 So we can just start off talking about, obviously I think a lot of, there's been a lot of media coverage on the epidemic and Taiwan's success during it. And I want to ask you about just some of the successes and then we can move on to the challenges as well. So successes, I think one of the things that really struck me, stuck out at me was the rumor over, what was it? Your humor over? Humor over rumor. Excuse me. That's fine. So I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that idea, how that idea originated within the government. How often you guys are using it, right? Because aside from that, you know, Premier Su would use but photo like. And also the two spokes dog. Okay, yeah. The Zhongchai, which is very humorous. Okay, yeah. So tell me about those, are those things still ongoing? Yeah, of course. Or we're doing this every day, like. Yeah, Zhongchai is of course alive and well. I mean, it's a real dog. It's a real dog that lives with the participation officer of the Minister of Health and Welfare. And the PO lives just, I think a few minutes walk from the MOSW. So they can just walk back home after each CC press conference and take new pictures of the dog without paying shutter stock or anything like that. And then begin new memes about it. Okay. Yeah, the idea of humor over rumor was introduced, I think around 2017. I proposed that idea in a cabinet meeting saying that there needs to be a fast, a public and a structural response that makes clarifications more viral than disinformation. And I drew this experience from my own participation in the 2014 sunflower movement where we did set up the, for example, live streaming to the streets so that this information about the occupy itself will not grow because everybody who walk by the street can check for themselves what's actually going on in the occupied parliament. So that's a solution to a issue that often plagued occupy movements which is rampant disinformation on conspiracy theories. And so that has some personal experience, I guess, in it. And also around that time, 2017, one colleague in my office, the name is Chen Yan-yong who actually wanted a job at NIDAC, but I don't think he actually got it, but he is very proficient in the use of memes and has actually quite a following. But anyway, so he also shared with all the participation officers at the time about the idea of using memes to overcome rumors and also shared many international counterparts doing similar things, like there's a better, like a big platform literally built by the party in Iceland that's called the best party, right? And so there's like political movements around the world that has this kind of comedic idea to it. And even domestically in Taiwan, since last year, we also have a political party. The name is literally can't stop this party, right? Or Huan Le Ufa Dam, the unstoppable happy party, right? And they do have a type of city councilor, so it's a real party. And many of the party members are prominent YouTubers and so on. So they are also working on humor over rumors. So it's not just the state or the public sector. The people, the social sector is also working on pretty much the same idea. And so, but to be frank, back in 2017, the participation officers' uptake of these ideas were kind of lukewarm. There are some notable examples like the National Palace Museum. But by and large, people do not think that the rumors are that much a problem that we need to work with professional comedians to tackle. But fast forward to the 2018 election where this information was really rampant because the election was coupled with the referendum and the referendum tend to travel on outrage, which makes this information even more easy to spread. And so that became like a real problem. And so then, of course, the new spokesperson at the time, Kulasio Dhaka, really liked the idea. And it was her who actually implemented the triple two system, where when all the disinformation, trending disinformation gets detected, the relevant competent authority, usually a ministry, need to come up with two pictures, each 200 words or less, that gets the clarification message viral within two hours. So that's the triple two principle. So the main implementer is Kulasio Dhaka. So two pictures, 200 words, what's the other two? Within two hours. Within two hours. Yeah, the same news cycle. People criticize 200 characters. Oh, okay, right, because we're talking in Chinese. And so, since that minister, sorry, wasn't a minister. The spokesperson, Kulasio Dhaka. So that's the person who took it out. Is that when you guys started hiring professional comedians? So because it's delegated to the ministries, right? So the ministries did, right, start working with professional comedians. And the Ministry of Health and Welfare is an interesting case because the participation officer themselves is actually quite a professional in making such interesting memes. And so instead of like working with contractors or working with professionals, the PO themselves can suggest, for example, the famous pink mask episode. It was them that suggested to Minister Chen Shizhong, you should put on a pink mask to show solidarity to the boy who called, that says you're a rationale mask, oh, I get this pink, I don't want to go to school. And also, it was also the PO who suggested that Minister Chen should say that his childhood idol was the pink panther. And so this is like really humorous take, not only gender mainstreaming, but also making masks a fashionable item that people would like not only wear it for health purposes, but also wear it for like just making a