Martin Aldrovandi: Is this comfortable for you?

Audrey Tang: Of course. It’s comfortable for the microphone, I’m sure.

Martin Aldrovandi: Exactly. OK, thank you very much, again. We’ll just start, is it OK? You are also recording this.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I’m also recording.

Martin Aldrovandi: Yes, yes. My first question really is, if you can say that, what’s the difference between being a government minister being here at the executive here, and being like a hacker?

Audrey Tang: I’m still a civic hacker. There really is no difference. If you look at my name card it’s lower case minister, as in I preach about digital instead of an upper case minister, where I command people to do things. I don’t do that.

Audrey Tang: Because I’m joining this position as kind of a lagrange point, like equal distance between the community social sector and the public sector, I would say that my role stays as a channel, no matter where people build me as a lower case or upper case minister.

Martin Aldrovandi: It’s the same thing, or would you say that the minister is less important? It’s a…

Audrey Tang: No, because in Taiwan a minister’s words and the journalist’s words have the same degree of freedom. Indeed, I would say journalists sometimes have higher legitimacy.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, [laughs] we are the only jurisdiction in Asia if you count Asia-Pacific, New Zealand, and us, are the two jurisdictions according to the civic monitors, that a civil society has exactly the same freedom of speech, assembly, and so on as government ministers, whereas in other jurisdictions, being a government minister gives a higher form of expression freedom. In Taiwan there’s really no difference between a journalist and a minister.

Martin Aldrovandi: Is it also a reason why you chose to take that post?

Audrey Tang: Yes. I assert, when I joined the cabinet, that I’m working with the government not for the government, and I’m working with the people, not for the people, meaning that I’m working to get the civil society, the public sector people, economic sector and so on to work together upon the shared values and the common goals, rather than doing things by myself. I’m more of a connector than anything else.

Martin Aldrovandi: That’s a bit a broader question, the second one. The Internet, or coding, how does that support democratic values?

Audrey Tang: The Internet, I think, embodies a democratic value, indeed a liberal democratic value called permissionless innovation, meaning that you don’t have to ask for authority explicitly, before you go off and create, say, Bitcoin.

Audrey Tang: Anyone who support your protocol, that is to say your innovation of a new way to communicate can join your network without pre-approval of any intermediaries, and that is fundamentally the “inter” part of the Internet. Before the Internet, the various network upgraders serve as checkpoints just like the top-down authoritarian structures.

Audrey Tang: After the “inter” part of the Internet is invented it’s called the end-to-end principle, meaning that any two person using the Internet can innovate together regardless of their geographic or topological relationship.

Audrey Tang: That’s the ideal. Of course, we all know that Internet has become vulcanized recently, but that was its original vision.

Martin Aldrovandi: The Internet, or at least, the World Wide Web is something fairly new and also democracy in Taiwan as well.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the personal computer in Taiwan which is around the late ‘80s is also the time when the ban on the press freedom and the martial law itself got lifted, so it’s literally the same year actually. World Wide Web becomes popular around ‘95, ‘96, which is also our first presidential election.

Martin Aldrovandi: How does that correlate?

Audrey Tang: I think in other jurisdictions when there’s a longer history of democracy people see democracy as a tradition. In Taiwan, because democracy is fairly new, we have the same generation that has access to the Internet and the same generation that has access to democracy.

Audrey Tang: Just like Internet, democracy is seen as a new social technology that can be improved, that can be experimented upon. All the different strands of democracy are participative, libertive, they react liquid, whatever. They all arrived to Taiwan in roughly the same decade. Because of that, there’s less of a fixed tradition to honor but more of a palette of options to consider.

Martin Aldrovandi: One thing that strikes me every time, so my Taiwanese friends if they want to come back to vote, they actually have to physically come back, and also go to their cities. Is there something planned in the future where people actually either could use letters, or use e-voting?

Audrey Tang: As early as next year, actually, in our Referendum Act, there is a clause that says, “Remote distance voting is specifically considered in the Referendum Act.” Also, 18-year-olds can vote in the referendum but not in an election, because 20-year-old is hard-wired in the constitution.

