The media creates the news instead of just reporting the news.
12
One should be highly skeptical these days when a video shows somebody acting in ways that have no relation to what one has seen of that person in the past. It is a good bet (although not 100% certain) that when see Trump saying something outrageous in a video it is not a fake. On the other hand an outrageous video of Pelosi, Hillary or Obama is almost certainly fake, so many such have been produced by right wing noise makers that none such can be trusted.
13
While the potential for disinformation using this video technology is certainly real, I tend to agree with Ms. Wardle.
And I think our best defense is, surprisingly, the internet. My first first exposure to the Pelosi fake was a news story exposing it as a fake. This debunking occurred within 24 hours of the fake's release.
The huge amount of real video is our best defense against being actually fooled by a fake no matter how technically adept it is.
That, and taking a chill pill. Dont get caught up in the mad rush to be the first to share or succumbing to FOMO.
3
It's clear that only words printed on a trustworthy piece of paper by a trustworthy person can be trusted......forget tech!
1
Nor do we want insane people, mentally ill people, with access to the White House. That is why we need background checks...particularly income tax records available before people are allowed to run for office.
11
Perhaps Trump is a deep fake.
1
The scariest part: The stupid folks who believe these "deepfakes." This is, after all, the "fake news" era, with Trump and his acolytes, including Tucker Carlson and "Fox and Friends," making stuff up at will and the lemmings swallowing it whole.
13
Why, why, why does this technology exist other than for some misogynists on Reddit to make fake porno clips? This a strange case of an amateur technology that was literally created for giggles to make a horrifying impact on global society. What a real shame.
AI technologists need to take a hard look in the mirror and think about whether what they're doing is for the improvement of society, or for their own egos.
4
The only thing new here is that now anyone armed with a computer and an internet connection can produce a "deepfake".
No, we do not need new laws to protect us. We just need to be a little more skeptical without becoming cynical.
2
(reply to Lisa)
“...This is also true when the particularly folks on the Far Right or Left hold these belief systems not out of an individual belief, but as a way to simply align themselves with those around them...
But what about when it’s just you and your high-velocity assault weapons in a survivalist cabin in Idaho, where the nearest person is twelve miles away – and you don’t like them much at all, because their cross-country skis wreak havoc on the snowmobile trails you lovingly carve into the forest after two feet of powder have fallen...
Never mind – answered my own question, early in...
As far as the lefties – just hint that you’re going to weaken rent-control in Manhattan...
Been setting them off since Ephron’d been writing scripts...
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/opinion/03tierney.html
“...I was a character in a story about mass delusion and the madness of crowds," she writes. "I was, in short, completely nuts...
The NYC communist and teacher’s union leaders always regretted not running her for governor against that faux-centrist Mario...
That guy’d sell you a used bridge, and make you put his name on it...
Hear that – like the Trumps – the son carried on the family business...
Can’t drive a half-mile in NY without seeing their name on something...
Incenses NYC socialists almost as much as either Clinton...
1
-----just wait until tRump produces a deepfake of a riot or of some other tense situation, disseminates it, and then uses it to declare martial law. Democracy is toast.
9
@huh, I am surprised that it hasn't happened yet, but I sense that he's trying to goad people into having a real riot so that he can do exactly that. Alarmist? Perhaps, but alarmists are usually right eventually, and I fear that we are standing on the brink of "eventually." I sure hope I'm wrong. I'm afraid that I'm not.
4
While the NY Times can admit some people weaponize context (in the video) it is not yet able to admit it weaponized over ten thousand attack articles against the American President for its own partisan reasons.
At least you didn't call it journalism hehre.
2
I often wonder if we're being tested every time I see a video of some adorable inter-species awesomeness or a little boy getting off a schoolbus and running to the arms of his littler sister (the small child before him running off the bus with no adult anywhere around). Maybe I'm a cynic or a skeptic and maybe that will serve me well in the age of deepfakes.
1
Cigarette packages have warnings printed on them that their contents may be hazardous to health.
Do we now need to have similar warnings affixed to online content as well?
