Determining why fake news is so compellingAt a community center hosted by Bangkah Church in Taipei’s Wanhua neighborhood, a crowd of seniors listen to 28-year old Tseng Yu-huan speak on behalf of Fake News Cleaner.The attendees, many of whom come daily to the church’s college for seniors, are learning why fake news is so compelling. Tseng shows them some sensational headlines. One: A smoothie mix of sweet potato leaves and milk was said to be a detox drink. Another: rumors that COVID-19 was being spread from India because of dead bodies in rivers. He used mostly examples from Line, a Korean messaging app popular in Taiwan.With just one formal employee and a team of volunteers, Fake News Cleaner has combed Taiwan’s churches, temples, small fishing villages and parks, spreading awareness. While they started with a focus on seniors, the group has also lectured at colleges and even elementary schools. Early on, to catch their target audience, Hsieh and her co-founders would get to the hiking trails near her home by 5 a.m. to set up a stall while offering free bars of soap to entice people to stop and listen.Now the group has a semester-long course at a community college in Kaohsiung, in addition to their lectures all across Taiwan, from fishing villages to community centers.For Hsieh, her personal experience helped shape the approach to battling disinformation.In 2018, ahead of a referendum on gay marriage, Hsieh had started to lobby her father. He was well-respected in their community and could command a lot of votes. “I wanted his vote,” Hsieh says.It seemed unlikely: She says he opposed gay marriage and had said homophobic things. The two had often clashed on this issue before, she says, devolving into screaming matches to the point where he had thrown things on the floor. But when she decided to change his mind, Hsieh discovered a new level of patience.”After we fight, the same night, I’d apologize, and say my attitude is very bad,” she says. “And I’d make him a cup of milk or a coffee, and then after he started feeling better, I’d say ‘But! I believe …”Through the course of three to four months, Hsieh lobbied her father, sending him articles to counter the things he had been reading online or explaining patiently what the facts were. For example, he had read online that AIDS came from gay people. In actuality, the virus was actually from chimpanzees and had made the leap to human hosts in the 20th century.What finally turned the page after months of lobbying, Hsieh says: She connected the issue to her father’s personal experience.When he first started doing business, decades ago, some Taiwanese suppliers did not want to sell to him because he’d come from China after the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalist party. When he proposed, his future wife’s father threatened suicide because he was not of “Taiwanese” background. Hsieh saw an opportunity in that.”Just because they’re gay they can’t marry the person they love?” she asked, confronting him.Her father, Hsieh says, is now a staunch supporter of gay marriage.
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