statement. Yeah, I see a rainbow mask. That's right, yes, that's a rainbow mask. I saw a lot of rainbow masks during Pride as well. Okay, what are some of the, I guess, other successes that you are really proud of during this pandemic that Taiwan has achieved, especially in the digital realm? Sure, so the digital realm is the assistive role. The most important technologies are chemical, that's to say soap and hand sanitizers, and physical, which is masks, respectively. So digital may be a third assistive technology. So I think one of the main things that I want to stress is that during the pandemic, we limited the centralization of data collection, although by the authorizing act, there's the ECC, the Central Epidemic Command Center, has the lawful authorization to collect new data. By and large, we work with the heuristic that says we do not collect new data in the name of the pandemic that we were not already collecting before the pandemic. And this is very important because for each new data collection, there's a set of privacy and cybersecurity evaluation and impact assessment that must be done. And if this is like genuinely new, like the Bluetooth dongle contact tracing that Singapore has rolled out, then of course people will take time to familiarize themselves with the cybersecurity and privacy parameters. And by essentially not doing that and piggybacking on existing data collection methods, for example, the national health card and a refillable prescription, we use the same method to dispense the mask at the pharmacies or for the digital fence, we use the earthquake advance warning or flood advance warning, which builds on the cell phone tower signal strength triangulation that's a existing data collection endpoint. So I think we avoid the needless invention of new data collection methods in the name of pandemic and therefore the cybersecurity and privacy parameters, although of course it's still debated and still controversial, at least people are talking apple to apple or orange to orange because we're not working with apple on that. Orange versus orange on these data flash methods. I don't have. Well, thank you for bringing that up because actually that was one of the main questions I wanted to ask you. Yeah. I guess I have been reading a little bit about the data collection or trying to read about it. But I guess the people that I spoke with, I spoke with a Gov zero percent. Sure. And then I also spoke with a tech policy person. I think you probably know both. Yeah, of course I know both. Because you have the policy of no anonymity. Yeah. So I read, of course, the collaborative document. Okay. So then, yeah, can you talk to me a bit more because it seems like, I mean, their criticisms were interesting, right? They were saying, sure, from one perspective, from a technical perspective, you're saying what you're doing is piggybacking, but I'm not sure that I wasn't in Taiwan before. But I'm not sure that, say, the telecoms, they were collecting all this data that in the past they weren't necessarily sending it to CCC, right? They were not sending to CCC, but they were sending out earthquake warnings and flood warnings, depending on your phone's whereabouts. Right. So the CCC basically told them that they need to add one more disaster type to their SMS sensing. And it is true that the earthquake warnings and flood warnings were only sent to people in the vicinity, whereas for the digital funds, it's also sent to the medical officer, because otherwise the medical worker cannot check your whereabouts, right? So that is true, but so the data processing is done still by the telecoms. The data collection is the same, which is the phone signal data. The only difference is on the data application. Okay. And you mean, so the application was actually being used by CCC? By the CCC mandated norms, that is to say, send SMS to the local medical officers if somebody breaks quarantine or send it to a police officer if somebody who is already a confirmed case breaks the perimeter. Then I guess another question that arose and I don't know which databases are being combined, right? But so I understand that CCC also gained access to say immigration databases. And then one of the other people I spoke with, what he told me was like that there were no, it wasn't really publicly stated how this data is being used, kind of the data operators. What else? How long the data is gonna be in use for? You know, I guess there's a whole bevy of things that you can start worrying about once you start thinking about privacy. So I would love to- Yeah, and that's a deficiency in our privacy act. And a structural one. The only deficiency that prevents us from getting the GDPR adequacy with the European Union, to be precise. And the reason is that Taiwan does not, at this moment, a single data protection authority, a single DBA. And there's no independence for the institution that for example, like the French Canilla, which is an independent body that plays the role of the DBA. And they get basically public funding, but they don't report to any minister. At the moment, the Taiwan Privacy Act says that each competent authority, each ministry, is their own DPA, as well as for the businesses that operate, for example, that require a license permit to operate under some ministry. Then that ministry also become the DPA of those particular businesses. But of course, in Taiwan, I mean, we're a liberal democracy most of the time other than the health system, which is social democracy. We're a liberal democracy most of the time. And so many businesses doesn't need a license for the competent