1 month ago
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Their days often began astatine nan ace of dawn.
They’d caput retired to a church, a temple, a parkland and group up a stall. They’d activity retired seniors successful particular, those who are possibly nan astir susceptible citizens of nan information-saturated nine that has enveloped them. To get group to extremity and listen, they’d connection free bars of soap — a metaphor for nan scrubbing that they were undertaking.
They’d talk to people, inquire them astir their lives and their media depletion habits. They’d ask: How has clone news wounded you? They’d thatch techniques to punch done nan static, to spot nan illogic successful conspiracy theories, to find nan facts down nan mendacious narratives that tin sometimes style our lives.
Nearly six years later, pinch conscionable 1 general worker and a squad of volunteers, Fake News Cleaner has hosted much than 500 events, connecting pinch assemblage students, elementary-school children — and nan seniors that, immoderate say, are nan astir susceptible to specified efforts.
Its group are filling up speech halls and becoming a cardinal sound successful an effort arsenic pressing present arsenic anywhere: scrubbing Taiwan of disinformation and nan problems it causes, 1 lawsuit astatine a time.
BATTLING THE EFFECTS OF STORIES THAT AREN’T REAL
Like immoderate antiauthoritarian society, Taiwan is flooded pinch type types of disinformation. It touches each facet of a person’s life, from conspiracy theories connected vaccines to wellness claims aimed astatine promoting supplements to rumors astir awesome Taiwanese companies leaving nan island.
Despite its very nationalist nature, disinformation has a profoundly individual effect — peculiarly among Taiwan’s older people. It thrives successful nan earthy gaps betwixt group that travel from generational differences and a perpetually updating tech landscape, past enlarges those gaps to origin rifts.
“They person nary measurement to communicate,” says Melody Hsieh, who co-founded nan group pinch Shu-huai Chang successful 2018. “This full nine is being torn apart, and this is simply a unspeakable thing.”
Chuang Tsai-yu, sitting successful connected a caller speech by nan group successful Taipei, erstwhile saw a connection online that told group to deed their thorax successful a measurement that would prevention them successful nan lawsuit of bosom discomfort. She said she really tried it retired herself.
Later, she asked her expert astir it. His advice: Go straight to nan emergency room and get checked for a bosom attack.
“We really do judge nan things group will nonstop us,” Chuang says. “Because erstwhile you’re older, we don’t person arsenic overmuch of a grasp connected nan extracurricular world. Some of these scammers, they will constitute it successful a measurement that’s very believable.”
Chuang is fortunate: Her boy has explained immoderate of nan things she sees connected her telephone — including disinformation astir wellness connected nan Line app. Not everyone is arsenic lucky, though. When it comes to misinformation, there’s a batch of activity to do.
Taiwan is already location to respective established fact-checking organizations. There’s Co-Facts, a good known AI-driven fact-checking bot founded by a group of civic hackers. There are nan Taiwan Fact Check Center and MyGoPen. But specified organizations presume that you’re astatine slightest somewhat tech-savvy — that you tin find a fact-check organization’s website aliases adhd a fact-checking bot.
Yet galore of nan group astir affected are nan slightest tech-savvy. Fake News Cleaner believes addressing this spread requires an old-school approach: going offline. At nan bosom of nan group’s activity is approaching group pinch patience and respect while educating them astir nan algorithms and norms that thrust nan platforms they use.
Hsieh says she was moved aft seeing excessively galore instances of section because of clone news: a mates that divorced, a mom who kicked her kid retired of nan house. Many specified stories surfaced successful 2018 erstwhile Taiwan held a nationalist referendum connected a number of societal issues including connected atomic energy, activity education, and cheery marriage.
At their second-ever event, Hsieh and Chang met a unfortunate of clone news. A rootlike seller told them he’d mislaid income because group had publication that nan rootlike fern he planted and sold, known locally arsenic guomao, caused cancer. Business faded, and nan vendor had to waste disconnected portion of his land. For a year, moreover restaurants didn’t bid from him.
Keep up nan work, he told them — it’s needed.
DETERMINING WHY FAKE NEWS IS SO COMPELLING
At a organization halfway hosted by Bangkah Church successful Taipei’s Wanhua neighborhood, a crowd of seniors perceive to 28-year aged Tseng Yu-huan speak connected behalf of Fake News Cleaner.
The attendees, galore of whom travel regular to nan church’s assemblage for seniors, are learning why clone news is truthful compelling. Tseng shows them immoderate sensational headlines. One: A smoothie operation of saccharine murphy leaves and beverage was said to beryllium a detox drink. Another: rumors that COVID-19 was being dispersed from India because of dormant bodies successful rivers. He utilized mostly examples from Line, a Korean messaging app celebrated successful Taiwan.
