Two Cheers For Unfiltered Information
Inthe early hours of December 31st,2019 weeks before the coronavirus was recognized as a buddingpandemic, Taiwanese Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director LuoYijun was awake, browsingthe PTT Bulletin Board.A relic of 90s-era hacker culture, PTTis an open source internet forumoriginally created by Taiwanese university students. On the site'sgossip board, hidden behind a warning of adult content, Yijun found adiscussion about the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan.However, the screenshots from WeChat posted to PTT described aSARS-like coronavirus, not the flu or pneumonia. The threadidentified a wet market as the likely source of the outbreak,indicating that the disease could be passed from one species toanother. Alarmed, Luo Yijun warned his colleagues and forwarded hisfindings to China and the World Health Organization (WHO). Thatevening, Taiwan began screening travelers from Wuhan, acting on theinformation posted to PTT.
Aniche Internet forum, not the WHO or Chinese Communist Party (CCP),notified Taiwan, and the world more broadly, of the seriousness ofCOVID-19 - the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The sameday, Wuhan'sMunicipal Health Commission describedthe disease as pneumoniaand cautioned against assumptions of human-to-human transmission.While Chinese health authorities downplayed the seriousness of theoutbreak, a lightly governed websitehelped information about the disease to escape China's GreatFirewall. As viral misinformation inspires skepticism of free speechin the west and conservativelegal scholars express admiration for China's system ofinformation control,this episode illustrates the value of unfiltered speech.
PTT'sgossip board is not fact checked by experts, and while the board hassome rules, it is a place for gossip rather than verified informationor news. The forum is governed far more liberally than contemporarysocial media platforms with extensive community standards and tens ofthousands of paid moderators. While bulletin boards have largelyfallen out of favor with western Internet users, PTT probably is mostcomparable to 4chan, the Something Awful forums, or Hackernews. Inthe past, it has hostedleaked government surveillance proposals,and Chinese officials have recently complainedabout the siteas a source of abusive speech about the WHO.
Thereis a real difference between lightly governed or unmoderated spaces,essentially ruled by the First Amendment (which inevitably play hostto the good, the bad, and the ugly) and platforms that arespecifically curated to highlight vulgar or illiberal content. 4chancontains image boards dedicated to fashion, travel, umpteen forms ofJapanese animation, and /pol, a board for politically incorrectconversation that receives an outsized amount of attention inmainstream media. The Daily Stormer is a blog for white nationalists.We must resist the urge to condemn ungoverned fora alongside badlygoverned forums simply because both provide platforms for noxiousspeech.
Because the Daily Stormer is specifically curatedto highlight neo-Nazi speech, we can safely assume that it won'thost valuable information. Its gatekeepers explicitly selectfascistic speech for publication before the content goes live and areunlikely to grant a platform to anything else. It certainly isn'ta hangout for anonymous epidemiologists. 4chan, on the other hand,contains its fair share of extremist speech but the platform is notmoderated by fascists, nor, for the most part, anyone at all. 4chanhosts almost any sort of speech; despite being unverified, usefulinformation may still be posted there. Due to its lack of formalgatekeeping, users' comments are not screened for eitheraccuracy or good taste. As a result of 4chan's norm ofanonymous participation, prominence, and popularity with particularlyactive internet trolling communities in the mid-aughts, the sitegained a reputation as an informational free-for-all, rendering it auseful dumping ground for both leaks of authentic nonpublicinformationand unhinged conspiracy.
Evenas its prominence has diminished, 4chan's reputation ensuresthat it remains a popular space to share privileged information,often in concert with other essentially unmoderated publicationservices such as Pastebin. Last year, Newsof Jeffrey Epstein's deathwas first leaked on the site. While it can be difficult to prove theveracity of any one claim, the existence of such a place--anungoverned information clearinghouse--has undeniable value.Ungoverned fora allow arguments, assertions, and media to be freelyshared and considered without giving undue authority to unprovenassertions.
Becauseusers participate anonymously or pseudonymously, they cannot relyupon, and subsequently do not risk, their permanent personalreputations and credentials. Likewise, it is the very popularity ofthese message boards as information clearinghouses that makes themattractive to bad actors. If you want to publish a sensitive message,for good or for ill, lightly moderated platforms are good tools forthe job.
Althoughthese platforms may spread disinformation, if read with a healthydose of skepticism the content they carry is not per-se dangerous.Crucially, they fail differently than, in this case, Chinese statehealth authorities, which had political reasons to downplay theseriousness of the outbreak. Rather than providing filtered,authoritative information that can cause widespread harm ifincorrect, such as the WHOrecommendations against mask use published throughout March,open fora host many unfiltered claims that, without supportingevidence, carry little authority whatsoever. A healthy informationecosystem will contain both trustworthy authorities, and bottom upinformation distribution networks that can correct institutionalfailures. In a world in which seemingly authoritative sources are nottrustworthy, unfiltered platforms will gain credence, for good andill.
However,as Luo Yijun's late night discovery on PTT demonstrates,unverified information can inform and illuminate, especially in theabsence of trustworthy authoritative information. Furthermore, ifused effectively, open-source information hosted on ungovernedplatforms can enhance the capability and legitimacy of traditionalinstitutions, such as the Taiwanese CDC. Liberally governed platformsare often blamed for their role in transmitting falsity and hate butseldom lauded when they facilitate the spread of life-savinginformation.
WillDuffield is a Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute