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🇹🇼 Taiwan /Elections & Politics

Taipei Government Page’s Southeast Asia Ad Error Prompts Troll Farm Jabs

From Liberty Times · () Chinese

Translated from Chinese and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • The Taipei government’s “Humans of Taipei” Facebook page received numerous positive Indonesian-language comments under several posts.
  • The city’s information department said an operating vendor had mistakenly targeted advertisements at Southeast Asia and ordered an immediate correction.
  • Online commentator Liu Yu alleged that contractors may buy foreign fake accounts to inflate engagement, while citing a government report that set annual content and reach targets for the page.

Rows of Indonesian-language praise beneath posts on Taipei’s official “Humans of Taipei” Facebook page have sparked accusations about how public agencies measure online reach and spend publicity money.

Taipei’s Information and Tourism Department said the comments resulted from a vendor mistakenly placing advertisements in Southeast Asia. The department said it had investigated the matter and ordered the contractor to correct the problem immediately.

May I now say that Chiang Wan-an’s Taipei city government is using feed money to support an online troll army?

— Liu YuHe mocked the city’s explanation that a contractor mistakenly targeted advertisements at Southeast Asia.

Online commentator Liu Yu, known as Four-叉-Cat, mocked the explanation by asking whether Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s city government could now be accused of using “feed money” to support an online troll army. Liu said he had first exposed the issue, but also described outsourcing the management of official government pages to private companies as common.

There is no insinuation toward anyone, but after reading the response from Chiang Wan-an’s Taipei Information and Tourism Department, those who understand will understand.

— Liu YuHe suggested the department’s explanation raised further questions without naming a specific target.

According to Liu, contracts can specify the number of monthly posts, the number of likes and comments each post should receive, and a target percentage for follower growth. He argued that official pages often attract little attention, making those performance targets difficult to meet. Vendors may claim to buy advertising to increase reach, he said, while a cheaper method would be to purchase foreign fake accounts to post comments and likes.

Liu also shared a department report stating that the page was expected to publish 68 original posts a year and reach more than 9.19 million people. He questioned the value of those figures after the department acknowledged that the page’s promotion had been outsourced and accused the resulting engagement numbers of being artificially generated. He called for cutting the city government’s media-promotion budget and relying on the mayor’s own Facebook page for policy communication.

The numbers look beautiful, until the department admitted yesterday that the traffic had been generated by a contractor. What use are numbers that beautiful if they are all fake and artificially inflated?

— Liu YuHe challenged the reported reach and engagement targets for the government page.
About this summary

Originally published by Liberty Times in Chinese. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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