authority. That also means that there is no enforcement if they violate the privacy primitives. And so currently the interpreting agency for the data protection is the NDC. Specifically, the Data Protection Office within the National Development Council, but they are in charge for interpreting the law, but not enforcing the law. Each ministry is in charge of enforcing the law. And this federated architecture essentially mean we have maybe like 12 DPAs, but we don't get 12 more seats at international table. So that also means that each DPA, each ministry is free to enforce it however they want. And even for the same set of data, as you said when the data sets are being joined together, if you ask one side or the other side, they may give different enforcement and interpretations and definitely doesn't have the same, for example, data retention rules and things like that. So it is a problem. The criticism is valid. So can you tell me how, are you guys taking measures to address this problem? Yeah, yeah. Like within the next couple weeks actually. Yeah. So we are going to propose to the legislature in a cabinet meeting sometime this month that we are going to establish a independent privacy protection agency, probably called a council or a commission. And this commission reports only to the head of the cabinet. It doesn't report to any ministry. Its budget won't come from any ministry either. So that avoids the classic situation of a minister really wanting to do something and then the person reporting under them cannot help stop them basically. And so it will be truly independent. It's a little bit like the Aviation Security Council. And actually it's been renamed to Transportation Safety Council in Taiwan. In that it's an independent agency. So we will propose that to the legislature and with luck the legislature will approve it sometime next year. And so as soon as it stops this decentralized DPA stuff not only will probably get GDPR adequacy but also this new DPA will be able to not only review. The NDC can already review, they're already reviewing but if they review and find something wrong they don't have the enforcement power but a new DPA will have enforcement power. You mean this new council? Something like that, yeah. When you say DPA you mean? Data Protection Authority, is a European Union term. Okay, sure. Well that, will you, okay, two questions. One, is that a personal proposal of yours or is that just something that I think a lot of people around you civic hackers are something that you guys have had exchanges on something that you think the community wants. And then two, are you guys going to be able to retroactively kind of look back at some of the stuff that CECC has been doing data in the sense of the pandemic has been done? Sure, so to your first question is being deliberated on the V-Taiwan platform. I think it's also in 2017 from November. And there's a draft of that as early as 2018, July 2018 from the NDC. So it has been consulted, of course, with stakeholders. But I wouldn't say it's my personal proposal. Everybody see it as a shortcoming. It's just we need a politically opportune moment to set up new agencies. And such an opportune moment came when Dr. Tsai Ing-wen promised that there will be a new digital competent authority as her second presidential term came in promise. Actually, the vice president candidate of the KMT proposed pretty much the same thing. And so it's bipartisan, by definition bipartisan. And so if you look at the legislature records, the KMT also worked on a data protection authority. So once we have our version from the executive yuan that will be one of the versions that legislature will deliberate alongside the KMT version. So I would say that this is the moment where the two parties, at least their presidential and vice presidential candidates respectively, see this as a prior political priority to have a digital competent authority, before which there's no white bipartisan priority on this. And are you guys planning for it to be mostly informed by GPR and your response? Of course, of course. And also the new data governance act being deliberated by the EU. So that's the first question. The second question, yeah, of course. So right after SARS 1.0 actually in 2004, not only the administration, but the constitutional court did a review of the actions taken during SARS 1.0 in 2003 and found that this lockdown, this barricading of entire hospital to be barely constitutional. That is to say it would have been constitutional if people have thought about it, but because we did not have any experience with SARS. So the constitutional court said that it's barely constitutional. Let's not do that again and charge the legislature to make new rules and new legislation that will enable a constitutional like well in advance, like a fixed like 14 day and so on. And instead of like just limiting people's freedom of movement with no definite day, we need to restrict this still very narrow and deep privacy and freedom of movement violations. But with due process pre-approved by the legislature and people understand that after the 14 days, of course, there's no stigma that they can just freely move about. So this is a joint review by not just the administrative branch, but also the legislative and the judiciary. And do you think will there be one for after current after COVID-19? Assuming that there is a pause between SARS 2.0 and SARS 3.0, then we'll probably have time for this kind of review. Hopefully. Are you predicting the SARS 3.0? I'm not predicting anything, but many people said that it is possible that it becomes