In general, with all information, and with varying degrees of exception for the most trusted and vetted partners in life, business and community, one should TRIANGULATE and use critical thinking. In other words, use three unrelated sources to determine if the information is sensibly accurate and veracity intact.
4
I don’t disagree, Cowboy. However, the VAST majority of Americans (err... humans) will not use the skills or methods you describe. They have, they are, and they will believe that their eyes behold.
That is the problem.
12
That is why I suggest the solution to the problem. I totally agree people are sheeple. They are meta information consumers. They never read a book or researched a subject in a library from primary sources. They listen to opinion makers as if it were hard facts news. I do believe we are in for worse, not better times in terms of the general capacity of our collective population to process information for smart and honest use.
6
I have yet to see anything that remotely looks convincing.
1
But how do you know ?
Isn’t that the point ?
6
'The result: We can no longer trust our eyes.'
We can and should trust our eyes and ears, as long as the data are rooted in reality, in real-time, real-place experiences from which consensus reality can coalesce between multiple entities.
If the data come through the Internet, however, doubt everything your senses tell you. Who knows how many editors there have been? And with what intentions?
3
Deepfakes will be a problem, but for a long time now it has been possible to fake images and it did not lead to anarchy or a total mistrust of the press. Deepfakes are the next step, yeah, more versatile and surely better suited to fool and convince people but in the end I believe them to play a role in only a few major stories.
What is really dangerous is the fear of the people that anything could be a fake. Critical thinking and media education will become more and more important in the future to be able to navigate the - big - available amount of news and information. Only people who know how to fact check and use media right will be able to trust the press and be somewhat safe from the effects those deepfakes might have.
3
The difference is: Before the mass media were gatekeepers who vetted information that could be broadcast. That, plus the utter digitalization and atomization of content means the reliable sources can be inundated to the extent more info consumers take the false videos and reporting.
2
I also think there is a bit of laziness. All of the deep fakes I have seen including those in this video were obviously off. There is an old saying “trust but verify”. I do not think this will mean the end of truth. I do think that the viewer will have a renewed obligation to *verify* the things they believe. Further it is incumbent on news agencies not to repeat lies and rumors as they debunk them. Yes this is possible to do. Instead of repeating for example lies about past presidents and Epstein. One could just say “President trump repeated false conspiracy theory accusing famous individuals of possible involvement. These are statements made without any factual basis and will not be repeated.” Debunk, but don’t repeat. Trust but verify.
8
Her point about image manipulation being nothing new is roughly equivalent to an argument that military assault rifles are nothing to worry about because we've always had knives.
I don't see the sense in peddling complacency.
5
Thank you Claire Wardle for showing the real dander that is reflected in the genius (?) of Trump and his deplorable devotees who undermine the very notion of objective truth, usually with no more substantial evidence or reason than the facile label "fake news."
Just because something can now be faked is not a good enough reason to actually believe that everything is a fake, however tempting such solipsism is.
Unfortunately, it takes hard work to critically assess each particular claim of truth or fakery, and for those with religiously ideological axes to wield, such effort is too often deemed deplorably unnecessary.
A 140 character Tweet by a twerp cannot provide good grounds for claims either way.
3
This fine essay is simply one more reason I NEVER watch video news (or anything video).
On a related note, it is interesting to note that it was Facebook that in large part was responsible for forcing news organizations like the New York Times to increase their online video content:
"Then, as part of one of Zuck’s pet projects, Facebook pushed publishers to “pivot to video” and even paid some news organizations to make videos (for Mic, those payments are reported to have been as high as $5 million in a single year), with the predictable result that newsrooms laid off writers en masse and beefed up video teams. Never mind that Facebook, as we wouldn’t learn until much later, was dramatically overselling the number of minutes people actually spent watching videos on the platform. The site’s gravitational force had become so strong that its every move changed the orbits of those around it."
The above quotation comes from the ultra-liberal magazine, Mother Jones. And while I don't normally embrace their view, I think they nailed it on this one.