Audrey Tang: The Referendum Act is more flexible. That’s where we do experiments like this. After people agree on the common of such a norm, then maybe we’ll take some of that back to the elections.

Audrey Tang: So far, the main design is to try it out on a national referendum, especially because the topics on the ballot are the same, no matter where you are. But if you are say, in a foreign embassy, and taking care of the people who want to vote locally in that dispatch, in that consulate or embassy, if they are voting for people then it’s actually very easy to see who voted for what.

Martin Aldrovandi: Oh, OK. It’s more a technical problem?

Audrey Tang: It’s also a social problem. In Taiwan when we tally the votes, opening the ballot box and taking it out for everybody to see, we actually allow live streaming and recording it from different directions. That’s a very strong way to make social trust possible, and the fairness and openness of elections.

Audrey Tang: People’s expectation of the tallying process is higher than in many other jurisdictions. Because of that, the e-voting as you mentioned, or remote voting as you mentioned, have to go to the same level of legitimacy, transparency, and accountability as the already very high standard.

Audrey Tang: That is again, why we start with say, e-collecting next year, because when you’re collecting like signing your signatures on a referendum topic, people do that on the street. They write their names and so on, even though there may be other people looking near them.

Audrey Tang: They’re seeing this as kind of social support issue. The ask for secrecy, and so on, is somewhat lower than actually voting in the booths. We start with e-collecting, and then maybe e-voting or distance voting. But maybe e-tallying between those two for the Referendum Act before we consider any of that to the election.

Martin Aldrovandi: What kind of timeframe are you thinking that will be possible?

Audrey Tang: E-collecting is already ready. It’s just that cyber-security audit is ongoing. Once the cyber-security audit finishes, then e-collecting will just be online, so in a very near timeframe like some time this year, maybe.

Audrey Tang: After e-collecting then it depends on the social will, which in turn will determine how the Parliament looks at this issue. There is a broad consensus on trying out a referendum before election, but that would depend on the Parliament’s composition which we don’t know, right? The election is happening at the MPs.

Martin Aldrovandi: You have many different projects where you also use these, whether it’s companies or people. Can you talk a little about that? Was there something like this before you came into office, or was this just something very new for Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: If you’re talking about the petitioning system, then the join the gov.tw is perhaps the largest petition site for Taiwan. It has around more than 10 million users, 10 million visitors, unique visitors.

Audrey Tang: Considering Taiwan is just 23 million people, that’s a lot of people. The petition, they have to collect 5,000 e-signatures before it will get a guaranteed response from the ministry in charge. If it’s cross-ministerial, then I will personally visit the place to talk with the stakeholders and so on.

Audrey Tang: We work on two issues of these multi-stakeholder nature every month on average. That’s the petition and party for alluding to that. The system started, I think, 2015.

Martin Aldrovandi: That was…It’s still fairly new.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I of course helped in the initial design and implementation and helped the first petitioning case, which is about immune therapy for cancer, for new forms of cancer. It started by someone that bequeathed this petition, because he was pretty advanced in his cancer already. That has of course become a legal option now, thanks to the petitioner.

Audrey Tang: The design is for people who are really stakeholders, literally stakeholders, to raise a topic that may be outside of the radar of both the administration and the MPs.

Martin Aldrovandi: There are also many other protests, and the Uber was also on this? The Uber case?

Audrey Tang: The Uber case was not a petition case. It was something that the civil society as well as the three related ministries in charge all want to discuss. It did not take place on the petition platform.

Audrey Tang: It took place on the mechanism maintained by the social sector called vTaiwan. vTaiwan is a multi-stakeholder conversation model based on the common will of the administrations in charge as well as the civil society.

Audrey Tang: VTaiwan has hand out maybe 26, 27 pieces of regulations and laws that has gone through the vTaiwan process. After I become the digital minister, my main contribution is institutionalizing a copy of vTaiwan, something that’s heavily inspired by the vTaiwan process into the administration. It’s called the Participation Offices Network.

Audrey Tang: The PO Network is a replica of vTaiwan, but with the facilitators and the mediators, instead of civil society people, it’s the career public service playing these roles.

