Two crude fake-news stories win believers, warning of a bigger threat to Taiwan’s elections

Two fake-news stories so poorly made that they should have been easy to dismiss have nevertheless circulated widely in Taiwan, according to York University associate professor Shen Rong-chin. He said their popularity points to a deeper danger for the island’s elections.

One story targeted Democratic Progressive Party candidate Shen Po-yang. An anonymous pro-blue Facebook page, “政客爽,” altered a video of him with the caption, “Ocean currents sweep through Taipei, 500,000 people cheer as Shen Po-yang crosses the street.” The video later appeared on CTi News’ political program “Big News Big Explosion,” where commentator Huang Ching-ping mocked the supposed exaggeration. Shen Rong-chin said the program concealed the video’s original source and presented it as evidence that Shen Po-yang’s supporters had inflated the size of a crowd.

The second story circulated under headlines such as “These few slaps leave CNN red-faced” and “CNN host pinned to the ground.” Shen said it falsely repackaged an earlier CNN interview with Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, about an undocumented immigrant who had faced what the story described as federal entrapment. Miller argued that “illegal immigrant” should be used instead of “undocumented immigrant.” Claims that followed, including references to bank robberies, were fabricated, Shen said. Some versions still included clips from the genuine interview, even though the footage did not contain the invented material.

Shen said both stories had glaring flaws, yet people in Taiwan continued to believe and share them. He warned that as China’s AI technology develops, it will become possible to produce large volumes of convincing fake news and accounts at very low cost. He predicted Taiwan’s local elections at the end of the year could serve as a major testing ground for Chinese Communist Party interference, followed by the presidential election two years later and future votes. “If Taiwanese people believe even this kind of crudely manufactured fake news, there is indeed reason to worry about their ability to resist Chinese AI interference,” he wrote on Facebook.

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If Taiwanese people believe even this kind of crudely manufactured fake news, there is indeed reason to worry about their ability to resist Chinese AI interference.