5
That video alone (but along with the article) is phenomenally, profoundly intelligent. It is the response to this stuff that matters, going back to the best advice--think, think, think for yourself and recognize *context* of information (if you've already kept informed), as Ms. Wardle points out. Trump is the master con artist and manipulator of "fake," as he projects it onto others with whom he objects, then denies his own egregiousness by claiming "fake" when it's exposed. With this reversal of stance itself, as self-contradictory, he betrays his twisted self. I inquire of people who try to defend Trump by falling back on last-resort absolutes like "well, you cannot trust anything anymore" by asking if they accept medical advice from their doctor who bases it on hearsay or guesswork. As typically of course, they don't, then oops, some level of trust must still exist somewhere...Duh! Caveat emptor, indeed!
3
Thank you for this video, Claire. Critical thinking is essential, and not always give in to your biases when you see something you are outraged about and want to share. I've made this mistake more than a few times, and now I stop before I share a friends post.
I quit FaceBook due to the lack of critical thinking and the complacency of re-posting false information. Either that or fully disown my friends whom I once admired more before they became FB fools.
1
Back in the sixties - when I was a teenager - I read something in one of those popular teen magazines from that time, which I found to be startling and amazing --
I ran downstairs - where my step-father was sitting in his chair - and with wild breathlessness exclaimed --
"Have you seen THIS?!?!?" --
He looked at it for a minute and waved it off as nonsense --
"But -but -- it says so RIGHT HERE!!!" - I insisted --
At which point my step-father said something to me which I've never forgotten --
"Don't believe everything you read" --
I gave him puzzled look - and he simply repeated --
"Don't believe everything you read" --
At the time - it was difficult for me to wrap my be=rain around - and completely grasp - the point he was making --
However - over the years - that simple lesson has served me very well - and saved me a lot of potentially-wasted time -
For example --
"Jeffrey Epstein..."
Don't believe everything you read -
And the mantra is even more valuable in these days of -- "But I saw it on the Internet!!!"
Don't believe everything you read - and don't believe everything you see on the Internet --
What a concept...
3
Facebook, Twitter, Google, the internet, AI are the doorways to our extinction. They facilitate and empower the worst of mankind. Ted Kaczynski, the unabomber, was wrong in his solution, but was prescient about how technology would destroy humanity. Evil capitalizes on the use of technology to hurt people. That's why a good guy with a gun cannot stop sick and evil people with guns. Advantage evil and the mentally ill.
Solution: REGULATE everything that has the potential to do great harm. Vote Republicans into the dustbin of history. Make the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, all social media, all TV, all radio subject to government oversight with independent third party public oversight. Punish all fake or doctored news and videos with long prison sentences.
The future of mankind, not just America, is on the line. Do nothing and we enter the Republican Party's twilight zone.
5
We are in a twilight. Whether it is dusk or a new dawn is yet to be seen and known. The demographics and the impending fiscal wreck will cause a reckoning which may well dilute or depose Republican politics and certain recent red strongholds ( Fl, Pa, Oh, NC ) and even Texas. Once that tide turns, adios red White House. The strangleholds of low populated, rural, evangelical states with small Electoral College votes won’t change anytime soon. But national politics and potentially the Senate balance may very well turn. The question today among other is: will the impact of Supreme Court justices installed, the lessening of environmental concern, the dismantling of health care and the huge budget deficit disorder be lasting or be resolved in 2020-2030 next three presidential cycles ?
4
so why can't truthful, honest videos run a ribbon of encryption that reveals when it is compromised.
Something along the line of silver or whatever it is in the new generation of dollars.
There is a better mouse trap..........
There is actually a fairly easy way to figure out what is real and what is not: rely on news outlets that practice real journalism - things like verification methods, a firewall between owners and editors, and etc. They have not gone anywhere. Reuters, Associated Press, Mercury News, New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, CBS, CNN, NBC - all of these and many more are even more easily available than ever because they are online. Yes, the 'mainstream media' has been attacked by those whose biases are not aided by the truth. That means basically nothing to anyone who actually cares about the truth. Credibility is due the outlets that have earned their reputation by actually being credible. Period. A partisan accusing them of bias does not make it so.