Martin Aldrovandi: Can you talk a bit…maybe just introduce the Uber case, because I find that one actually quite interesting.

Audrey Tang: Sure. Back in 2015, the vTaiwan platform handled this case, and that’s the first time a AI-based conversation system called Polis is used in a regulation context in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: We wrote out the surveys to the Uber drivers, taxi drivers, Uber passengers, other passengers on the same time, and used a visualization platform so that people can see what their friends and families feel like in this issue.

Audrey Tang: Most importantly, we didn’t ask a abstract question like “What do you think about platform economy?” but rather, “What do you think if someone driving to work stops by to pick up a stranger that they meet on the phone and charging them for the detour that they have to make?” a very specific case.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, the overlapping consensus was that that’s fine as long as the insurance, registration, and license is taken care of if that someone do this detour more than twice a day.

Audrey Tang: This is the rough consensus of all the stakeholders on this topic, and the face-to-face consultation meeting is then taken, taking the rough consensus as the agenda for the face-to-face conversation. Uber and the taxi companies all came to the face-to-face deliberation, which then determined the multi-purpose taxi regulation that we’re using now.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, if you call Uber, actually all of them are having the plate, over 3,000 of them are having the red plate, meaning that they are multi-purpose taxis. The taxi companies are also running on very much Uber-like apps.

Martin Aldrovandi: Using this way of communicating with people, taking people into the decision process, does it make it easier for everyone to accept the final outcome?

Audrey Tang: Or to live with the final outcome, yes.

Martin Aldrovandi: Compared to before.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, compared to before, because previously the problem is that the representatives cannot accurately represent the argument of their constituents, but now with Polis and other civic technologies, we can listen at scale, meaning that millions of people can listen to one another thanks to the automated facilitation of the AI algorithm.

Audrey Tang: The algorithm must be open, transparent, accountable. All the source code is public for everyone to see all the data, public for people to analyze. The machine that runs this code is in a separate security-reinforced place in Taiwan now.

Audrey Tang: It must become part of the democratic institution to be part of the governance project. It’s not relying on a arbitrary black box somewhere else on the planet.

Martin Aldrovandi: Can we talk a little bit about the sandbox, which I found very interesting as well?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Martin Aldrovandi: What was the challenges in digging for you…

Audrey Tang: After Uber, people started to realize that this is not a single, specific case. Self-driving vehicles presents a very similar issue, if not more, and fintech present a similar issue.

Audrey Tang: If a mobile telecom say, “I’ve done my KYC. I want to open a bank,” but does not have a physical building, then that actually changes the way that the finance minister views the risk factors calculated for anti-money laundering and things like that.

Audrey Tang: For all these issues where the public and the public service, to be honest, knows almost nothing, because these are really new, emerging technologies, we settled on the idea of the sandboxes.

Audrey Tang: It’s inspired by the UK system of fintech sandboxes, but we’re the first continental law jurisdiction that adopt this continental law-style sandboxes, which require the MP to carve out a zone for people who submit a proposal of a better regulation or better legislation to try their alternate worldview for a year and convince the society it’s a good idea.

Audrey Tang: If they succeed in convincing the society and the society co-creates a norm around this new technology, then it’s a success, and then the regulation must take into account this alternate reality and make it into the mainstream reality.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, if it doesn’t work, then we thank the investors for paying the tuition for everyone. It’s like reverse lottery. Everybody gains a little bit. [laughs] Because of that, then, people learn that they can launch multiple parallel sandboxes. We have ones for platform economy, for fintech, for self-driving vehicle, for 5G dedicated sandbox spectrum, many other things.

Martin Aldrovandi: Pretty much everything is possible, right, with just a few exceptions?

Audrey Tang: Anti-money-laundering still holds. You cannot launch a sandbox to try out money laundering for a year. I don’t think terrorism is permitted. You cannot launch a sandbox to try out terrorism. Other than these obvious ones, everything else, yeah, is fair game. You can challenge any ministry’s regulation.

Martin Aldrovandi: Was this difficult to convince or deal with these different ministries who were in charge of that? Was that new for them?

