5/27/22, 7:10 PM Faster facts: The rapid expansion of fact-checking – News in Asia For example, Indonesia’s government-run StopHoax website launched in 2018 in collaboration with non-governmental organisations, including independent fact-checking organisations. Two survey respondents involved in the project expressed the view that there is room for cooperation between the public and private sectors when the subject matter is less political and more social, for example human trafficking. Meanwhile, in Taiwan the most popular chat app LINE works closely with four private fact-checking organisations, as well as the Taiwanese government, sharing resources such as databases about past misinformation and debunked stories. 12 Although the arrangement appears to be designed to respect the independence of each media outlet, 13 the government frequently highlights its ‘successful’ cooperation with fact-checkers and social media platforms when dealing with manipulative content about official government outputs, for example speeches by President Tsai Ing-wen. Perhaps more surprising, the Chinese government launched an online platform in 2018 called Piyao (Refuting Rumour) that aggregates and publishes what it considers fact-checking articles from a variety of media outlets in the country, including state-controlled news wires, Communist Party-controlled local news media and governmental agencies nationwide. 14 Politically sensitive fact-checking cannot be seen on the website and is unlikely to be tolerated by the government elsewhere either. Despite this, in early 2020 a journalist in Shanghai launched the non-governmental China Fact Check in order to verify widespread rumours and distorted international news circulating on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo. The initiative has been prolific in debunking questionable content in Chinese about the news outside of China, the majority of which tends to be translations of Englishlanguage misinformation. 15 PHOTO Guy Dickinson Tech platforms, which tend to be the primary vehicles of misinformation, have significant influence on the region’s fact-checking industry Dilemmas of dealing with tech platforms https://newsinasia.jninstitute.org/chapter/faster-facts-the-rapid-expansion-of-fact-checking/ 5/13