I'm not sure why this is so mysterious to so many. Perhaps the first step would be for the real news outlets to publicly explain the process they follow to attempt non-biased reporting, to verify stories and sources, and to maintain honesty and independence. Too many people seem to think their standards are as lax as, say, Fox entertainment media.
2
Slow down, look both ways, proceed cautiously.
4
Principles can’t be faked. They will be all we have left.
2
One of the best pieces of journalism! Well done NYT! Scary when you think about where this is all leading..
Here’s a thought for the future: don’t watch videos, read. Easier to distinguish truth.
3
The recipe for the worst dish ever
Mix in one society destined to fail:
1. unlimited personal data exploitation
2. monetized AI (deepfake, speech/face/video recognition)
3. ubiquitous digital surveillance
4. massive income/wealth inequality
5. generations brainwashed to believe STEM/compsci/AI dev is the path to fulfillment
6. a societal rejection of humanist thought
7. a social media driven collapse of interpersonal connection
8. a morally corrupt culture
Let fester and wait...
what could possibly go wrong?
3
At this point I wish I was on the battlefield in the Somme in WWII - at least I would be living every moment facing extinction, but with an ironclad conviction of words like valor, freedom, honor, patriotism, which at that time held a deep, abiding and profound sense of value and truth.
Nowadays, words themselves, video technology, smart phones, and texting, have all been so prostituted and enfeebled, that nothing really holds much validity worthy of our trust anymore. Not truth. Not human dignity. Certainly not politics or politicians.
There isn’t any “there there” as Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, her home town.
And I say now, there isn’t any “here, here” anymore. We inhabit a colossal nightmare wasteland, a dystopian malaise where we have no verifiable reality left to cling to, though we daily delude ourselves to reaffirm our already obsolesced notions of what life means lest we lose every fiber of what lends life meaning.
Sadly we live in an unstoppable, meaningless, dehumanized existence rather like The Sims. Our lives manipulated and controlled by sinister masterminds who have created an artificial world, with disposable characters, whose place on the chess board of our national life, is just as expendable and worthless as any digital Sims family.
How I pity the young. How grateful I am to have spent a good half of my time on Earth in a world where there were no smart phones, personal computers, no facial recognition, and no fascists in Washington DC
2
@Rene Pedraza Del Prado
1. Wow.
2 The Somme was WW 1.
3. It's not as bad as you think.
4. You might want to try decaf.
2
“Whether and how”: Facebook will weaponize deepfakes in order to keep Trump in office.
Not sure about the rest. One hopes that Google and Twitter can oppose or at least counterbalance the evil that is facebook.
I can already read Trump's tweets denying the authenticity of real videos showing him a bad light: "Deepfakes by the Deep State!"
2
All of the fake video out there should be referred to as "shallowflakes" since these days you have to be pretty shallow yourself not to view sensational or bizarre videos with at least some skepticism. Like information from a source, information from videos now needs independent confirmation.
1
Lies and liars shall always be with us.
There is no substitute for a responsible, skeptical and independent press.
1
“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie -- a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days -- but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
Hannah Arendt
From a 1974 interview with the French writer Roger Errera and published in October 26, 1978 issue of The New York Review of Books Interview.
1
This is a concerted effort by this administration to make the public distrust ALL news. Hence when the president and his administration does something truly horrendous (like every fifteen minutes), most of the public will just assume it is fake. This is so totally evil. And I have to ask yet again, republicans, are you really OK with this?
1
Everything *is* false.
This CGI deep-fake stuff is actually less dangerous than an old fashioned demagogue. Even a good polemical writer in the past would have swayed more people.
Brings me back to an Edgar Allan Poe quote:
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
It's been easy to make stuff and spread misinformation, it's just since we've had audio and then video we thought we'd found a way of verifying things with our own ears and eyes. This, as the author notes, is illusory as well.
