[3][4] Using the TELNET protocol, PTT provides a quick, free of charge, and open online forum community.
[6] The main site was founded on 9 September 1995 by Yi-Chin Tu (杜奕瑾 Dù Yìjǐn), then a sophomore in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University.
The machines and other hardware used to set up PTT was obtained by the administrators without the help of the university, and hence it operates with a high level of freedom.
In 2004, PTT activities coordinator Huan-Yu Chen (陳奐宇) teamed up with an on-campus organization NTU Blood-Donating Bus (台大號捐血車) to hold a blood drive to solicit blood donations in exchange for PTT money, which led to the creation of the Donate-Blood forum.
The death of Cindy Yang (楊又穎) is an occurrence of this, and it is the first time netizens in PTT were made aware of this issue.
Cindy Yang, a model and actress, committed suicide in 2015, after suffering from taunts and accusations from various social media, notably PTT.
Subsequently, corruption incidents attributed to her father, and insider trading allegations against her partner were leveraged for harassment by users of PTT for several years.
Additionally, in 2017, the Islamic Association of Taiwan publicly criticized PTT allowing the users to spread fake news and post hate speech about Muslims, and calling it names such as “garbage religion” or “Muslims are trash” thus the Islamic Association of Taiwan protested against the government to voice concern about abuse of anonymity in PTT.
For example, in 2009, Dell Computer has mispriced its LCD monitor and notebook products on its official website and this aroused lots of netizens on PTT to go fishing for cheap deals.
A PTT account with the username "connyli", for instance, posted the photo showing his orders were valued more than NT$360 million.
The court, however, finally ruled against the PTT members of trying to take advantage of erroneous information to force Dell computer to sell below their cost.
Like all other anonymous or semi-anonymous internet communities in Taiwan, there's plenty of fake news and many acts of cyberbullying on PTT.
In recent years, the most notable is one of Su Chii-Cherng (蘇啟誠), Taiwan's representative in Osaka, who committed suicide in 2018.
His office was accused of not assisting Taiwanese tourists stranded at the Kansai International Airport in the wake of Typhoon Jebi.
During the Typhoon Jebi crisis, fake news said that the Taiwanese tourist had to identify themselves as Chinese in order to be allowed to board China's bus that was used during the rescue efforts, and therefore led the other netizens in PTT to begin to criticize Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Taiwan's representative in Japan.
Prosecutors later found that the account's IP address could be linked directly to Slow Yang (楊蕙如), who is considered as pro-DPP figure and a member of Frank Hsieh's faction.
Furthermore, Slow Yang was accused of paying and asking others to post such fake news in order to protect Frank Hsieh at the expense of Mr. Su's life.
In April 2019, a PTT account with the username “ken4645” posted an article titled “Is Wang Jin-Pyng (王金平) and Han Kuo-Yu (韓國瑜) related to China's online warriors?” This article, along with several fake photos, alleged and accused that Farmers’ and Fishermen's Association South Information Center (FFASIC) and KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-Yu received funds from China and tried to purchase Facebook pages for spreading misleading information in order to affect public opinion related to the election.
In June 2019, the Taiwan People News published a column written by Cao Chang-Qing (曹長青) which alleged that President Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文) paid off officials at the London School of Economics (LSE) to obtain her Ph.D.