New Party Taipei City Councilor Hou Hanting questioned yesterday that more than 15 unrelated Facebook fans simultaneously posted the "Ocean Current is showing its power!" picture card, which means "the New Taiwan Dollar and the Internet Army are showing their power." However, after an investigation by information security experts, they found that the source of these fans was the well-known Chinese content farm "Borderless Group". The blue camp has repeatedly insinuated that the green camp "buys the Internet army". The truth may be unbelievable to the supporters of the blue camp.
Information security experts revealed that the fans accused by Hou Hanting actually came from the "Borderless Group". This group is located in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, China. It operates overseas fans such as Malaysia through VPNs in other countries, and uses a large number of fans to post messages simultaneously to wash away traffic. Once users click on the diversion links attached to the sensational pictures and texts, they will be directed to the group's content farm website, thereby earning traffic benefits.
Experts analyzed that the group is good at deceiving clicks with sensational headlines. For example, it once titled "Sudden explosion in the early morning, killing at least 55 people," which was actually a tour bus crash in Central and South America; or it said "Presidential Palace was shocked to be bombed," but it was actually an attack on the presidential palace in Aden by the Houthis. Political scientist and cognitive warfare expert Wang Hongen once discovered that the Borderless Group would use AI to rewrite articles in support of Iran to guide public opinion. In addition to making money from traffic, it also often posted politically manipulated articles to guide public opinion.
Information security experts pointed out that Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan's Facebook was blasted overnight as an example. At that time, in order to clear the ground, some media hired unnamed people to claim that according to market trends, it would cost more than 4 to 5 million yuan to wash 200,000 comments online. However, TPOC Taiwan Issues Research Center immediately The confirmation stated that "Jiang Wanan's Facebook messages were not simply bombarded by netizens," but were instead a collective action formed by the interaction of a large number of users. None of the top 10 messages ranked by the number of likes belonged to a highly similar fixed template, but were rhetorical questions or ridiculing content written by netizens themselves.
Experts bluntly say that whenever the situation is unfavorable recently, some members of the opposition party will label their opponents as "spending money" and "showing off their power." However, looking back at last year's Kuomintang presidential election, a large number of Facebook fans and YT channels simultaneously appeared on the Internet to support party chairman Cheng Lai-wen, which is enough to prove that it is not the Taiwanese political party that will adopt such operating methods, but the Beijing authorities from abroad.