It comes down to trust. The NYTimes could print total falsehoods and millions would believe it because they trust the NYTimes to do responsible journalism and check their facts.
As it becomes possible to easily generate deepfakes or whatever else comes next, the concept of trusting your source will only become more important. It is up to journalists to maintain that trust.
Much sturm und drang about very little - there have bee photographic fakes since the Civil War [Alexander Gardner] and somehow we have muddled through in the subsequent century and a half.
Any kid with photoshop can produce and publish anything.
It is not the picture just as it is not the video - it is the SOURCE that matters
"Don't be afraid"
Spoken as only someone who is trying to manipulate would say. What is up with all these grown adult creepers whose goal in life is to do nothing more than mess with other peoples minds.
I'd like to point out that when deepfakes first came out, there were both male and female celebrities mapped into pornographic videos... They didn't discriminate!
This is as humorous as it is old: the archetype of modern 'deepfake' has its 18th birthday coming up next month, and moreover has its post-modern roots in several decades of agency psychological operations. This is Agency 101. Regards.
So let us depend on intelligent, cognizant, and critical thinker electorate to sort through the high tech lie machine. While trying to make the next BMW payment. Or, put food on the table. George Orwell was right.
1
Visual and auditory information has always had the capacity to be manipulated. It’s more challenging to catch it now but it’s a good time to be practicing your critical thinking. Be curious about source. Spend a little time educating yourself about topics that come through your social (and other) platforms. Think of it as a game where you decide how much energy you want to invest in problem solving. If it’s an image, reverse image search is a great tool or you can peek at the code behind an image. If you don’t have the time, don’t share it. And remember the old adage “don’t spread rumors”. Happy hunting :)
1
If you think deep fakes are not a big concern then you have not been paying attention, IMO. There has been some deeply outrageous claims made on the internet that have gone viral and been believed (birtherism anyone?). Deep fakes are even more convincing, especially if they reinforce opinions people already hold. IMO, a large percentage of folks are not going to do the due diligence required to verify/disprove deep fakes.
1
The author's point that deepfakes are not such a special concern because digital manipulation has been around for a good while is rather analogous to an argument that military-style assault weapons are not such a special concern because knives have been around forever.
Opiates have been around forever, too, but it's Fentanyl that propelled overdoses to record levels.
5
Couple of thoughts
Photographs and videos used to be the gold standard for "truth". Even when enhanced, the basic subject was untouched. Enhancing images has been around as long as images. Painters and sculptors did it all the time; it was called art.
But when we have editing tools that can change the reality captured in a video or photograph (and they are getting better and better), the image is no longer an image. Nothing digital can be trusted to be immutable.
I would not be surprised if we don't arrive at a point where images from digital sources will never be acceptable evidence in court.
2
The problem isn't convincing fakes. The problem is people who don't care what is true.
18
The final advice applies far more broadly: please don't share anything (on social media) unless you're completely sure it's authentic, regardless of whether you agree with it or are entertained or titillated by it. To that, I would add please de-friend anyone who shares content without first vetting it. Absolving oneself of responsibility for a retweet (as the President himself has done) is like treating drunkenness as an excuse for criminal behavior.
2
Propaganda is nothing new, nor are the weaknesses in human psychology that make propaganda so effective. Deep-fakes work because people are willing to believe them, and/or spread them around. They favor bad actors and those who seek to disinform, such as Trump, who understands that continual repetitive information and disinformation bombardment seriously amplifies the propaganda effect: the more you are exposed to a statement, the likelier you are to believe it’s true, even when it’s not.
There are currently several start-ups developing software to detect even the most sophisticated video alterations, and one day we’ll all have apps that verify the authenticity and origin of any video via digital verification and watermarking techniques.
Not that this will make deep-fakes less effective, since software cannot address the human factor of desirability bias. The reason deep-fakes work so well is rooted in cognitive bias, which those who are unable — or unwilling — to apply critical thinking techniques will never overcome.