something like a season of flu because the base number is high enough for mutations to occur. So maybe not 3.0, but like 2.1, 2.2 beta or something like that, right? So if that happens, then the vaccination strategy, everything needs to adapt as well and will probably better off with the physical vaccines all the time, just to be sure. Because think about the possibility of SARS 2.0 mutating so that the 14 days is no longer sufficient. And that will change pretty much everything related to quarantine and things like that. So assuming that no such mutations are okay, we'll probably have some breathing room literally to have a retrospective just as we did in 2004. It's, go back a little bit to, so it seems like then if there's a bipartisan push for a data protection authority, is that arising, do you think, from the general public? Like that both political parties are sensing, oh, the general public actually has this desire for privacy. A, do you think that's happening in Taiwan? And I asked that question because working in Asia, all the time if there were any data privacy stories, data protection stories, the Western mindset and kind of what scholars would say to you, is the stereotype, right, that Asians don't care about. This whole Confucianism thing. Yeah, I don't know if it's Confucianism. I'm not up to damn Confucianism. Never studied it. But you're a digital minister, so I wanna get your take on this, especially because if we go back to what happened, the talking about the data collection and it's, okay, the narrative that has emerged from the media is that in East Asian countries, citizens are willing to put up with a greater degree of service. Yeah, Confucianism, yes. Right, right, right, right. The South Korean contact tracing methods, Japan Singapore, so I don't know, what is your take on that? Okay, so first of all, I'm a Taoist, I'm not a Confucianist authority on Confucianism, but with that said, I do think Taiwan has something different here because we make sure that the data collection is piggybacking on existing data collection methodologies. Also, we rely on what's the media called participatory self-surveillance, meaning that instead of concentrating the data and therefore power to the CEC, independent business owners, for example, the hostess boss and host boss, the nightlife district basically collect their own data on the patrons, but they can do so under a, for example, a pseudonym first basis, or a throw away sim card, or a throw away email account, in order for any reported case to be able to contact the patrons in the past couple of weeks, but they do not need to hand over that data to the municipal or to the central government. And in fact, these are shredded after a few weeks if there's no local cases, which has been like that for the past half a year. So the idea is that the data collection, if it is balanced with the desire of pseudonymity or anonymity, this actually gets more people participating. Otherwise, we're essentially driving the nightlife district and the workers there into underground, like the US prohibition era, and then no good data will come out of it. Actually, some nearby jurisdiction suffered from the second or third wave, precisely because of this configuration, because they forced the nightlife district to comply using very top-down methods. But here it is just an administrative recommendation, really, Xingzheng, Zhidao in Mandarin, and then they figure out their own way of retaining the data, but without the obligation to give the data to the CECC. And so I think this means that they act out of rational self-interest that keep the business going and not wanting to be stigmatized. And also, like our mask communication strategy is another example, we say, wear a mask to protect yourself against your own unwashed hands. Again, this is a rational self-interest narrative. So I would say that during the pandemic, the narratives that comes out from Taiwan, especially from the CECC, is a balance between collectivism and individualism, but it's mostly about rational self-interest. But do you think that, do you think it's generally true, though? Because there wasn't, a lot of the privacy criticisms I presented to you, these are from people who care about data privacy. Of course, and I care too. Every day. I'm squarely into 6% that wasn't happy of the way that digital fans are being communicated. There was 94% of approval, but the 6%, including probably the two people you have spoken to, eventually worked with the member of the parliament who said at a public hearing, essentially interpolation, and then the Department of Cybersecurity, the Minister of Justice, and so on, published for the first time, like how exactly the same works to the members of parliament and also because it's livestreamed so to the public. Yeah, I don't know whether it's whatsoever recorded, but at any case, it's just published to the public afterwards. Yeah, but yeah, so like the 94%, right? But most of the islands residents actually didn't care. And I mean, so much, you know, when I came here in quarantine, and I was just like looking on Twitter and there were a lot of people, people liked to tweet when they're in quarantine. And there's so, yeah. But there's a lot of people who are just all praise for, and you know, no one thought about, no one, I think there was one critical article written by a Taiwanese American perhaps, but where he was like kind of freaking out about the electronic fence. Because I think his phone had shut off, so then the police called and... Yeah, I've read that already. Okay, yeah, BBC article. Yeah, we probably need