00:00China is behind several social media accounts promoting Beijing's narratives to shape public
00:04opinion in Taiwan. That's according to a new report from Reporters Without Borders.
00:09RSF found that China is putting political messaging in Facebook pages, pushing lifestyle content.
00:15The pages are tied to a Chinese digital marketing firm that the National Security
00:19Bureau here has identified as conducting influence operations targeting Taiwan.
00:24About 75 percent of people in Taiwan use Facebook.
00:29To find out more about China's online influence tactics in Taiwan, our reporter Alan Liu spoke
00:34to Crystal Tu. She's a research fellow from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
00:40China operates lifestyle Facebook fan pages and inserts political messaging when it's needed.
00:46In your view, what is the strategy behind this approach?
00:50I think it's purely from digital marketing strategy is that you begin with the very
00:57very low-interest topics such as lifestyles and interests.
01:03And that's a very easy topic that will attract a lot of fans and user viewerships.
01:11So it's beyond the kind of the normal tactic we see in information operations.
01:26Beyond running content farms, have you observed any new tactics in China's influence operations
01:32on Taiwanese social media?
01:34Well, we see a compliance of the tactics that beyond just using purely social media accounts.
01:42For example, there's a recent search for phishing for a certain social media account that if you have a large
01:53viewership or a large follower in the social media account,
01:57you might receive some phishing emails.
02:01You might try to suffocate your account, and as long as they acquire the account from phishing to acquire your
02:10password for social media accounts,
02:12you might try to modify that for other purposes.
02:17Or you will see that it's to create similar pages that are mimicking the similarly official account.
02:26Like, they create several kinds of similar accounts that look like officials or look like have local connections.
02:36But in fact, they are actually operating using by external sources.
02:42Besides exposing these tactics, what else can Taiwan do to more proactively counter these influence operations?
02:49One of the gaps I have seen in to proactively counter such influence operations is that you need to empower
03:00the people with the knowledge about intentions.
03:03So as long as you understand what is happening, what is trying to achieve, it gives people a sense of
03:11control and empowerment that you understand what is happening.
03:15So you have initiative to make your own judgment.
03:21And I think the empowerment is the most powerful way to counter such influence operations because it gives the powers
03:31of judgment and understanding back to peoples.
03:35That was Crystal Tu from INDSR.
03:38It would be helpful to your friends and family that you can create.
03:38But if you're familiar with it, you can only make your own judgment in order.
03:38But you can see that there are no matter.
03:38Magical and your friends of the community but I want you to do that.
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