Audrey Tang: Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. It’s new for them, of course, but they can see, if they don’t do this public, multi-stakeholder process or mechanism, it doesn’t stop people on the street to do the same, and eventually gaining higher legitimacy or at least more popular than the governance system.

Audrey Tang: The governance system is quickly being rendered obsolete if we don’t connect to the open multi-stakeholder model. This is because in Taiwan broadband is a human right. Even on the top of Yushan Mountain, 4,000 meters, you still have 10 megabits per second and 16 Euros per month, unlimited 4G connection. If you don’t, it’s my fault.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, people are not just viewers and readers. Everybody is the media. Because of that, the new form of democracy doesn’t leave anyone behind. It doesn’t exclude people who don’t have broadband access, because everybody does.

Audrey Tang: More than 90 percent of people actively use the broadband bidirectional communication, and this way, if the government disconnect itself asymmetrically from this very vibrant civil society, then the legitimacy will be dwindling, as we have seen during the Sunflower.

Martin Aldrovandi: There was no, say, hesitance from the government or from the civil servants’ side?

Audrey Tang: After the Occupy? No. There’s a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but there’s no hesitance, and my main work is to lower [laughs] the fear, uncertainty, and doubt by saying everybody gets some credit for innovating.

Audrey Tang: Previously, public service are anonymous, but using this way, people can see you’re really fixing problems. You’re really thinking in a very structured fashion. You are really contributing to the public understanding.

Audrey Tang: Everybody who participate gains credit. Everybody who participate also lower their risk, because their risk of being misunderstood is far fewer, and that I can absorb all the political risk. Less risk, more credit – why not?

Martin Aldrovandi: Will this continue even if there’s another…I mean, it doesn’t look like it right now, but if there’s another administration with…?

Audrey Tang: I worked in the previous administration, too.

Martin Aldrovandi: That’s something that’s not tied to…

Audrey Tang: In the DPP primary, William Lai was saying he will be even more open [laughs] than Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, and after the primary ended and now they’re running on the same ticket, the KMT said they will be even more open. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: There is a race, I guess, [laughs] but the KMT literally said – Mayor Han literally said – that if he becomes president, it will no longer take 5,000 people to sign a petition. It will only take 3,000 people, and things like that. I guess it’s a good competition.

Martin Aldrovandi: That’s very encouraging, actually, for…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Martin Aldrovandi: I also want to talk a bit about the transparency. Why is that so important to have, say, for example, even this kind of conversation recorded and published?

Audrey Tang: I think first of all, both of my parents are journalists, and we talk about the future of journalism all the time in my family. There’s a lot of pressure nowadays on journalists, because everybody can be a blogger or a microblogger, also known as Twitter nowadays.

Audrey Tang: In any case, there’s a race to produce some content in a short timeframe, which makes investigative journalism difficult. One of the ways the investigative journalists have in their toolbox nowadays is what we call collective intelligence, working with the crowd to source the most important viewpoints and offering the unique perspective from the journalists point of view, but instead of collecting source materials.

Audrey Tang: The source materials, the more context there is for the collective intelligence to work through, the better the investigative journalists can do their job. The less contextual information there is, the more the content farms and so on will gain traction to the detriment of the investigative journalism.

Audrey Tang: I’m doing this as a kind of a, I don’t know, firsthand reporter [laughs] within the cabinet to make the entire context easier to access for journalism.

Martin Aldrovandi: In general, on transparency, a transparent government, can there be too much transparency?

Audrey Tang: Of course, if you say anything that you feel that are anecdotal, you’re quoting your friends words and that friend is not ready to get published, and so on, we have 10 days to edit this transcripts, so you can take out parts of it. I will always, of course, happy to be quoted. Because of that, the boundary is set by the participant, but the default is fully open.

Audrey Tang: What I’m doing is radical transparency, meaning at the root, like making it the default. If you take extra effort, you can still take out parts that you consider a trade secret or you consider something that may danger other people’s livelihoods and things like that.

