In Taiwan’s open society, government and political groups have embraced the use of Facebook as a barometer of public sentiment.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/05/27
By: Morley J Weston

Photo Credit:EODIS NASA

Look down any Taipei Metro car during rush hour, and it is immediately obvious that Facebook is a fact of daily life in Taiwan; 77 percent of the country claims to use the service, according to data-analysis firm Statista, among the highest penetration rates in the world.

But with great penetration comes great responsibility, and research conducted by The News Lens suggests data on Taiwan’s citizens has been widely harvested by private and government entities.

Much of what happens with this data is a black box, but here are a few things we learned about data scraping in Taiwan:    [FULL  STORY]