to communicate it better. But I think the fact that there is no opting out really is a different norm, right? Of course, you can kind of opt out by saying, you know, I'm going to a hotel for quarantine, and I don't have a phone, right? So that's a way of opting out, but it's kind of extreme. And also it doesn't really help the kind of legitimacy of the government if we simply say that this works perfectly, no need to worry about it. The fact is that the digital fence, like the mask dispensing system, is under a lot of co-creation via the report of frontline people. The frontline has workers and the people in quarantine informed the algorithm a lot so that it started being quite imprecise, but eventually became quite precise. For example, initially in the quarantine places, some of the places didn't have good, like 4G cell phone tower reception. And so the signal would just flash, and there's a lot of false alarms and so on. And of course, we just install new equipment around all the quarantine places and so on, and making sure that especially, like near the yummy mountains and things like that, we actually set up new 4G cell phone tower just so that the signal will not just float all around. So it's a continuous improving process. And in the mask availability case, the map, which is a great social innovation, definitely not a state innovation, conflicted with the pharmacist, take a number system, which is again a social innovation. And so the pharmacists were handing out those numbers at the beginning of the day in exchange of the National Health Card and then telling them to go back in the evening to collect the masks. But what happened then is that the mask map will show that this pharmacist is full of availability. And only during lunch, when they're processing those IC class, you'll just see this drop, right? So, but this doesn't look natural. So people would accuse the pharmacist of just hoarding masks or something. So these two social innovations were initially at odds with each other. But of course, eventually the next week, actually, after we wrote out a system, we set up the data schema so that the opening hours are divided into two columns. One is for the dispensing of the numbers and one is for the dispensing of the mask. So that's some of the problem. But still some pharmacists tell me, judge, even if they announced the take number hours from maybe by 8.30, they already handed out all the numbers. So they still have this 30 minute window where people will call them saying, I see you have plenty of masks on the map. Where are you saying you've also doubted? So they wished for a button that they can click and disappear from the map, which I personally took that suggestion and worked with the NHIA to implement that button. And once that button gets implemented, they don't complain much anymore. And so this is a co-creation process. And so if we started saying, you know, this is all perfect, it's not like that. We all always say, yeah, sorry, we made some mistakes and please tell us so we can co-create. I brought up the case of the BBC article not just to get your, I just wanted you to respond on that, you know, whether it's true that most people in Asia do not care about their privacy. I don't think that's the case. I think people do care about their privacy and especially Taiwanese people. It's just that we have certain norms that were already there before the pandemic. And so as long as the counter-pandemic effort do not violate those norms, then these are tolerated. But I'm not saying that these norms are very privacy-preserving. For example, like handing out your ID card to park a car or something. That's actually compromised the privacy because the current generation of ID cards prints the name of both parents on the back of the card. And even the name of your spouse, if you have one. So people can easily, you know, figure out your sexual orientation just by flipping your ID card to the back. And that's of course a privacy encroaching norm. And we are fixing, which is the reason why I just handed out this card to you, right? So at the back of the card of the 7th generation, there's no name anymore. No names of family members, spouses. It does say that this person is single, though. This is my popular demand, right? But at least no sexual orientation discrimination based on the name of this spouse. And so we are working on improving those privacy norms. But the existing norms, some privacy-preserving, some not, are what they are. And the most we can do during the fight of pandemic is not to make the norm even more destructive for privacy purposes. Okay, I mean, fair enough. And I ask these questions because I think, especially, you know, I'm American, representing American media, and we've all kind of seen how it depended on. Well, I think in American English, so. I wouldn't have something like that. That's great, that makes my job so much easier. I don't want to translate. I know. I remember reading the Wired article, and I'm trying to think of like, I don't have to research it, I don't have to do all this. Exactly, exactly. I've never read that. But I asked this because I think a lot of societies like the U.S. in particular, a democracy, a name, has been struggling really, you know, and a lot of the struggle I think, especially if you look at the messaging around masks, where people say like, this violates my freedom, if you tell me to wear a mask. No, of course. And so we talked a little. That's why the Q of Spokes Talks say, wear a mask to protect you against your own unwashed hands. I guess the question is just, what are some of the