Taiwan group goes offline to help senior citizens ‘scrub’ off disinformation

An anti-misinformation group in Taiwan called Fake News Cleaner has hosted more than 500 events, connecting with college students, elementary-school children — and the seniors that, some say, are the most vulnerable to such efforts.

Their days often began at the crack of dawn. They would head out to a church, a temple, a park and set up a stall. They would seek out seniors in particular, those who are perhaps the most vulnerable citizens of the information-saturated society that has enveloped them. To get people to stop and listen, they would offer free bars of soap — a metaphor for the scrubbing that they were undertaking.

They would teach techniques to punch through the static, to see the lack of logic in conspiracy theories, to find the facts behind the false narratives that can sometimes shape our lives. In nearly six years, with just one formal employee and a team of volunteers, Fake News Cleaner has hosted more than 500 events, connecting with college students, elementary-school children and the seniors.

Like any democratic society, Taiwan is flooded with assorted types of disinformation. It touches every aspect of a person’s life, from conspiracy theories on vaccines to health claims aimed at promoting supplements.

Despite its very public nature, disinformation has a deeply personal impact — particularly among Taiwan’s older people. It thrives in the natural gaps between people that come from generational differences and a constantly updating tech landscape, then enlarges those gaps to cause rifts.

“They have no way to communicate,” says Melody Hsieh, who co-founded the group with Shu-huai Chang in 2018.

Taiwan is already home to several established fact-checking organisations. There’s Co-Facts, an AI-driven fact-checking bot founded by a group of civic hackers. There are the Taiwan Fact Check Center and MyGoPen. But such organisations presume that you are at least somewhat tech-savvy — that you can find a fact-check organisation’s website or add a fact-checking bot.

Yet many of the people most affected are the least tech-savvy. Fake News Cleaner believes addressing this gap requires an old-school approach: going offline. At the heart of the group’s work is approaching people with patience and respect while educating them about the algorithms and norms that drive the platforms they use.