatisfaction with government policies, and uncertainty about the nation’s direction increase the cost of government communication with citizens. Internationally, disinformation damages trust between nations, leading to misunderstandings about friendly assistance and interpreting invasive interference with significant control methods as friendly help. Short-term gains may result in aligning with authoritarian leaders or betraying democratic allies, causing instability and challenges in international relations.
In the 2024 elections, we observed three major patterns of disinformation influencing election outcomes. First is the attack on livelihood policies, such as unaffordable egg prices, opening imports of U.S. pork, and handling Japanese-treated water. False information, including fictitious claims of Russia or the U.S. taking a strong stance against Japan, such as declaring war or condemning actions, influenced public perceptions of the government’s capabilities, and made people believe that Taiwan’s government could not protect its citizens. The second pattern involved criticisms of candidates and negative portrayals of political parties. False information surrounding political figures, like the spread of unsubstantiated rumours about Lai Ching-te‘s extramarital affair and illegitimate child. Similar to the past instances where false information claimed that Tsai Ing-wen helped Lee Teng-hui undergo an abortion or that Hsiao Bi-khim was an undercover girlfriend of former president Chen Shui-bian, all of these allegations utilized negative rumours and images of extramarital affairs to influence voter perceptions. They had a significant impact on voter perception. The third pattern exploited the heightened risk of war following the Ukraine conflict to threaten the public. Messages suggesting that choosing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would lead to war created fear and uncertainty, manipulating international examples to intimidate Taiwanese citizens.
After the presidential election, disinformation started spreading about the unfairness of the election process. Videos and false information challenged the trustworthiness of elections by suggesting irregularities and claiming elections cannot be trusted, therefore undermining public confidence in the electoral system. Disinformation such as “elections are unfair, so the elected leaders may not represent true public opinion,” “democratic processes are unreliable,” and “Asian people do not need democracy” uses anti-democratic propaganda to create biases in political views and foster distrust in democracy. This phenomenon exemplifies the worst-case scenario where authoritarian regimes exploit the democratic system, hiding under the protection of freedom of speech to promote anti-democratic political propaganda and ultimately eliminate democracy through the democratic society’s votes and institutions.
Cofacts has been combating disinformation by establishing a fact-checking platform. Through the development of information technology tools, we teach the public verification techniques for open source intelligence(OSINT) and leave data for the benefit of others. Cofacts advocates for openness and transparency, empowering citizens with the ability to verify information. By maximizing platform accessibility, every individual has the opportunity to provide answers and counterarguments to disinformation. This process encourages media literacy training for citizens, allowing them to actively contribute. We believe that only when individuals become aware and participate in this process can they truly understand the risks in shaping information and appreciate the value of safeguarding trust.
Future Directions: Disinformation Challenges in Taiwan
By the end of 2023, Cofacts conducted over 2000 individual surveys through sending requests via LINE, an instant communication app. These surveys revealed that over 85% of respondents believed that disinformation originated from China, and over 95% were aware of and perceived the problem of fake news as very serious. We are pleased that people are concerned about the issue of disinformation. However, at the same time, some individuals still believe that fake news is manufactured within Taiwan itself. It is challenging to recognize the authoritarian threats Taiwan faces, and malicious foreign disinformation can cleverly hide its sources and identities under the protection of freedom of speech. The polarization of democratic societies, to the extent of considering “ideologies one does not agree with as fake news,” is worrying to us.
In the future, Cofacts will continue to develop collaborations with artificial intelligence and provide essential data and code for researchers and international friends to develop fact-checking robots like what we have achieved with our Thailand friends. We hope that through these collaborations and advocacy, we can enhance our country’s democratic resilience and engage in more cooperation with democratic allies worldwide.
This article was published as part of a special issue on “2023 to 2024: Looking Back, Thinking Ahead.”
Taiwan Insight 