lessons that, I know everyone's asked you this question, but what are some of the lessons that can be taken away for democracy, democratic nations, where you are balancing truly an increase, and I'm only thinking of this in Chinese or something, or like increase in Chinese, right, for... In coercive power. Yeah, for centralized organizations like the CDC, have pandemic tasks. That's right, that's right. Right, how are you balancing that with, you know, saving lives? Yeah, but by substituting the coercive power to the social sector's communication power, there's this well-established theory by Manuel Castells, among others, of what is in the book called The Communication Power. In its, the main takeaway that I have read the book is the idea that the coercive power, top down or lockdown, or I don't know, shut down, take down, whatever, these kind of powers, they are, of course, effective, but the return is diminishing. And you can see this inaction around the world. Lockdown fatigue is the thing, right? So even if you could, theoretically, like, get more coercive power by the design of something like CECC, or in countries that didn't have a CECC by the emergency power during the crisis that they can exercise to essentially bypass the parliament, you could, of course, constitutionally do that, but the return is diminishing because people get tired following the rules that they did not know why was there in the first place. And on the other hand, if we focus on the communication power to make sure that Q-Spoke stock speaks in many languages, explains that it is in your own best individual interest, even if you have no one nearby, it's still possible that you would touch a surface that has the virus on it. It's still possible that you would just, like, literally put your hand to your mouth and in Mandarin, it's a thing, right? So if you do that, you'll still get infected, even with nobody nearby. So a mask is not about protecting other people. It's about protecting yourself against your own hand. And that links mask use to a hand sanitation. And so that message isn't a top-down message. And everyone who hear this message can remind each other in whatever way they deem reasonable. And so in fact, if you ask people around February, why are you wearing a mask? Many of them would tell you that they wear a mask even when CECC tells it's okay to not to wear a mask on metros, which they did for a couple of days, fearing a mask shortage. And then we very quickly changed course. Did a U-turn and say you have to wear a mask after all. Yeah, but those 48 hours, people still wore a mask because they understood the importance of it and actually criticized the CEC for saying that. So fortunately, it's just 48 hours and not say 40 days, but yes. All right, so the message then was they were thinking about saving themselves. Exactly. Then I guess when you look at the US, do you think there was just kind of a science communication failure in some ways? I do know, I mean by Taiwanese standards when at the time of the pandemic, when our top epidemiologic authority want to talk to the vice president, he just look into the mirror, right? So like literally V.P. Chenjian is the author on epidemiology textbook and also led the SARS 1.0 counter SARS effort. And so by that standard, I mean it's not a reasonable standard to expect other jurisdictions. And also I think it's also because we had the societal inoculation thanks to the 2003 SARS 1.0 bad experience about lockdown and all that, panifying in 95, the central government saying completely different thing from the municipal government. So we had it quite bad in 2003. So we know what say the US is going through because it's not unlike what Taiwan went through in 2003. And so we learned from it in 2004, did this cross all the three branches, joint work, designing the CDC saying. And so I think, yeah, assuming that of course the vaccines work, I think all the democratic countries will probably do what we did in 2004, which is to set up new rules and designs and mechanisms and so on so that people will not panic when SARS 3.0 came. And it will, it's just a matter of time now. Can we talk a bit about, you've talked a lot about open governance, you've talked a lot about using digital tools to kind of build up democracy and trust, right? And you sent a Twitter message to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris recently saying that, what did you say exactly? Come and visit. Yeah, and we can share the Taiwan model. Trust of the government is very important and that trust of the citizens is also very important. The government trusting citizens is very important, yes. What, I mean, are there any lessons that you think Taiwan can offer in terms of trust between the citizens and government? To a lot of, yeah, and I asked this also because I think in the current environment, the internet has become this place that's, it's very different from its original vision, right? Originally the vision of the internet is this place where you can share knowledge. Is to survive a nuclear holocaust. Oh, was that? It was the original vision. Okay. Maybe another utopian, I don't know that. But the utopian vision of the internet that I think was quite there in the early 2000s, if we're talking about sharing, meeting friends, making connections. But these days the internet has filled the disinformation and I think probably leading to more polarization as opposed to last. So just, and we saw that really with the US election on this time, there's so much disinformation. So I guess what lessons, what tools, what can they use? What are some, yeah, there's some solutions. