 As Max mentioned, I basically read our APAC work around content regulation recently moved here from Brussels. So I have been working in Brussels for the last 11 years prior to coming to Singapore. So point of reference is pretty much very much around the European Union and did a lot of work around like the code of practices that existed there as well as working through the recent consultation around the Digital Services Act. So I really look forward to working with you when you're cheating on everyone else. So thank you. Thank you. I'm really happy to make your acquaintance. And I know ministry is super easy at the moment because it's a cold-bed situation and Taiwan's developing a lot of state solutions to that issue. So we will keep our conversation within like 30 minutes to 35 minutes. And at the moment you went on with Sam and Audrey when you were talking George and I and make with me and ourselves that feel free to pin us or to talk to us. We can turn on the video otherwise we'll be Sam and Audrey talking. And about 9.30, 9.35 or 9.40 that we will probably start to wrap up. So keep the conversation within like 30 minutes. So without further ado I'll pass it to Simon and for you to kick off. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Tang. It's great to see you. It's been an eventful six months since we were on the APEC panel together in November last year. It's a pleasure to be with you again. I only wish it was in, you know, we were actually in person. And finally also the situation was rather better in both Singapore and Taiwan. So that we won't continue to be focused on the issues of public health and there is occupying a lot of your time. And I know we are going to talk a bit about regulation today but I'd be very happy to if you'd like as well just to talk a little bit about the COVID situation and the support that we have provided in partnership with the Taiwanese government. But there are other things that are on your mind that you'd like to share around that and where we might also be able to be found. But I'd love to hear that. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I remember your active collaboration leading up to our presidential election and MP election in order to have honest advertisements that's published in real time as an API for investigative journalists that really helped a lot to combat the infodemic. Well, we didn't call it infodemic back then but yeah, that's infodemic and enhance if not public health, public mental health. So thank you for the collaboration. You're welcome. Look, I know from experience of Singapore where we were feeling very much felt things were under control. Everything was returning to normal. We were somewhat behind Taiwan in that respect but I know that you're going through some difficult times right now with these spikes and also issues around vaccine kind of take-up, etc. Again, this is something that we're very active on across Asia as well as elsewhere in the world and working with national health authorities to address misinformation, to ensure people have good information about vaccines and other public health matters and also to help people find vaccines, etc. So again, if there are some things that during this conversation or in subsequent days where you think perhaps there's something you're aware of that we're doing elsewhere that might be helpful in Taiwan and then please let us know or if you continue to let us know about that. Okay, excellent. Yeah, I am currently working as Max has mentioned on the vaccine appointment system. We're looking at well not a spike now, right? Rather kind of flattened curve but it's not going down. So just a continuously flattened curve. And on the other hand, of course, that means that the vaccination is on top of everyone's mind. Back when I was vaccinated on the first dose in mid April, I had a very difficult time convincing my friends and family to get vaccinated. Well, we don't have that problem there. So I think that fear distribution and appointments is the only thing that's currently blocking us from achieving significant vaccine uptake that and of course the supply of vaccines. And so I wonder how Facebook have worked previously with other vaccine appointment systems either in the US or in other countries? Do you have like stories, anecdotes or some working models to share? Well, actually, as you may have seen just yesterday, we launched a partnership with the Hong Kong government on what's called Vaccine Finder. So what we could have to do after this call is just share some information with you about that. And if that seems like something that would be of interest that could be helpful. But also we can, Max can provide information about other partnerships we've done on the vaccine front. And you can see whether some of those might, one or more of those might be helpful for time. Why don't we do that after the call? Excellent. Thank you. Just go on and talk about the issue of regulation. Yes, which is a primary purpose for our call. I mean, look, it's when Mark Zuckerberg probably more than two years ago now said that we are in favor of regulation. We think it's not right for these big private companies to be making big decisions every day around where to draw the line on content online. And actually, we do think this is an important role for governments here. Frankly, the first, I would say almost 18 months after he made that declaration, really not that much happened. There was a lot of talk and not a lot of action. But what we've really seen in the last six to nine months is a lot more action. And now it's actually countries which are not looking to regulate the Internet are seem to be in a minority. And what we're seeing is just a real very big range of different actions. Obviously with Meg on the call, we have an expert at what's happening in Europe. And she I'm sure be happy to join our conversation if you've got some specific questions about that. But we also developed our thinking, particularly around what we talk about regulating, it's not just any kind of regulation clearly. We definitely think there are some regulations which are pretty bad are actually going to suppress freedom of expression, or are going to impose the wrong kind of obligations on platforms like ourselves, which will not enable the kind of openness that we appreciate about the Internet and not allow for connectivity and the sharing of ideas around the world. And frankly, also disrupt some of the fundamentals of how the Internet works. But what we of course want to do is work with governments that are keen on trying to find a balance between how we enable video expression, how we get the balance right between what are what should be the obligations of platforms, and what are the obligations of people using services like Facebook or Instagram, and our messenger services. And so I'm happy to talk a bit more about some of those principles, but I'd like to just understand where you're thinking is that in the thinking of fellow ministers around the future for