7
I disagree with those on this comment thread who say that this is nothing new. It is new. It is new because, unlike religious texts, the deep fake video has an experiential quality that convinces on an aesthetic and emotional level. These carefully-engineered fakes leave an impression on the hypothalamus that cannot be erased. They are, in fact, mass mind control.
2
Ms. Wardle makes a strong case here for what people like myself have been trying to argue for years. Technology isn't so much the problem, as it is the ways that consumers take short cuts in critically evaluating the messages that they see and hear. The need for speed has overrun the need for context.
This is a problem that will be around for at least another generation, so be ready for more and more problems to arise before there's ever a solution for it, because it has to come from the consumer, not the platform.
2
This strikes me as an incredibly shallow analysis.
Me: So, you said I've got a new, more potent strain of cancer? That's pretty bad, right?
Doctor: Well let's not be melodramatic. Disease has existed for thousands of years. Remember the common cold? Or even viral infections. Those were diseases, too!
2
Nothing new here. All religious texts have been embraced by millions as indisputable truth for a very long time, even though the writers were far removed by circumstance from the the events they describe. Our brains flock to any claimed authority. We're built for this.
But we now need a kind of radar for the new strand of evil and exploitation that has emerged with the digital age. NO leader should have unchallenged access to his minions as a tool of influence and management.
That our mentally challenged con artist can command the news cycle via Twitter is a tragic example of how far we have fallen from our potential.
13
Blockchain technology allows the securing of digital assets (essentially allowing you to make unique digital items). Bitcoin is currently the most secure (and most secured) blockchain network (as a function of the amount of mining that takes place). Someone needs to create a browser plugin that allows digital validation of items that are secured on the bitcoin blockchain. In a nutshell, we have the tools to solve these problems, it simply needs education and a pressing reason to solve them.
1
Thank you for this, Dr. Wardle and NYT! Educating ourselves, being cautious about how we participate in and how we think about information disseminated on social media, and holding all information-disseminating institutions fully accountable are the best inoculations against the current disinformation epidemic. Reliable information does exist, however, identifying it has become far more challenging.
5
Excellent video. Another problem though: people believe what they WANT to believe.
7
I think I'll stick to books (on paper) and peer reviewed data.
As a technical headhunter I've see data important deleted as never being there only to be contradicted by the same data in the paper version of that very same online magazine.
This is not quite the "brain in a vat" situation but it seems to be pointing in that direction when one has to wonder/question the veracity of anything on line.
5
Last weekend I had the opportunity to view the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn through a telescope in someone's backyard. Saturn was especially amazing because the rings were visible. The teenage son of one of the guests saw Saturn and decided it was fake. He could not be convinced that he was really seeing Saturn, despite the fact that the telescope was pointed directly at a bright object in the sky and he had just seen the almost-full Moon through the same telescope. Is he typical of young people now? Have they lost faith in everything they hear and see, even in the real world? We need to approach life critically, but what if we can't?
30
@Round the Bend
A healthy dose of skepticism is essential to scientific inquiry. Allow that son to express his disbelief in the telescopic image, then follow it up tomorrow and/or next week with corroborating evidence. This engages critical thinking.
He doesn't believe the images he sees in this mirrored contraption are real? Persuade him with evidence that the mirrors are aligned by principles of physics to focus light from a sector of the sky and make the rings discernible to the human eye. Present the evidence.
2
@Round the Bend... that kid sounds exactly like several bosses I've worked for in the past. In universities no less.
You dismiss the slowed video of Nancy Pelosi as a simple and obvious fake easily seen through, not the real stuff to worry about, yet I recall that Trump seized on it immediately to say there was something wrong with her, part of his ongoing project of dumping any criticisms made of him back onto the original critic. It didn't have to be sophisticated to serve its purpose.
16
Watch the video again...she does say the shallow fakes are far more insidious.
@freyda I think that was her point
By many fact based standards, one can determine where real and faked information is coming from. Real evidence comes from peer reviewed research and from a functional federal government which currently appears to be quite ill if not on life support.
It appears more and more reasonable that our two and a half century old democratic experiment may be coming to an end and fake information is helping to make it happen.
