At 13:01 on the afternoon of April 18, 2019, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake occurred in Hualien. At that time, several photos showing “giant cracks on the ground of Songren Road in Taipei City” were shared frantically on Facebook, PTT, and mobile LINE groups.
The Cyber Crime Metropolitan Detachment of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) stated that a man surnamed Wang made an unverified judgment and distributed photos and text about the ground crack on Songren Road in Taipei via LINE groups, and a female netizen surnamed Lai posted the photos and text on PTT without verification, causing an expanded sharing effect. Both behaviors led to a sensationalized fake news effect, causing panic among the public on that day due to the false disaster information. The CIB, in accordance with Article 63 of the “Social Order Maintenance Act” involving “spreading rumors sufficient to affect public peace,” referred the netizens to local police stations for court adjudication.
🚨 Internal Editorial Short Review: Chilling Effect and Freedom of Speech
The Tsai Ing-wen government’s reckless amendment of laws to stop political enemies has resulted in a chilling effect on people’s freedom of speech even in “non-malicious” situations. If even sharing what you see and hear publicly can lead to being caught, then who will dare to speak in the future?
The simplest example is a “forest fire”…
If someone notices signs of fire in a distant forest and uploads a photo to social media to inquire, and it ends up going viral but is later proven not to be a fire, should they also be arrested and imprisoned?
We might as well look at those natural disasters with a cold eye in the future; after all, as long as the one in trouble isn’t me, it’s fine…
Or maybe one day if the Communist Party sends an army to invade the coastline, we won’t dare to say anything after discovering it, for fear that if it’s just a National Army exercise, we’ll end up getting ourselves into trouble?
Praise and thanks to Tsai Ing-wen.