content regulation in Taiwan? Certainly. So because of our rather successful, I would say, collaboration around honest advertisement, which we treat as de facto election campaign sponsored campaign expenditure, right? That was the framework. So we did not pass a election amendment act to regulate political and social cause speech on Facebook during our presidential election season. And I believe that success well qualified, but relative success led to more action around say our leading antivirus companies like Trend Micro now starts to offer counter disinformation services in addition to the counter scam and counter virus counter efficient services. A startup called who's call I believe also joined this work in addition to of course the Taiwan fact check center and Michael Penn, who you already understand have a partnership with Facebook. So what we're looking at is what I call a people public private partnership, where people the social sector take the lead to establish speech related norms and Facebook as a economic sector player basically adhere to such rules according to say the initiative about self regulation on disinformation that you have already signed in addition to PDT and other players and the government instead of passing any particular act simply publish how much and the norm is followed and abided by the economic sector players. So that was the model that we work rather successfully leading up to the presidential election. And that's my of course preferred approach if things do work. Minister Robinson also said that if this model works, then of course the legislator doesn't have to do a top down approach that you just alluded to. And so my interest is in keeping this people public private partnership model work in the emerging challenges around non-election related speech where referendum of course is coming, but there's many other things. Yes, well that's what I mean that the flexibility as well as the kind of multi party a multilateral approach to that is something that we are very supportive of. Because you know we've all seen examples and I guess the European cookie law is probably one of those prominent examples of regulations which however well-meaning because they are structured in a very technological specific way actually become rather self-defeating and just become an annoying feature of life online and don't actually help people necessarily understand issues around privacy and tracking and that kind of thing. So we're certainly in favour of flexibility, incentives for accountability I think is very important. So these issues around transparency and so the way in which the government you know effectively almost from the sound of it under your preferred model will effectively audit or require companies to report on how are they doing against these kind of codes that are coming out of public-private dialogue. I've seen you know absolutely we've seen that work very well in the European context around misinformation and the codes there and you know the transparency around that so that all sounds like a very positive area that we could be supportive of and indeed we can share with you and Minister Lo as well our experience of this in different parts of the world. I know that particular countries or regions that you're with Minister Lo looking at to see what can we learn from those. Well I don't know whether the oversight board is a jurisdiction but actually we do look at your oversight board to discover the ways of how to make it more transparent accountable. If not directly participatory I mean there's no jury in oversight board jurisdiction but I think the oversight board is quite transparent in its decisions and its workflow. The only issue that we found from the social sectors observations in Taiwan is that the throughput that is to say the timeliness really needs work that is to say when the result of the oversight board decision affects the algorithm or the parameters exactly how that's implemented and how soon it's implemented, implemented in what fashion people don't really have a way to see that and of course the inbound flow into the oversight board how the cases are selected and so on. These of course remains non-participatory so instead of pointing to another jurisdiction which you know may change by passing a new law overnight I would like to to explore how your preferred ideal world oversight board the both the inbound flow and outbound algorithmic processes and accountability and transparency would work in your ideal world. What we've not yet seen is examples of how the oversight boards work interacts with or will interact with different kind of regulatory arrangements in certain countries. We've always said the oversight board is not about how we respond to national laws around speech and so as you know we've got pretty well established processes now for taking in reports from governments where they believe there is speech on our platform which is locally unlawful and for us to review that and under the global network initiative framework and then in certain circumstances to geo-block content so we do have a mechanism doing that but the oversight board is very separate it's all about our standards and providing oversight around how we apply our community standards and also where we draw the line and obviously we've had the most recent example of that where the oversight board has you know said look you some of your approaches towards suspending people are seen rather arbitrary and you need to provide certainty and that was obviously in particular in respect of President Trump and you have seen hopefully our announcement around that last week but also in our new in our transparency center we also now as a result of the oversight boards and decisions we now provide more transparency around the nature of our strike system and what what are the sanctions we apply when people come to convene our terms and in particular the approach we take for very for people with a more prominent voice like a president or an ex-president so and as you know we also have an oversight board member from Taiwan Dr Catherine Chen I have no idea whether she was involved in her involvement in that decision and because these things are you know the oversight board doesn't say who's on what panels does it work but I'm sure we can share with you more you and colleagues more information about our early experience of working with the oversight board and and we perhaps could share some thoughts about how that could link to what happens within individual administrations yeah so a clarifying question I take that when you said these are separate processes you mean that a national geoblock or takedown is not subject to an oversight board appeal right but but I was more alluding the other way like a facebook content policy takedown whether it's subject to a national government appeal for the oversight board to to relic yes it could be I mean for instance I mean if there is a piece of content where we have acted on it and it involves that government then they