Martin Aldrovandi: It’s also for government, governmental meetings?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, for all the meeting that I chair. Yes. I’m not saying to say the minister of defense that you have to adopt this. I’m not doing that. Everything is by voluntary association. Each ministry can decide to send one person to my office to partake in this collaborative policy making. There’s 32 ministries in Taiwan, so theoretically there could be 32 colleagues sitting here.

Audrey Tang: Actually, there’s more than 20, or just around 20, meaning that some ministries never send people. I take that as a signal that they’re not yet ready to partake in this collaborative policy making.

Martin Aldrovandi: Not yet meaning the goal is that everyone is at some point?

Audrey Tang: We’ll see. We’ll see. Defense and diplomatic issues are seen as the two things that will not be part of this system because first, they’re presidential purview mostly, and also, they produce the most amount of national secrets.

Audrey Tang: Even the foreign service after I become the minister for a year or so, they start sending people to my office. They figure out that there is an arm called public diplomacy. In public diplomacy, you want more people to know things, the better. That’s aside from the traditional, multilateral diplomacy.

Audrey Tang: We collaborate with not just the foreign service here but also with a lot of other foreign services who’re stationed here in Taiwan this kind of public diplomacy projects, too.

Martin Aldrovandi: What are their reactions to that?

Audrey Tang: They’re very happy that things like POTUS can reduce their administrative burden. In public diplomacy, you really want to know what are the things that both sides bilaterally is seeing as important. Again, they run into the problem that previously they cannot very easily listen at scale.

Audrey Tang: Now, for example, if you look for the digital dialogue, if you search for digital dialogue AIT, AIT being the de facto embassy that USA have here, then you can see a series of digital dialogues where we ask people what do you think is the best way to promote Taiwan’s role in the global community.

Audrey Tang: What is the best way to broaden the trade relationship between the two economies? What do you think about security cooperation? Nowadays, we’re asking what do you think about talent circulation.

Audrey Tang: For all these issues, people can very easily see not only what the divisive issues are as well as the rough consensus, what people really feel as important, but there’s no disagreement between the two polities. These should just be priorities for the bilateral in the coming year.

Audrey Tang: This allows the shoestring budget agency anywhere to run this kind of conversation where people can see they agree with their neighbors on most of the things most of the time, actually more than they imagined because the popular media will, of course, sometimes encourage people to think on the divisive statements or divisive issues. There’s actually a lot of low hanging fruits.

Martin Aldrovandi: Are these thoughts…

Audrey Tang: Our statement contributed by participant to the digital dialogue. This is the only divisive one actually.

Martin Aldrovandi: Right.

Audrey Tang: Right. There’s much more in common than we, just like vTaiwan, and this is heavily inspired by vTaiwan. We get the stakeholders to meet together, livestream our meeting where we agree to be bound by only the top 10 rough consensus as the agenda and talk specifically on how to make those 10 points happen.

Martin Aldrovandi: Sorry, to understand, this is with the AIT?

Audrey Tang: This is with the AIT and the foreign service intel.

Martin Aldrovandi: OK. I see. That’s just also open for everyone to see?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course. If you search for digital dialogue AIT, you’ll find it.

Martin Aldrovandi: You already mentioned the advantages of this radical…Radical transparency you said means starting at the root.

Audrey Tang: At the root.

Martin Aldrovandi: Not radical meaning that everything has to be transparent?

Audrey Tang: No. Basically what my work is, in Taiwan it’s called daoism, but it’s connotated as something religious outside of Taiwan, so I coined a word conservative anarchism to convey really the kind of philosophy that guides my work.

Audrey Tang: Conservative meaning that in Taiwan there’s 20 national languages. There’s many culture, many lineages. I understand the Internet multi-stakeholder culture is just one of the cultures in Taiwan, and we want to conserve the cultures themselves instead of one culture dominating the other.

Audrey Tang: We also want to build a transcultural republic, so that the transcultural perspective, where one culture can see the same thing on the perspective of other cultures…Intercultural dialogue is very important.

Audrey Tang: Anarchism to me is not about one line of thought eliminating other lines of thought, but rather it’s about not giving command or coercive power for one culture over other cultures.

Martin Aldrovandi: Also, you don’t give commands, I read, right?