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, like literally two things. One is about the government trusting citizens. So we use this approach that we call people-public-private partnership. Which is not unlike the slogans other jurisdictions use, but we put people first. That is to say the social sector come up with a norm. For example, during election campaigns, it's essential for the campaign donation expenditure to be published not only as information, but as open data so that investigative journalists can work with data scientists to develop models that will then find out the link between the vested interest and the people who campaign, for example, and publishing as PDF files makes their life harder, right? And publishing as just paper copies makes it even harder. So people in the GovZero movement did this interesting intervention where they went straight to the control and took out those A4 photocopied campaign donation records and expenditure records and scanned them and published it for everybody to do a CAPTCHA style OCR so that people can collectively rebuild the structural data that was hoarded by the control unit. And that wins those successful. That is control units that even if each number have three people looking at it, you can't be sure it's 100% true. So you're probably publishing some misinformed information. And so the response from the GovZero movement is that, yeah, which is why you should publish the structural data as your duty. I also participate in drafting that response. But anyway, so in the end of the day, the control unit and the legislature agreed on it. So by 2018 election, that's the first time the control unit actually published the structural open data for campaign donation and expenditure. And then we have a new social norm set by the social sector no less. So it's a people-public partnership now. And then we talked to Facebook, saying, look, there's a norm. You can either refrain from publishing your ads library or you publish in a very obscure way, but in which case people will see and say that a lot of campaigns evaded this radical transparency by telling their supporters to buy them Facebook advertisements, bypassing the radical transparency here. And so you may face social sanction if you keep doing this. And I told Facebook that very clearly. And so even if we don't have true jurisdiction over Facebook, social sanction in Taiwan is a very strong thing. And so Facebook eventually worked, I think Taiwan is among the first jurisdiction if not the first where they just published everything in the ads library as open data and banned foreign people from buying advertisements during our presidential election this year. And so this is a negotiation with the mandate from the social sector and the public sector and eventually with the agreement reluctant or not by the private sector of this new norm. So this is the thing about trusting the social sector to people to set the norm and then work with the business sector only after the social sector and the public sector reached consensus and then can pressure the private sector together. So this is the first lesson I would like to share. The second one is working with journalists, not against journalists. And in Taiwan news, Xinwen, literally is the same word as journalism, Xinwen Ye and Xinwen Gong Suo, right? So journalism is literally just news work and journalists news work us. So there's no way in Taiwan to say the F word fake news without offending journalists because if you say it's a Xinwen, it sounds like you're accusing journalists of not doing their job correctly, right? It has the same thing in English. Oh really? I would say that. It's two different words in English. But people will just lobby that at you in interviews these days. Oh really? It's like, what's been happening since Trump became president? I see, I see. Okay, that's news to me. So and both of my parents are journalists. So out of filial piety, a confusion concept, I can't say the F word, I can't say just Xinwen. And so in Taiwan, we say just Xinxi way high, right? The disinformation crisis and disinformation has a legal definition as intentional untruths that cause public harm. If it only harms say the image of a minister, it's just good journalism. So it has to cause public harm for it to be classified as disinformation. And so I think I have a clear delineation between journalistic work that is sometimes mistaken. Journalists like everyone makes mistakes but versus the intentional untruths that cause public harm. This part, the journalistic part, we need to democratize it and make sure that in the K-12 curriculum, for example, the students can become kind of part-time fact-checkers and like essentially participating in fact-checking the presidential candidates that actually happened during this election. And that together is a much stronger counterpoint to this intentional disinformation. Now, if you classify like the journalists doing their honest work along with the people who intentionally spread information operations and things like that, then you lose the most important ally you have which is the journalistic norm. And then you might as well start calling journalists like text workers or text collectors or the editors, text processors, content workers, right? Which is devoid of the meaning because it's just like when you call journalists as just content producers and so on, it removes the journalistic norm and ethics and standard that defines journalism. But that is actually the safeguard of the community against disinformation. So reinforcing that, that