With conscionable 1 general worker and a squad of volunteers, Fake News Cleaner has combed Taiwan’s churches, temples, mini sportfishing villages and parks, spreading awareness. While they started pinch a attraction connected seniors, nan group has besides lectured astatine colleges and moreover simple schools. Early on, to drawback their target audience, Hsieh and her co-founders would get to nan hiking trails adjacent her location by 5 a.m. to group up a stall while offering free bars of soap to entice group to extremity and listen.
Now nan group has a semester-long people astatine a organization assemblage successful Kaohsiung, successful summation to their lectures each crossed Taiwan, from sportfishing villages to organization centers.
For Hsieh, her individual acquisition helped style nan attack to battling disinformation.
In 2018, up of a referendum connected cheery marriage, Hsieh had started to lobby her father. He was well-respected successful their organization and could bid a batch of votes. “I wanted his vote,” Hsieh says.
It seemed unlikely: She says he opposed cheery matrimony and had said homophobic things. The 2 had often fought connected this rumor before, she says, devolving into screaming matches to nan constituent wherever he had thrown things connected nan floor. But erstwhile she decided to alteration his mind, Hsieh discovered a caller level of patience.
“After we fight, nan aforesaid night, I’d apologize, and opportunity my cognition is very bad,” she says. “And I’d make him a cup of beverage aliases a coffee, and past aft he started emotion better, I’d opportunity ’But! I judge …”
Through nan people of 3 to 4 months, Hsieh lobbied her father, sending him articles to antagonistic nan things he had been reference online aliases explaining patiently what nan facts were. For example, he had publication online that AIDS came from cheery people. In actuality, nan microorganism was really from chimpanzees and had made nan leap to quality hosts successful nan 20th century.
What yet turned nan page aft months of lobbying, Hsieh says: She connected nan rumor to her father’s individual experience.
When he first started doing business, decades ago, immoderate Taiwanese suppliers did not want to waste to him because he’d travel from China aft nan civilian warfare betwixt nan Communists and nan Nationalist party. When he proposed, his early wife’s begetter threatened termination because he was not of “Taiwanese” background. Hsieh saw an opportunity successful that.
“Just because they’re cheery they can’t wed nan personification they love?” she asked, confronting him.
Her father, Hsieh says, is now a staunch protagonist of cheery marriage.
MISINFORMATION UNDERMINES EVEN DAILY INTERACTIONS
Fake News Cleaner avoids authorities and takes nary backing from nan authorities aliases governmental parties. This is because of Taiwan’s highly polarized governmental environment, wherever media outlets are often referred to by nan colour of nan governmental statement they back. Instead, nan group focuses lectures connected mundane topics for illustration wellness and fare aliases economical scams.
Hsieh’s acquisition pinch her begetter informs really volunteers interact pinch their students — an attack that goes beyond showing group a fact-check claim. The cardinal is to thatch group to deliberation astir what they’re consuming. “What we are dealing pinch is not astir existent aliases false,” says Tseng, nan teacher. “It’s really astir family relationships and tech.”
At Bangkah Church, nan assemblage watches Tseng arsenic he lectures nan assemblage astir contented farms, websites that aggregate contented aliases make their ain articles sloppy of nan truth, and really these contented farms make money. He besides asks: Do nan articles person bylines? Who wrote them?
Fake news relies connected emotion to make clicks. So often, headlines are sensational and entreaty straight to 3 types of emotions: hatred, panic aliases surprise. A click aliases a page position intends much money for nan websites, Tseng explains. The retirees watch him, engrossed.
Everything goes smoothly until it comes clip to activity pinch nan technology, Tseng tries to get his students to adhd nan Line relationship of MyGoPen, a well-established Taiwanese fact-checking organization. A measurement that typically takes a infinitesimal ended up taking 20. Teaching assistants scour nan room, helping seniors. Loudness and disorder prevail.
Many aged group extremity up pinch costly phones bought by their children that they don’t cognize really to use, says Moon Chen, Fake News Cleaner’s secretary-general. Sometimes their children unfastened a Facebook aliases Line relationship for them but don’t explicate nan phone’s fundamentals.
That produces trouble. Algorithms service up pages that nan telephone personification hasn’t followed to capable up nan page, nan provenance of accusation becomes hazy and group tin get confused.
After nan class, seniors could beryllium heard saying they could inquire a mobility to MyGoPen, nan fact-checking bot they were told to add.
Lin Wei-kun, a Taipei resident, who attended nan class, said he knows amended than to judge each nan accusation that he sees online, particularly nan ones that declare occurrence uses for mundane foods. But he appreciated nan group’s people because he says galore group retired location do judge it.
“These days, there’s a batch of accusation online. I usually conscionable delete it,” he says. “For example, cilantro is conscionable a garnish. But if they constitute a station saying cilantro has these miraculous uses, a batch of group retired location would judge it.”
It’s 1 much mini measurement guardant successful Fake News Cleaner’s instruction — 1 personification successful Taiwan learning 1 thing, and becoming a spot much alert of a virtual world of misinformation that grows much analyzable by nan day.