7
I think this is a sign of things to come. Human understanding of what reality actually is will be making a fundamental shift in the next few decades, maybe even less, as neuroscience, technology, AI and our understanding of reality, including such phenomena as that which we call "free will" shifts.
True, we won't know what's real. Thing is, most of us don't yet, anyway. There are people - and they're not fools - who think we live in a computer simulation already, and always have.
Soon, though, I predict we won't even care. AI will give us such a convincing version of reality that it will be completely indistinguishable from "the real thing".
2
@Jack Lee
There are people - and they're not fools - who are somehow sure don't we live in a computer simulation, despite having no evidence whatsoever.
Why anybody believes anything on the internet is what it pretends to be (including this comment) is totally beyond me and has been for years.
Except that it's really just more of the same, but on steroids. People have always bought snake oil, and people have always believed whatever confirms what they already believe.
The internet has created true democracy, where anyone can say anything with equal ease, regardless of its truthfulness, reality, or of their own wealth or knowledge.
10
@Steve Fankuchen
Yes, 40% of the people totally believe Trump. A huge number of Conservatives still believe Obama was born in Kenya.
@Steve Fankuchen
I would dispute your definition of democracy. What you describe is the inmates in charge of the asylum; a sort of mind contra anarchy, although that seems like an oxymoron too. I’m going with Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
Very good fundamental insights, shared on the opening video. Just a tad ironic that a video designed to alert us on Fakes exclusively choose examples honoring of democrats and shaming President Trump. If I would have given this mini lecture, I would have gone out of my way to keep it politically neutral, for Fakes are used in the political arena.
4
@John Alexson
So, where are these alleged fakes that are produced by Democrats? You claim they exist, but for some reason cannot produce them.
Perhaps the problem really is only one party, your party.
I've found that people believe what they want to believe, and that the extremes on BOTH sides are guilty of this. Far Right and Far Left extremists seem most likely to believe anything which only confirms or legitimizes their current belief system. This is also true when the particularly folks on the Far Right or Left hold these belief systems not out of an individual belief, but as a way to simply align themselves with those around them. These are 'unintelligent', unthinking people, and they can be found on both sides of the political spectrum.
As a liberal, I have many liberal friends, a number of whom are not all that intelligent and who are PC just for the sake of it. They'll often Share something with me and say something like 'can you believe Trump did this?' or similar. And many times, as soon as I see the story, I'm quite certain it's fake news. So I go on Snopes.com, and sure enough. Then I write back to my friend, reminding them that they always need to Question the source of such stories. Typically, if a 'news story' brings up a swift visceral reaction, and especially if it spreads like wildfire online, we must all stop, take a deep breath, do a bit more investigating, and only then decide how to react.
29
@Lisa: Do you do the same thing for all your conservative friends? It seems to me from the tone of your comment, you are not a liberal but a conservative.
2
@Lisa Interestingly, this posting does not sound "real" to me. It claims to be from a "liberal," but sounds more like part of a well-designed disinformation campaign: (1) false equivalence: "unthinking people...can be found on both sides of the political spectrum." [compare to Trump's "fine people on both sides"] (2) half the posting consists of illustrating how her liberal friends are really just as stupid as right wingers. Very cleverly done, too; just enough psychological truth at the beginning to sound plausible, but clearly slanted by the end.
2
@Lisa
In America today, the extremists are entirely on the far right. We haven't had radical leftists for many years, and nothing said here suggests that you are a "liberal."
2
In my day as an analog professional photographer we were told to fake photographs ,that is what photo-retouchers were for they made the ugly and unwished for, correct and pretty, using dyes ,Exacto knives ,air brush & pencil ,even glass filters .
All that's new is old again.
9
We've come a long way since Max Headroom.
5
There is existing software that can scan or analyze a photo and detect if it was digitally altered.
Similar software to detect manipulation of videos is certainly in the works, and Internet platforms that offer videos for the public to view or download MUST be required to label them as "Altered" when the videos are identified.
