How Taiwan Is Trying to Defend Its Democracy From Mis- and Disinformation

Cathy Harper

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Taiwan’s version of the “democracy sausage” – a public display at the Presidential Palace, Taipei, August 2025.Credit: Cathy Harper

“Taiwan is on the front line,” Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Dr. Lin Chai-Lung said ahead of a recent referendum, “and we have to come up with solutions.”

Taiwan is ranked highly as a liberal democracy, but it is the target of significant pro-China misinformation and disinformation campaigns, aimed at undermining trust in elections and democracy, according to several reports and a growing body of academic research.

Its solutions involve a whole-of-society approach, including legal change, civil society and education.

Taiwan’s Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act 2024 imposes significant fines on social media platforms that do not remove content that is verifiably fake and intended to be misleading, such as fake videos of celebrities promoting a product that they don’t actually endorse. Taiwan’s cyber ambassador, Audrey Tang – who until last year was its first minister of digital affairs – said that since the law’s enactment “there are no deep fake ads anymore if you scroll on Taiwan Facebook or YouTube.”

Additionally, before national elections in 2020, Taiwan passed the Anti-Infiltration Act, which imposes criminal penalties of up to five years in prison and significant fines on persons or entities receiving support from “hostile external forces” aiming to disrupt elections and democracy. The law is not without critics, though – the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) warns that it could be used in a politicized manner and violate fundamental rights.

Tang does not endorse censoring content or banning social media due to Taiwan’s almost four decades of martial law (1949-1987) when freedom of speech was curtailed and political dissidents were jailed and killed. She agrees with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance who spoke out strongly against any form of censorship, including on social media and the internet, in a major speech in Munich in February. In 2022, Taiwan’s government proposed a Digital Intermediary Services Act (modeled on the European Union’s Digital Services Act 2022 aimed at preventing the spread of disinformation), but it was withdrawn due to public concern about censorship.