journalistic standard, making sure that everybody can be a immature journalist and participate in journalistic ethics and norms and also in the schools teach not of media literacy media competence for a lot of those children or maybe have more Instagram followers than I do. So in a sense, they are media and so be a competent media and adhere to the journalist's standards. I think this is again, very important and really the reason why, like even though we do have our own share of disinformation during our presidential election, there was a trending rumor that says the CIA printed invisible ink. So that no matter who votes, your ink would disappear and presidents, I will get a vote. And that gets dispelled because people were encouraged to participate in media competence and during our counting process, like people who are literally YouTubers can be there and film the counting process and use their own apps. It could be called Chinese and Xian or Ian Buddha or whatever to do the counting themselves in a decentralized fashion. And that means that even though the disinformation spread for a few hours, does like YouTubers in all the different political affiliations confirmed jointly that the counting process was indeed free and fair. You're speaking of the misinformation, the media literacy education. I think in your last interview with AP, you talked about trying to bring that to education. Yeah, media competence. Yes, we now have a, I think is at Mlearn is a website that we are now sharing this curriculum of not just K-2-2, but lifelong education as well. And so that's a public resource that teachers can access. Yes, yes. And to go back to the Facebook point, sorry, I know we're going over time. Sure, it's fine. Let me know if you need to run. But. Maybe five minutes. Okay. Did that work? Do you feel like Facebook publishing that data the ads data and it's limiting also foreign buyers? Do you feel like that had an impact? It did because if any candidate tried a dark pattern, it would get discovered and made into sensational reporting. So, which is why during the presidential election, I don't think anyone in the legislation or the presidential race tried any dark patterns on Facebook. But they might have tried through other channels. But on the other hand, of course, Facebook was the dominant channel during that election. And so Facebook's participation means a lot. But of course, the same accord that Facebook agreed on is also agreed by line and also by I think Yahoo and also Google slash YouTube. So it's a pretty good roundup. Let me just see if there's any. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess just one final question about this information, which is that's going to be also a question of volume, right? If Taiwan supposedly the source of the most, does it make, like you guys are the target of the most disillusioned one? You're probably not the source. Right, you guys are not the source, sorry. Now, I misspoke. There was some paper from an institute in Sweden. I've read that. Right, right, because of China. It's a qualitative survey, yes. Yeah. And I think, you know, Taiwan has a, I've heard of co-facts. I know you guys have multiple like fact-checking centers. Micropen, Taiwan for Check Center, and so on, even Trend Micro, and Who's Call offered there, so this is. Yeah, I guess the question is though, I mean, are they just kind of drops in the bucket fighting against this volume of, you know, there's a lot of money being poured into this formation and so I feel like sometimes you, the fact, listening to these facts, listening to using things like a line bot to check a fact, requires a certain degree of tech savviness that may not be present in the populations that are actually getting, so like older people. Which is why Q-Spoke Stock posters are also very effective, yeah. Like preventative medicine, like vaccine of the mind, yeah. Yeah, I guess I just, I wonder if the government has any thoughts about volume, if you have any thoughts about volume, combating the sheer volume. But not all of those volumes, this information actually turns viral. But if the R-value is under one, meaning that each person on average doesn't share it to at least one other person, we don't even need to counter that, right? It's the same as epidemiology, right? You only work on the sort of virus that has a R-value above one, right? And that is actually quite few. Okay, fine, okay. I guess that's why it's called going viral. Great, I don't think I have, I don't think I have any more questions. Okay, awesome. Yeah, is there anything you wanna add? Well, I think the American experiment, the great American experiment is about just publicly tackling those structural issues that affect democracy and sharing the experience of how to tackle it with the entire world. That's what I said during my interview with, I think Tyler Cohen. And so, yeah, that's my message. And Taiwan is following in that idea, in that of course we face a lot of threats as you put it but our way of countering say that this information without a takedown or our way of countering the pandemic without a lockdown I think is of broad applicability to democracies, whether social democracy or liberal democracies worldwide. For I think at the end of the day, a democratic system itself healing is resilient and each onslaught of whether the virus of the mind or the virus of the body strengthens the democracy and produce like novel anti-bodies to overextend the metaphor which may be shared in a kind of COVAX arrangement. All right, thank you. That's a good ending metaphor. Okay. All right, thank you. Cheers.