Facebook: From the 'Vegetable-Stealing' Craze to the Double-Edged Sword of Digital Democracy — The Blue Coordinate That Defined Two Decades of Social Life in Taiwan

30-Second Overview:
The history of Facebook (臉書) in Taiwan is a compressed version of 20 years of digital social history: from the 2009 vegetable-stealing craze sparked by Happy Farm, to the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement's online mobilization hub, to the 2025 "FB refugee wave" triggered by Meta's speech censorship controversy. It is simultaneously Taiwan's largest public forum and the most active front line of cognitive warfare. As of the end of 2025, Facebook's reach in Taiwan still exceeds 75%, but its market share has continued to decline from 61% in 2022 to below 50%, shrinking for three consecutive years.

"Did you steal vegetables today?" This greeting swept through Taiwanese offices and campuses in 2009, originating from a browser game called Happy Farm (開心農場)¹. Facebook, which had just entered the Taiwanese market, leveraged this simple game — one that had office workers setting alarms in the middle of the night to "harvest crops" — to push Taiwanese visits past 5.7 million in August 2009². Taiwan was, for a time, one of the hottest markets in the world for Happy Farm³.

📝 Curator's Note: In an era before smartphones were ubiquitous, Facebook used "gaming" as the lowest-barrier form of social interaction to move Taiwanese social circles from the physical world into the cloud, allowing it to stand out in competition with Plurk (噗浪), the microblogging platform popular in Taiwan at the time⁴.

From a Harvard Dorm to a Taipei Office

Facebook's origin traces back to February 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard roommates set up "TheFacebook" in their dorm room⁵. Initially just a campus directory, its real-name policy and closed-circle design quickly spread across Ivy League schools. In the United States, Facebook grew out of student social networking; in Taiwan, it used social games like Happy Farm to directly capture the demographics with the strongest consumer power — office workers and middle-to-older-age users⁶ — laying the groundwork for "all-age" coverage.

Meta's Taiwan office was established in 2015, with its first three employees crammed into a small conference room. In 2019, the Taiwan office relocated to the Taipei Nan Shan Plaza, occupying an entire floor of 804 ping (approximately 2,658 square meters), equipped with distinctly Taiwanese employee amenities such as KTV and mahjong rooms, signaling long-term investment in the Taiwanese market⁷.

The Mobilization Map of the Sunflower Student Movement

If 2009 was Facebook's "social year one" in Taiwan, 2014 was its "political year one."

During the Sunflower Student Movement in March 2014, Facebook demonstrated astonishing mobilization power: live broadcasts, supply drives, and the spread of political discourse all unfolded simultaneously on the platform. Academic research has shown that Facebook use related to the movement had a significant influence on whether university students participated, with weak ties (strangers and acquaintances) driving participation levels even higher than strong ties (close friends and family)⁸.

Yet Facebook's role in the movement was also double-sided — information overload, disinformation spread, and community polarization surfaced at the same time⁹. The movement fundamentally reshaped Taiwan's political landscape and cemented Facebook as essential communication infrastructure for civil society, politicians, and NGOs.

"Diba Expeditions" and the Buying and Selling of Fan Pages

As Facebook's influence in Taiwan grew, it also became a front line for cross-strait cognitive warfare.

In 2016, following the Chou Tzu-yu flag incident, some Chinese netizens launched a "Diba Expedition" (帝吧出征) via Facebook, flooding related Taiwanese fan pages with massive volumes of comments, creating a transnational online conflict¹⁰. In 2019, Taiwan's Investigation Bureau publicly stated it was continuously monitoring attempts by forces across the strait to buy Taiwanese fan pages for political propaganda¹¹, exposing the structural vulnerability of Facebook as a transnational information battlefield.

The Algorithm Black Box and Media Dependence

As Facebook transitioned into Meta, the algorithm's opacity, opaque advertising revenue sharing, and control over news media traffic gradually fueled discontent. Many Taiwanese news outlets became heavily dependent on Facebook-driven traffic; any algorithm adjustment could devastate revenue, creating a difficult-to-break "traffic dependency"¹².

For a long time, there has been controversy over Facebook's political speech censorship standards in Taiwan, with users distinguishing between "red Facebook" and "green Facebook"¹³. Creators have also had their accounts suspended without warning, causing years of accumulated digital assets to vanish overnight¹⁴.

2025: The FB Refugee Wave

The most severe trust crisis erupted in 2025. Reports indicated that Meta collaborated with specific political forces to conduct opaque censorship and downranking of popular posts in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and that a large number of accounts discussing public issues were banned without warning¹⁵. Taiwan's internet history witnessed the famous "FB refugee wave" — approximately 20,000 users migrated to decentralized platforms such as Mastodon¹⁶.

Meta officially issued a firm denial, stating it had never accepted content censorship requests from the Chinese government regarding Taiwanese users, nor had it shared Taiwanese user data; content moderation was handled by a local Traditional Chinese team in Taiwan according to global community standards¹⁷.

📝 Curator's Note: When a social platform becomes public infrastructure, its censorship standards directly affect democratic functioning — this goes beyond the realm of commerce.

Anti-Disinformation Efforts

Facing a complex online environment, Meta also promoted anti-disinformation strategies in Taiwan. From October to December 2019, Facebook launched a major crackdown on Taiwanese content farms that "violated content policies," with over a hundred fan pages — including "Mishin" (密訊) — taken down in a concentrated wave¹⁸. In November of the same year, Facebook held a hackathon in Taipei themed around "combating disinformation"¹⁹.

Current Status: Reach Remains High, Engagement Continues to Erode

As of the end of 2025, Facebook's reach in Taiwan remains the highest among all platforms (over 75%), but its market share has continued to decline from 61.22% in 2022²⁰. Meta's Threads, by contrast, rapidly surged after the 2024 Taiwan elections due to its relatively more open atmosphere for political discussion²¹. According to 2026 data, Taiwanese users contribute 21.08% of Threads' global total traffic, making Taiwan one of the countries with the highest engagement in the world²².

Facebook's story is a microcosm of Taiwan's 20-year digital transformation: it taught Taiwanese people to socialize in a virtual farm, taught them civic mobilization on the streets outside the Legislative Yuan, and through censorship controversies, prompted them to rethink the boundaries of digital trust. Today, it occupies an awkward position — still the largest platform, yet also the one people complain about most.

Further Reading:

• IG: From a Photographer's Filter to Taiwanese "脆" Anxiety — Another Meta platform central to Taiwan, occupying a different use case from Facebook: Facebook is "keeping in touch with elders," IG is "for yourself," and Threads is "the big argument plaza."
• Threads in Taiwan — Why do Taiwanese people call Threads "脆"? From the Facebook refugee wave to "脆" claiming the number-one global traffic spot, the unique position of Taiwanese users within the Meta ecosystem.
• A History of Taiwan's Online Community Migration — From BBS, Wretch (無名小站), Plurk to Facebook, IG, and Threads — understanding why Facebook rose in Taiwan and why it is now declining requires this complete migration map.

References