Google Taiwan Employee Falsely Accused Our Page of Being a Content Farm on Facebook

During the day I used our page account to leave a mildly political joke on the Facebook page of a TVBS news reporter (see the end of this article), thinking I could borrow a page from those politicians and government organizations and shamelessly ride the exposure with a straight-faced argument. Instead, I unexpectedly pricked a fragile ego, and a man claiming to be a Google Taiwan employee came out to falsely accuse and smear our page as a content-farm page.

What, so politicians and government organizations can rub shoulders everywhere, but our page can’t? We may not have many followers, but I assure you our page was set up many years earlier than those official pages.

Let’s set aside the fact that this self-proclaimed Google Taiwan employee opened with a formula long brainwashed and defined by political persecution — the smear-and-label tactic I despise most[1]. Never mind that dozens of responses, ranging from warm to blisteringly sarcastic, were popping up one by one in my head. But seeing as he probably really is a Google (parent company Alphabet) employee, and fearing he might one day target us and secretly tweak the search algorithm, I won’t hold it against His Excellency (it’s not like I haven’t seen those dirty tricks working at tech companies — scared.jpg).

In reality, the website we developed doesn’t look the slightest bit like a farm, and we have never operated it on a content-farm model. But if, because of politics, religious belief, or even the remarks of an idol or celebrity, you get targeted by these troublesome obsessive-compulsives, things become very troublesome indeed. So there’s no need to say that anonymous comments are evil or anything like that — in a bad year, you don’t fear bad people throwing a scare into you.

The word “scare” here has a double meaning: one is the Taiwanese Minnan (Hokkien, commonly called Taiwanese) pronunciation of “crazy person,” and the other is someone who blindly becomes a devoted follower of a particular politician.

Today I thought that for a formal comment I’d use the formal page, which also demonstrates a responsible attitude (plus a bit of fishing in troubled waters for exposure). Instead, it drew out a Google Taiwan employee who opened his mouth with slander and rumor-mongering — I don’t know where he got his education.

When you think an international corporation should possess some admirable sense of fairness, the truth is they cannot stop worms with particular ideologies from invading and corroding honest standards.

The most obvious similar example is one we’re all familiar with: Wikipedia. All kinds of politically correct nonsense pandering to politicians are in fact visible everywhere, and some entries have even been locked by the authorities so no one can edit them (laughs).

Another interesting recent case: after President Tsai Ing-wen of the Republic of China invented a redundant, logically incoherent, and chauvinist erroneous term, “Republic of China (Taiwan),” Wikipedia quickly produced a dedicated political term called “ROCTW,” and a large amount of entry content has already been secretly replaced.

However, in my observations in recent years, apart from political topics, in terms of the precision and breadth of Chinese-language content, Wikipedia has begun to fall far behind “Baidu Baike,” which back then was merely a knockoff.

People used to say that only the victors of war can write history[2]. Until the development of the Internet, this has been rewritten as “history is written by those who know how to manipulate Wikipedia — even if you have a severe antisocial personality.” For example, I wanted to contribute a photo to Wiki for free use as a public-domain image and couldn’t even get in the door (I gave up decisively).

Wanting to learn how to operate a complex system unrelated to your studies or work inevitably involves some degree of stubborn, obsessive psychology. And such people most often belong to the self-centered crowd.

A friend even said his website was blacklisted by Wikipedia, and the reason the Wiki editor wrote was “content farm, most articles are personal opinions.”

Hmm, see that? Another content farm. These people’s smear-and-label opening moves really are all identical. My friend said a few articles on his site criticized the current ruling party government, and that was probably why it was blocked.

And since when does the existence of “personal opinion” violate Wikipedia’s rules?

To put it a step further, has there ever been, anywhere in the world from ancient times to the present, a single article that was not a “personal opinion”? And is it a content farm or a personal opinion — shouldn’t the Wikipedia editorial team communicate and coordinate among themselves first?

A Wikipedia that tolerates such self-serving editors is in fact an accomplice to censorship of free speech.

Compared with Facebook’s speech review, at least that’s outsourced to people in the third world, who have their own cultural upbringing and experience, so their moral judgments naturally draw questioning voices in many different countries. But at least you won’t get a content site like Wikipedia, which carries the banner of freedom while practicing absurd censorship, letting editors who have soaked in power longer and longer effectively censor whether the speech of specific targets is politically correct.

The True Face of the Mildly Political Joke

This time the much-discussed mildly political joke was this: when Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sued President of the United States Donald John Trump over the ban on foreign students and the case was formally ruled illegal, and the White House came out to give itself a way out, I commented under the article: “Trump probably envies Tsai Ing-wen’s ability to summon the grand justices and scold them to their faces.[3]”

Yes, I was merely stating