In today’s highly information-based society, the question of how to appropriately regulate large-scale transnational social media platforms has become an unavoidable issue for all democratic countries.
When considering the many available policy options, the key question is how to ensure that the majority of Internet users, and of digital network and communications businesses, are not harmed by fraudulent criminal activities.
Looking back over the past few years, although the government has put a lot of effort into informing the public about various kinds of fraud, it has been hard for such public information messages to reach a wide audience.
However, you only have to go onto Facebook, which is as popular in Taiwan as anywhere else, and you would see things like a fake version of cosmetic surgeon Chiu Cheng-hung (邱正宏) selling weight loss pills, a bogus version of traditional Chinese medicine doctor Wu Ming-chu (吳明珠) peddling anti-wrinkle creams, a copy of business media chairman Hsieh Chin-ho (謝金河) advertising services to teach people how to make a fortune from stocks and shares and a phony lookalike of radio host Hsia Yun-fen (夏韻芬) sharing her tips on playing the stock market.
The reason why such fraudulent messages spread so quickly and widely is that social media platforms make money from accepting and pushing advertisements placed by fraud syndicates.
Analyzed according to the “broken windows theory” of criminal psychology, this situation arises because, in the absence of statutory controls, fraudulent advertisements on social media platforms are not promptly blocked or corrected.
This is why there are so many complaints from the public about the government’s failure to effectively combat online fraud.
Earlier this month, the Cabinet convened a number of ministries responsible for combating fraud, namely the National Communications Commission, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Financial Supervisory Commission and the Ministry of Justice, to work on drafting a law specifically aimed at combatting fraud.
This is good news, but the authorities should bear in mind that, while criminals might seem like ghosts hiding in the labyrinths of online social media platforms, the culprits who allow disinformation to reach large numbers of people are the social media companies that make money from doing so.
That is why the EU’s Digital Services Act adopts a hierarchical management approach, requiring the onshore regulation of major offshore platforms.
Hopefully, in the next few months, Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties would set aside partisan rivalry and have the courage to follow the examples of the EU and UK legal systems in establishing effective platform governance regulations to calm the chaos of online fraud.
Lo Cheng-chung is a policy committee member of the Taiwan Nation Alliance and director of Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Financial and Economic Law.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017