Audrey Tang: That’s what anarchism means. It means not obeying or giving commands.

Martin Aldrovandi: The long-term goal would be then that the government is not necessary anymore?

Audrey Tang: Basically, the governance mechanism – if it’s transparent, it’s accountable, it’s inclusive – it means that everybody can create their own governance mechanisms on the areas they care, and still have reasonable political connectivity toward the main branches of power.

Audrey Tang: This is like the Internet. [laughs] Previously, there’s telecom operators, who don’t quite talk to one another. If you figure out the right social technology, the Internet protocols, then you can federate them into a polycentric federation.

Audrey Tang: The Internet really have no way to coerce you to use it. It doesn’t really have a coercive power, but yet everybody use it – somewhat reluctantly for some jurisdictions, but they still use it. That is the power of anarchism, the power of voluntary association.

Martin Aldrovandi: You just mentioned the certain jurisdiction. This kind of transparency – because I live in China right now, it just seems to say exactly…

Audrey Tang: Oh yeah. They mean the reverse.

Martin Aldrovandi: It’s exactly the opposite.

Audrey Tang: They’re making citizens transparent to the state. What we talk about – making state transparent to the citizens. It’s kind of mirror image out there.

Martin Aldrovandi: What do you think about that?

Audrey Tang: Well, in Taiwan, we’re seeing that as something not to do. It’s a constant reminder that whatever technology we develop, whatever term we use, we must not define it the way that PRC have been defining the word “harmony,” the word “social credit,” which in Taiwan is mostly about credit unions and so on, the way that the PRC define it. I guess it serves as a reminder.

Martin Aldrovandi: At the same time, mainland China is very close to Taiwan, and there’s a lot of influence. What kind of challenges does this pose to the government, your government, in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: The legitimacy of this government is based on the idea that this liberal democratic idea, the republic of citizens, which is the name of the country, stands continuous, stands in the sense that it’s more appealing to not only the Taiwanese citizens, but also homo sapiens in general that our legitimacy requirement is so high because we’re proving this not only to ourselves but to the international community that this way of liberal democracy is not only worth conserving, we’re actually making contributions to democracy itself.

Martin Aldrovandi: Does it also make it vulnerable to say for attacks from China?

Audrey Tang: What I’m saying is that if we revert back to the martial law era, we revert back to authoritarianism, then it’s easy for the international community to confuse Taiwan with the PRC because they would then look the same, which is somewhat what we’re trying very hard to avoid, not to be confused with the PRC. The more different, the better.

Audrey Tang: Marriage equality is a great differentiator. Previously we say we’re the only jurisdiction in Asia that has marriage equality. People actually get it. People cannot confuse that with the PRC.

Martin Aldrovandi: I understand that, but this kind of open society and also this transparency from the government side, does it make it vulnerable?

Audrey Tang: No, it makes it less vulnerable because the vulnerability is based on the authoritarian idea that our ruling elites knows better or knows best. In that sense, it relies on information asymmetry.

Audrey Tang: It relies on the concentrate of decision-making information to the top and not having people even discuss this issues, sometime enforce by automated censorship. That is their legitimacy theory. It’s called “social harmony.”

Audrey Tang: Here, if we adopt anything like that, then it actually makes the disinformation campaigns and so on more compatible with the disinformation campaigns coming out of the PRC.

Audrey Tang: The more liberal, the more democratic we are, the more context of policy making that everyday people can participate, the less likely that they will believe in propaganda because they don’t have to believe something if you are already partaking, creating that thing.

Audrey Tang: Just like if you have a very good friend that you’re moving to live together or at least have a phone call every other day or so, you’re less likely to believe in gossips or in rumors around that particular friend because you can just check with them.

Audrey Tang: If that friend monopolizes information and only respond whenever they feel like every couple year or something like that, of course there’s a lot of room for rumors and disinformation to grow.

Martin Aldrovandi: Currently how big of a problem is this kind of news infiltration from China in Taiwan, a fake news that one hears. There was recently a law that was passed against it.

