New Bloom interviewed Puma Shen (沈伯洋),
Note: This article is two years old, but recently posted due to significance of the content.
By Brian Hioe
January 06, 2020
Puma Shen (沈伯洋), assistant professor at the National Taipei University’s Graduate School of Criminology and the director of the DoubleThink Labs, on issues regarding fake news and disinformation in Taiwan before the election and efforts to combat this.
BH: What do you think are the key means by which fake news disseminates in Taiwan?. What is different about the way fake news spreads through these platforms?
PS: According to our research, there are two key distinctions. One is “online”. The other is “offline.”
Online, it’s through Facebook, or through content farms that fake news spreads. Content farms are often based in Malaysia, with some in Taiwan. When they operate content farms, they are usually operating fan pages at the same time. They copy and paste content from content farms onto fan pages and spread fake news this way.
This is how they were doing it last year, anyway. This year is different. Many fan pages were deleted this year, so now they first create content farm articles, then put out advertisements that if you want to make money, you can set up a fan page yourself and help them spread their content.