could appeal about that and I mean we as I think we can dig out the details on this but we're primarily focused on if you have had a piece of content removed by facebook and just as you can appeal to the oversight board and as I understand that we don't allow third parties to appeal on behalf of even for a national government even for a national government so we you know we at the moment we generally have thought of these things as I mean they're clearly all part of an accountability framework I'm all part of as saying we don't think it's right that a private america multinational should be making all these decisions in a what can feel like an unaccountable way even if we're quite public about the decisions we make and that that was why we call for regulation but also why we've why we've developed the oversight board and and you're right when it came to appointing the members it wasn't a big public vote about that but now the oversight board appoints its own members so whereas facebook was you know had a process for the original appointments now the oversight board is has its own independent approach to how it replenishes its membership and and also it is independent in the cases that it takes on and both ones that facebook asked it to take on but also ones which were appealed by by users of the of the service okay I bring this up and you will see that I'm trying to get content reposted rather than taken down it is because we've witnessed that the fact checkers serve a important role as a contextualizing service but if it's taken down by facebook's machine learning bot detection or whatever other means then actually the fact checkers or other communities do not have any means to provide that contextualizing service and sometimes when applied incorrectly the machine learning based takedowns does not actually have a good appeal process for individual users and so in that moment if the national government or any other consumer protection authority do not step in then it actually provides a very good conspiracy theory thought that has to say it actually amplifies the polarization around this random arbitrary looking like takedown with no appeal process if you understand what I'm saying because this is not a individual to individual basis but rather a large net of related accounts misclassified as takedown potentials by machine learning and currently as consumer protection authority or as the national government we actually have no visibility into this and so even when people can provide evidence to fact checkers that they were being wrongfully taken down we'll have to ask them to individually take to the oversight board but the inbound flow is not managed now it's not very transparent and so that creates a kind of legitimacy pressure on both facebook and the consumer protection authorities it's a really good point and it's one of the reasons why we don't kind of we haven't just transferred all responsibility over to the oversight board part of the reason for having a large public policy team and obviously we have Max Chen for for Taiwan and obviously George is in charge of the the wider region and is that you know they are also there for if there are issues like this we should almost know where you there's a concerns of me maybe more systemic although we're giving some there's a there's something there's something going on here in terms of our machine learning or in terms of how we're interacting with our third party fact checkers then absolutely you and colleagues are hopefully bringing those to our attention and so that we can look into those separately from the other side board so we're not saying that yes it was the only place you can go if you think that was getting something wrong here and there are other channels both for government I mean to both for governments and for our trusted partners and for our third party fact checkers there are there are many routes in to Facebook but and I would hope that you in particular and your fellow ministers would always be willing to you know would be very quick to let us know if you think there's something that's so that there's not not getting right but generally it's not without third party fact checkers we are not taking content down and when they let us know that they think it's something is likely false we label it and we reduce this distribution and but it's still available on Facebook but the exceptional areas are ones where we think there may be a link to real world harm and that is particularly with respect to COVID where we we do some types of COVID misinformation we actually remove from Facebook rather than just apply the label because we're really concerned about misinformation leading to people either taking you know quack kind of remedies you know whether that's drinking bleach or something has some other kind of remedy or it leading to people you know not taking you know vaccines which have been kind of widely approved for for use and because of misinformation suggesting that helpful yeah but sorry to kind of drew down on this point in Taiwan we yeah we've had for example a disinformation that said that the Taipei and New Taipei cities will receive quote-unquote chemical army sprays to kill the virus and it's very toxic and things like that and of course it's debunked almost immediately by the Taiwan fact check sensor but I think I presume and from what we witnessed that's the kind of messages that you actually go to take down instead of going to notice and public notice but but what's the what's the mechanism to make such decisions so I mean I'm happy to provide more information after the court has explained how that works and to provide some examples what we done I'm not sure I mean it's obviously COVID based so it's according to your criteria it's entirely possible for Facebook to just classify it as a takedown rather than a public notice and in these cases right in these cases we actually a couple years ago now provided a concrete proposal via max to you that is to say a second party notice and public geo notice and and I believe that proposal was seriously considered but ultimately not implemented max probably know exactly what I'm talking about max yeah I can I can provide some insight into that so when we're talking about this info and harm we're talking about harms individuals are personal like harms we usually when there's no code to action to harm a person that we probably won't take action on those contents but we rely on the party fact checkers of course that is a policy evolving and we have seen some involvement involved evolution in surrounding that policy in the COVID COVID time and about your point on the labeling actually we are doing that so when you are posting contents about about vaccines for example in any language you'll have a label on that so that you can take a look at the COVID info center on platforms to find more information about vaccines so actually the approach to misinformation remained pretty much the same that removes reduce and form which we believe that informing