On 16 February, an interview with Digital Minister Audrey Tang highlighting Taiwan’s use of technology to enhance its democracy was published in The Financial Times’ opinion piece “Digital tools can be a useful bolster to democracy” by Rana Foroohar. The article cites Taiwan as a case where the power of decentralised technology could be used to support individuals and democracies over the world. The piece praised Minister Tang’s work on harnessing technology such as distributed ledgers, quadratic voting and online open-source platforms to enable greater participatory democracy in Taiwan. The article also highlighted Taiwan’s efforts to combat disinformation with legislation requiring state agencies to immediately rebut false claims made online or on social media relating to their areas of responsibility, as well as its “presidential hackathons” which seek innovative solutions to public problems. The article stressed Taiwan’s commitment to transparency, citing that Minister Tang posts all interviews with the press online. “It seems to be going a long way towards building trust in the country’s system of governance,” Foroohar added.
The article also pointed out that according to a report by Swedish research group V-Dem, Taiwan was subject to more disinformation than nearly any other country, much of it coming from China. Commenting on the impact of social media on Taiwan’s democracy, Minister Tang stressed that rather than social media creating “a false sense of us versus them,” decentralised technologies have “enabled a sense of shared reality” in Taiwan.