Martin Aldrovandi: Audrey. We don’t use the term, the F word, You’re a journalist. You’re OK to use that. I respect that.

Martin Aldrovandi: In Taiwan, the word news and journalism translate to the same word, [Mandarin] . Because of that, it’s difficult for me to say the F word in Mandarin without offending journalists, and because of filial piety, I cannot do so. [laughs] Because of that, what we are saying now is just disinformation or information manipulation, information operation.

Martin Aldrovandi: It is a big problem, of course, worldwide. It is not only a Taiwan problem. The social media makes it easier for one angry person to mobilize tens of thousands of people in outrage. This is a general problem, it’s not just a Taiwan problem.

Martin Aldrovandi: Any place that has a room for discord can amplify that discord with the pathways to outrage. In Taiwan, we’re remarkably resilient thanks to our multiculture, transcultural perspective. It’s very hard to craft a message that will simultaneously make all the different cultures in Taiwan enraged.

Martin Aldrovandi: It’s like biodiversity, more resilient against a mind virus, if you will. We’re remarkably resilient but of course, just like elsewhere in the world, there is a lot of disinformation.

Martin Aldrovandi: How can a government deal with this, or should it not deal with it at all?

Audrey Tang: We deal with it with rapid, humorous response, because humor is a great pathway if you are angry about something, but you can make fun of it at the expense of one’s self, not of other people, which would be something else altogether.

Audrey Tang: If one can be humorous about it, then that clarification message itself goes viral without reinforcing the stereotypes. If people look at something and laugh at it, it’s very difficult to turn into outrage any more. People will be more likely to engage in rational discussions after laughing about it. These mematic engineering task forces are embedded now in all the different ministries that are facing the people.

Audrey Tang: They are required, when there’s a trend in this information, to roll out such funny packages within two hours, and each one 200 characters or less, with 2 pictures. Because of that, people come to expect that there will be a real-time clarification from the minister that’s in charge, so they work with the new cycle instead of against the new cycle.

Martin Aldrovandi: Can you make an example of that?

Audrey Tang: Sure. There was a rumor trending a few months ago that says, “Perming your hair multiple times a week will be subject to a $1 million fine.” Just an hour after this rumor got popular, our Prime Minister rolls out this picture that says, “Popular rumor that says perming your hair will be subject to a fine is not true.”

Audrey Tang: “I may be bald now,” says the younger version of the Prime Minister, “But I would not punish people who look like my youth.” The fine print says, “What we have done is introducing a labeling requirement for hair products starting 2021.”

Audrey Tang: A minister as he looks now says, “However, if you keep perming your hair many times a week, you will not damage your pocket but it will damage your hair. When serious, you may end up looking like me.”

Audrey Tang: This is humor, right? This is making fun at the expense of himself. This went viral. If you search for these words it’s far more likely that you will encounter this picture than the misinformation package.

Martin Aldrovandi: How did you come up with this kind of idea to deal with humor? That seems very unique for a government.

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm. My philosophy of working with the free software, open-source community has always been optimizing for fun. In the online community, there’s a lot of trolls. My hobby is actually to hook the trolls, or engage in authentic conversations.

Audrey Tang: I even wrote a blog post called, “My hobby troll hooking” on that particular aspect. That’s always my personal philosophy. I shared that with the cabinet, I think early 2017.

Audrey Tang: It is really to the credit of the spokesperson [Mandarin] and now Kolas Yutaka who then built the necessary logistics supply for all those ministries to be able to…It’s just like doing a stand-up comedy all the time, right? [laughs]

Audrey Tang: The necessary expertise within all the ministries, so that on average they can roll out such mematic responses within an hour or so, the requirements to us.

Martin Aldrovandi: It’s not a lot of time to come up with a…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, with comedies, especially if they use your minister’s image. You have to pre-clear all those images.

Martin Aldrovandi: What’s the response from the public?

Audrey Tang: They love it. It’s really interesting to see that, because we also allow for re-mixes. People really consider that this kind of politics is a participatory one. Truth to be told, it’s not a very deeply participatory one. But if they catch your 5 seconds’ attention, it’s more likely you’ll spend 50 seconds to understand the policy context.