informing our audience is to make sure that people have informed decision is the better keyword to the misinformation issue so if definitely I can provide more examples and if you follow up with you yeah but that's not geo labeling that's that's universal labeling right what I'm talking about is a very specific proposal instead of universal labeling like any vaccine related information in any languages receive a universal labeling that redirects to the vaccine center I'm talking about very specific proposal which is when a national government or competent authority notice something that warrants labeling they have a way into Facebook to mandate within the geo region such a government competent authority provided label on that class of information on that class of shared posts that is to say we don't call it fact checking because we are not journalists incompetent authorities we totally understand that but we also believe that there is a way to get the messages into the informed people and when we first talk about this proposal I think max's point was that the competent authorities were not trained in getting the right messages out in labeling or things like that using the central election commission as an example but I believe the situation have changed now and they are informed to provide pretty good labeling messages well actually we do have an example of this in our region and that's in Singapore where there is this false news group called POPMA which does result in effectively geo labeling and now as I understand it from you know from Max and from George this is something that the Taiwanese government looked at when Singapore government introduced that and you decided that wasn't the right way to go in terms of regulating for this and but you know very happy to have a kind of some follow-up dialogue at this and just to share with you our experience of POPMA and to think about is there is there something else here that could help or when there are situations like that. My original proposal was not a law to enact POPMA what I'm looking at is a protocol similar to the self-regulation protocol that Facebook have signed around political and social advertisements that is to say it is also designed to be multi-party when we made that proposal without resorting to a law which would be something like POPMA but I mean if the you know protocol level the rough consensus level which is more flexible and more fair and more easy for civil society to get involved doesn't work out then of course we are continuously looking at POPMA in the legislature chamber but because I'm in the administration so I'm more interested in a non-POPMA act way to introduce auditable accountable form of geo labeling but if you think a law is required to do that then of course the MPs will have to consider that. I think what we should do is share with you our experience of the covid information hub which is when people are either looking for information about covid or they are they particularly maybe are something that they might be looking at a something which is being debunked then we will often we will have been directed to the covid information centre that is obviously providing official information either from WHO I'm sure from and Taiwan's case from the local from the national health authority and and so you know so there are ways in which we ensure that people get locally relevant information about covid and whenever they are kind of in contact with information about covid generally on facebook as well as sometimes we will do things where everybody irrespective of whether they've been looking at covid related information will get a notice about hey here's the latest information on you know who's eligible for vaccines in in your where you live so there are a number of different ways we do this and we can share with you a kind of comprehensive digest of that and some of our experience around the world of what's really worked because I was certainly wasn't suggesting that you should go down the same route as popular there's all kinds of issues that come out of that but it is the closest example I've seen of specific geo-labeling on specific pieces of content but each each time it's used it also creates some controversy yeah definitely and I'm not saying that the government should be the only party to communicate this to to facebook that the good thing about a multi-party or multi-stakeholder protocol is that we can carve out community accepted ways for third party that's are sometimes more trusted again than governments to either vet or contribute to such public notices great well I'm very conscious of your time and I know you're very busy but I just want to reiterate that as your thinking develops we we're very much welcome being part of different forums that you might bring together particularly forums with the public and to talk about how can we address these understandable concerns that people have about both the how we support freedom especially but also how we help people have the best possible experiences as citizens online and so I hope that you continue this really fruitful dialogue and you're always very constructively challenging about our approach to things which I really appreciate thank you I think we're therefore able to wrap up is that right Maxie you're going to finish to a conclusion thank you very much I'm going to conclusion I think that's we have a really concluding conversation and definitely I will continue to follow up with your team and there are a lot of action items that we we take note of and I'll definitely follow up with Francis for this meeting if George and Meg can turn on the video and we can have a quick a quick shot of the the meeting so that we can have the record of it and okay great thank you very much so now it's my own hey George you're okay that's wonderful oh I dropped some of your pride as well I feel bad now I should have thought about that well um well then I agree Francis are you going to just take one Francis me you want me to do it okay one second okay the fruits uh thank you guys uh and thank you man for a good time and I know you're super easy and we'll follow up with the facts and pointers and other uh like solutions that we provide to the other markets um probably will be useful for Taiwan as well and make has prepared a lot of materials for our continued work in Taiwan surrounding counter regulations we're working with NCC and with Minnesota law's office actual assembly so we have another meeting with Minnesota law on the 22nd which will deliver that we can also share our top of mind ideas about how we we can work with Taiwan because Taiwan is definitely unique in this region in that aspect so thank you again and thank you Simon for your time and this is for coordinating this thank you again thank you and I'll post a conversation with only my side of video but with all of your voices to YouTube as I believe previously communicated okay so thank you so thank you and looking forward to continued discussion bye live long and prosper