The idea of one, if look at Wikipedia’s 網軍 term, they actually redirects to 網路特工. That means government hired. There is also 婉君, which I don’t even know how state this in English.

This term currently doesn’t have any definite meaning.

During 2014, because, as you mentioned, Sean Lien and Ko Wen-je both accused each other of additional propaganda, they brought up this term in 網軍. Then afterwards, it lose any meaning whatsoever. Normal astroturfing are sometimes described as 網軍 as well.

Before the 2014 election, it’s mostly used as cyber-arming, which means people who disrupt security infrastructures and so on, which is much more serious. It’s like the cyber-arming kind of stuff.

All they have to do is crafting some memetic device, and then the viral nature of social media will take care of the rest. The people who then spread those news are incidentally 網軍, but they are largely unpaid.

On the other hand, if you classify it based on it must be politically motivated and paid by a certain politician to further their purpose, of course that reduces the amount of people. As I said, it doesn’t have to be a lot of people at the core.

Sure, but even unpaid 網軍 is commonplace. It’s difficult to characterize the nature of the practice, because if you say only people who use automated tools are 網軍, then anyone who even install a plugin is 網軍, right?

Yes.

I’m familiar with that research.

That became their main aim after a lot of back and forth. Because half a million people went to the street, there’s tremendous social support. Eventually, that demand is met, and cases like these are now tried in the civil court. So-called original discoveries that was posted during that time ...

I think there’s a lot of rumors, but there’s a factual basis, which is there is no clarifications and no room for clarifications and for due process if this kind of case is being court martialed instead of tried on the civil court. Eventually, the protesters solidified their ideas, and ...

It’s a bit of both. The main protest was about the lack of transparency because it was a martial court. It happened as a misconduct in the army, so there was a martial court. CCTV sent their related information by the much more confidential martial court law. There’s no need ...

For original gossips, no, there’s no need to prove anything. Of course, people would try to come up with pictures, or with videos, and so on, but if they don’t, it’s considered a norm. The moderators won’t do anything.

It’s the same with gossiping board, is that there’s no need to prove one way or another. The exception is, of course, people would talk around a social object like a news article and provide their own 卦點, which means other things that the reporter did not write. There’s also ...

The original organizers, who didn’t know each other, are all PTT users who eventually met in a café somewhere, but most of the organization on PTT without knowing each other before. It’s not the exception, it’s a norm that there is a lot of these civil society activities that just ...

For example, the quarter-million demonstration back in August, 2013 was started on PTT by a 洪仲丘 case about a military misconduct, a lack of trial, and lack of transparency information of Hung Chung-chiu’s service, an "accidental murder" in the army, and became a quarter million people protest by the sheer ...

A lot of those propagandas start as so-called 爆卦, which means original discovery, original gossip. I would say, by far, the original gossips are the sources as much of the political discussions.

There’s also much more uplifting public issue boards. There’s the PublicServan board, who are career public servants, actually. Then there’s of course always the gossiping board, which is gossiping.

Yeah. There’s forums dedicated to political discussion, like the ironically named HatePolitics board, which comprises of people who hate politics, but that’s all they talk about. I guess it’s an identity too.

Basically, anything that you have seen that’s done in Reddit, maybe there’s its counterpart on PTT. It’s pretty well known here, actually. It’s not a secret or anything.

It’s pseudonymous. It’s a mix between 4chan and Reddit in some places. It’s normal to be pseudonymous. As I said, I think there are accounts in PTT that are semiautomatic controlled. They are bots in the sense that if you post something, they will automatically upload it, download it, or ...

PTT is text-based. It’s by far the easiest according to your categorization than the most limited form of expression. You can’t just ask the person you talk about on PTT to reveal anything about their real identity, start a live broadcast, or anything like that.

You can’t do that as easily on Line or Facebook.

That is to say, the discussion forums in PTT already comprises of people who already self-identify as some kind of sub-continent in the memetic sphere. People engage in PTT discussions deliberately to try to formulate some meme that they know will resonate with this core group. It makes further spreading ...

I wouldn’t say it’s the top used, but we see a lot of propaganda starts as PTT-originated content and repost out to Facebook and to mainstream media. PTT start a very active net. It’s a little bit like Reddit in this sense, in that you can very quickly gauge your ...

Of course. It’s the main. It’s the core. Facebook is the peripheral.

And PTT.

It isn’t used much. It’s like tenth place or something.

That is to say doesn’t try to masquerade as human but try to augment humans’ online behavior is much more efficient both in my own experience, and in my observation of use of social media here in Taiwan.

For me once we pass the Turing test in a convincing way most of the time, then there is much more use for people-masquerading bots to appear. Whereas at this moment, if you want to be really effective, I think putting a lot of effort in making bots appear like ...

Right. Because it’s pretty easy at this moment to tell a bot’s behavior, versus a human behavior, given a sufficient long observation time. That is to state your intentions not being conclusively asked. Maybe in a few years’ time that will change.

For an automated program that lets me find out, for example, like Google Alert, if my name is being mentioned on the media. Then it lets me know about it. Does that qualify as a bot in your study?

Which masquerades, to a certain degree, as a normal human user. At least it uses the same mechanism the human users use to interact. Is that the idea?

...on the same public sphere.

Because bots is, broadly speaking, anything that automates human work, right? You mean bots, roughly speaking, in social media...

That’s a overly broad question. Could you be more specific...?

Also diversity inclusion plans, which means that people of all kinds of cognitive modes into what has been roughly the equal way, not just people who specialize in code, in text or in law, for that matter. That’s pretty much my mandate.

Then my responsibility, broadly speaking, is implementing the open government plan, which entails radical transparency, civic participation and building accountability trail of as many policy-making as possible.

Every Wednesday we have a hackathon in the afternoon with the civil society and private sector people. Every Friday we have a hackathon with the participation officers in all the ministries. That’s the community-building ideation and everything. That’s Wednesday and Friday. Yeah, Saturday and Sunday are not workdays, so I ...

Wednesday and Friday are my teleworking days, so I don’t go to the administration building unless there’s emergency meetings. I try to keep them to the minimum. I still wake up kind of early, but I do a lot of analysis, coding, just hackathon stuff.

If it’s a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Thursday I would wake up at 8:00, then go to the administration building at around 8:30, and then start meeting after meetings. Then go back to my dormitory around 5:00 to 6:00 PM. Then, actually starting to do real work, which can ...

I dropped out at junior high school.

I dropped out of junior high when I was 14. If you don’t count kindergarten, then it’s about seven years. But then I went to grad school classes right after dropping out, so I don’t know how to count that. There’s no diploma, so I guess it’s seven years.

That’s a trick question.

It was personal. I was 11. My dad was pursuing his PhD there, so I went there for a year.

Right. [laughs] But otherwise, no permanent stay for more than six months at a time.

Oh, cool.

Germany, near Saarbrücken in Saarland.

Yes.

Sorry. Mandarin. I first learned Taiwanese Hoklo but I’m now more fluent in Mandarin.