Audrey Tang: If you start just by enlarging this fine print into a large clarification message, nobody will pay attention to it, obviously.

Martin Aldrovandi: Right. This will continue?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Martin Aldrovandi: Yeah. Since we were talking about this kind of disinformation or “fake news,” what do you think about this law that was recently passed?

Audrey Tang: You mean the Anti-Infiltration?

Martin Aldrovandi: The Anti-Infiltration law, and the opposition’s criticism of saying, “This is a very corrosive way to…”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s not a cabinet initiated law. I was not involved in the discussion about the Anti-Infiltration law. I will say, however, that there is a response from the MAC, the Council in charge of dealing with continental China affairs, that analyzed why this version is preferred by the MAC rather than the other drafts that has been proposed in the past few years.

Audrey Tang: I would encourage the readers to consult our mac.gov.tw responses, but I was not personally involved in it.

Martin Aldrovandi: Do you think such a law is necessary?

Audrey Tang: I would say that this law enables a clear legal definition of what infiltration is. That helps to set the frame of debate around particular issues pertaining to infiltration. But I would say that this information and infiltration, although it may have overlaps, are actually two different problems.

Audrey Tang: It’s just like content forums. If you look at content forums, most of them are around for safety or health. It’s not around politics. Of course, it creates opportune moments where the politics can leverage these topics to follow their political campaign, or disinformation campaign’s purposes.

Audrey Tang: Similarly, disinformation is a more general problem, like spam. It’s a general problem that can be taken to an infiltrator’s context for information or cognitive space, as they prefer to call it. They may have overlap, but I don’t think Anti-Infiltration law is all by itself solves, or aims to solve, the disinformation issue.

Audrey Tang: But it helps to…

Martin Aldrovandi: To frame the conversation around what constitutes as infiltration.

Martin Aldrovandi: But it seems very vague in a way, at least what I read.

Audrey Tang: It’s not vague. It is recursive, right? A recursive meaning that what’s already criminal, or illegal behavior, is now defined so that if they go through one intermediary, that intermediary is also subject to the law.

Audrey Tang: Previously, it’s only if it’s an external force, external judicial force, directing, say, a local person, or just to donate to a campaign, which is forbidden by the law, because only domestic citizens can donate to election campaigns. But if they go through one intermediary, then that intermediary has no legal repercussion.

Audrey Tang: So the infiltration basically defines saying no matter which number of intermediaries that you use, each intermediary, if they know for sure that they’re acting on an infiltrator’s direction or operation, then they’re as liable as their upstream and their downstream. That’s the main scope of the Anti-Infiltration law.

Martin Aldrovandi: OK. Thank you very much, Minister Tang. One last question. I read that you only spent two days per week here.

Audrey Tang: That’s right, yes.

Martin Aldrovandi: Can you elaborate.

Audrey Tang: Sure. I’m here every Thursday for cabinet meeting, and every Monday for conversation with the ministry of delegates to my office at work. We just have lunch together, to be honest. That’s the only thing that I’m committed to do in the cabinet. Most of the time I’m touring around Taiwan and connecting back to the Social Innovation Lab, which is my real office.

Audrey Tang: This office is unique in that it is jointly managed, or jointly taken care of by the civil society, the social innovators, that is, as well as the ministries. Because of that, you can see the decoration doesn’t seem very government building like.

Audrey Tang: Because of that office hour every Wednesday, from 10:00 am to 11:00 am, I’m here. You can talk to me for 40 minutes at a time, anyone can do that. We tore down the walls so you can just walk in from the street. Because of that, it’s more of a co-creation space than a government building.

Audrey Tang: Because my residence is just 10 minutes walk from this place, whenever you have any event that corresponds to the global goals, you can just use this space for free, and I’m more likely than not to join your event.

Audrey Tang: That’s why I can say that I’m at lagrange point between the government building on one side, and the civil society on the street on the other, because we’re literally by the street and with the street.

Martin Aldrovandi: OK. Thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add that I didn’t…

Audrey Tang: No, that’s it.

Martin Aldrovandi: OK. Thank you very much Thank you so much.