Taipei, Taiwan – Rinse your mouth with hot water for 30 minutes, then swallowing will make stomach acid kill COVID-19. Regular hot baths can also prevent you from contracting the virus.

These are just some of the suggestions Seven-minute audio clip In the past week, a portrait of a woman who claims to be Taiwanese legislator Cai Biru has been circulating on the social messaging app LINE.

Attached with a note in Traditional Chinese: “Very important! Listen to the whole thing! This is the process of Cai Piru sharing (information). I listened to it twice for your reference.”

The audio clips and suggestions were proven to be fake, and Tsai, a nurse who volunteered to be trained in the hospital during the epidemic, quickly acted to debunk them.However, since the island The worst outbreak COVID-19 production began earlier this month.

“From May 12 (the day after Taiwan announced the spread of the community), there has been a lot of false information trying to cause panic in Taiwan,” said Puma Shen, the head of DoubleThink Labs, a non-governmental organization based in Taipei. Track false information and digital surveillance.

He said that in the past month, disinformation campaigns took different forms.

First, they appear on Twitter accounts, then on YouTube, and in individual and group chats on LINE. Since then, voice messages claiming to be from members of Taiwan’s elite began to appear.

In recent days, fake posts from news sites such as the left-leaning “Liberty Times” and the pro-democracy Hong Kong publication “Apple Daily” have also been posted on Facebook pages. These pages are aimed at Tsai. Animal lovers and supporters of the English President. Shen said that other political elites also secretly signed COVID-19.

Fake news is also accompanied by Shen’s so-called “propaganda” posts, such as China’s statement that it will sell its COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan. Over the past year, Taiwan has been working hard to provide adequate doses to its 23 million people despite this effort. Distressing. The home vaccine will be launched this summer.

Sowing discord and panic

Although false propaganda campaigns are nothing new in Taiwan, Often targeted by China’s well-functioning propaganda machinery and its local supporters, The recent COVID-19 campaign has a serious impact on health.

Last weekend, Vice Minister of the Interior Chen Zongren stated that posts about the president’s health are “real fake news” and are equivalent to a “cognitive war” against Taiwanese.

Robin Lee, the project manager of Taiwan’s independent fact-finding website MyGoPen, said: “Compared with last year, this year’s situation is worse and seriously wrong. This is one of the reasons why the public feels panic.” “Do n’t Lie” is the Taiwanese pronunciation.

In the past month, Taiwanese society, after successfully containing the virus for one and a half years, implemented a partial blockade nationwide for the first time, making the association particularly vulnerable to fake news.

Although the number of cases per day is between 200 and 300, which is relatively low compared to neighboring countries like Japan, the epidemic is still the most serious, and in some respects it has caused a great loss of morale.

Last year, Taiwan experienced no local coronavirus cases for more than 250 days. Until the end of April, thanks to the active contact tracing program and mandatory 14-day passenger isolation, the total number of local cases hovered at about 1,200.

However, the recent epidemic is related to pilots of the national airline China Airlines. They have to accept a shorter quarantine period and have caused the government to close schools on the island for the first time since early 2020 and call on residents to start work. At home as much as possible.

Fake news island

With the emergence of rapid testing stations and the arrival of snap-ups across Taiwan, the instant noodle section of many grocery stores has been temporarily cleaned up, and false news has also made a comeback. But this time, many posts and news seem more credible.

In the past, fake news and propaganda messages from China were easy to spot: Simplified Chinese (used in the mainland) occasionally appeared or contained words that Taiwanese would find strange. But this time, the new post cache seems more credible.

A new round of audio messages funded by Chinese government agencies is on tour. According to a report released in 2020 by the US cybersecurity company Recorded Future, Taiwanese locals now earn between US$730 and US$1,460 a month to make social media posts (close to the island’s average monthly salary) for writing and publishing These words.

With Facebook’s crackdown on false information and fake news, viral information has migrated to LINE, YouTube, Instagram, and PTT (Taiwan version of Reddit). The most recent positions are mainly focused on COVID-19, but they also assumed the 2020 presidential election in Taiwan and Cai Zhiqiang’s campaign positions, and Cai Zhiqiang was re-elected as the second president.

CDC’s Shiba Inu mascot Zongchai reminded residents to maintain social distancing and wear masks to control the COVID-19 epidemic.

According to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, most (but not all) of this work is related to China’s united front department, the Communist Youth League, and an independent army of Internet trolls.

CSIS said that some of these are also produced domestically by Taiwanese. They may support closer ties with China, which China claims is its own island, or just doesn’t like Cai Guozheng.

Shen of DoubleThink Labs said that in particular, the videos were traced to content farms run by Malaysian Chinese.

Cute attack

MyGoPen and Taiwan Fact-Checking Center are just two organizations working locally to eliminate false information campaigns, expose fake news on their websites, and then share information between social media accounts.

The Center for Disease Control broadcasts its afternoon press conferences live on multiple platforms every day to provide Taiwanese with the latest statistics and health agreements, but it also relies on humor and memes to resolve false information.

Zongchai, the Shiba Inu dog mascot of the Centers for Disease Control, is a successful sport. Zongchai appears regularly in the CDC’s news about recent case numbers and practical advice, such as the correct social distance length: that is, the length of the three Shiba Inus’ nose-to-nose alignment.

Although these messages are rich in content, they fully reflect the Taiwanese’s appreciation for cute memes. Even Taiwan’s dictator Chiang Kai-shek once received cartoon treatment in a LINE post of the partisan Kuomintang.

Zongcha’s pigeon mascot issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regularly announces changes to Taiwan’s travel restrictions. These are part of his “2-2-2” response to false information: a 200-word response and two pictures within 20 minutes “Sense of humor” is listed as a priority rumors”.

#????? ?Posting time: 2021.5.24
?Internet transmission of “suspected mass burning of Wanhua pneumonia remains” Command Center: People with intentions fake media webpages to spread false information ?https://t.co/x41SBDNMyG pic.twitter.com/eDgODga5FV

—Taiwan Ministry of Health (@MOHW_Taiwan) May 24, 2021

(Translation: released on May 24, 2024. “It is suspected that Wanhua pneumonia caused massive burning of the body.” False information spread on the website)

In April last year, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Tang Tang told the French Strategic Research Foundation that this so-called “memetic project” aims to “package information in an interesting way, and you only need to share it.”

But every time the CDC publishes a cute Shiba Inu post, another false message appears.

Earlier this week, MyGoPen revealed a rumor that the United States had injected so many additional vaccines that they started vaccinating cats and dogs. Another source said that despite scientific data reports, the effective rate of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is only 29.5% More than 90% efficiency Used for original viruses and emerging variants

What is certain is that in Taiwan’s fierce struggle to contain the latest wave of infections, Taiwan will make two efforts to eliminate counterfeit memes.