At least, then, we will have a chance, to know fake from real.
49
@LarryAt27N While there's a great deal of work to detect fakes post-facto, it's apparently a very hard problem. And with shifting attacks, even if largely detectable, the meme of everything is a fake is still going to propagate.
However, there is a different approach -- making the source material, especially that produced by well-known sources, cryptographically verifiable as to source and derivation, i.e., the originals should be verifiable as should any excerpts -- ideally that point to the original sources, that are themselves cryptographically sealed.
This isn't a new problem, but one solved almost 30 years ago by Haber and Stornetta's work (now, famous after decades of obscurity, as "blockchain"). Distributed trust systems, such as blockchain are all hyped and trendy, but sealing digital materials as to make them virtually tangiable and verifiable should be used by news producers prior to their modification. This would in fact, make it easy for anyone, to immediately know the modification history and provenance of digital artifacts. The key is to make the process so easy and brain-dead simple for everyday users to understand.
This is very possible with the adoption of standards by the makers of video capture devices, content producers, and platform distributors.
It takes only will to preserve the epistemology foundation of our society.
Without it, we are truly in trouble and unable to deal with the many problems we need to face with intellectual integrity and trust.
22
@LarryAt27N
I think your solution is too simple to work very long or ever. I can open the script of what you have just written, alter it, attribute the alteration to you, and post it on my web site. All within 10 minutes or so. If I post it on social media and just happen to misspell LarryAt27N to LaryAt27N the majority of people would not notice and you could not prove that I knowingly miss-quoted you on any social media. So it would stick there for a very long time.
People are going to have to exercise their common sense. I was taught not to cross the street without looking both ways. Wasn't everyone?
I am mostly upset by discovering that nearly half of Americans lack any common sense. Is it any wonder that they voted for fool? I think not.
1
@Eben Thanks for your useful suggestions.
If only the videos audio of Donald Trump saying something racist or stupid, or having been elected President for that matter, were fakes.
66
Michael Wolf's latest book on Trump says he isn't really afraid of the Russian hooker pee tape, even if it exists, because he will just claim it is a fake and his base will believe him.
66
She was pretty obviously a fake when the video started. Maybe that was the point.
The problem as I see it is the democratization of the media through the proliferation of social media, so basically now everyone is a reporter or can break a story. And so as the traditional journalistic disciplines of verification and fact checking decline, the fake media takes over.
In our hyperpartisan political climate people are too quick to share unverified or suspicious stories because they confirm what they believe.
8
@Will Rothfuss
Yes, but I would imagine it is more like "because they confirm what they" think they believe because the framework of what one now believes is provided and encouraged through the internet which even if one once believed something through for example life experience, these beliefs are being slowly re positioned as the internet sees it or through the popular view. Only true way to have a handle on what you believe is to unplug completely at least for a period of time, almost like a re-boot of the human mind, and let the inner voice speak.
2
I'm not a techie, but in the old world of videos there was technology that could detect whether a video was doctored.
I would think that there must be similar technology to discover whether these new, digitally created images have been altered in some way.
If there are, then it's not too much to ask/require the big social media companies to deploy those filters and then label the image with a disclaimer.
This has two advantages. The first is that we don't ask these companies to be gate keepers or censors. They only have to say that this image or video did not pass a specific standard for authenticity.
The second advantage is that it helps educate the public. If you keep getting "not authentic" disclaimers from a particular web site at some point you will abandon them and seek your information from other sources.
5
@Drspock
I'm not a techie either, but it's hard to believe that there isn't or won't soon be a method to 'launder' a deepfake and conceal its manipulated nature.
Software is getting away from us, and I'm not prepared to take any reassurance concerning it at face value anymore. I don't see why I should.
14
@Drspock and neither am I a techie, but I don’t think it really matters on some level. A first impression is enough for lots of folks, and most, if they see something that fits in with the way they want things to be, are not going to investigate whether it is really “true”. Alas.
4
Why anybody believes anything on the internet (including this comment) is what it pretends to be is totally beyond me and has been for years.
Except that it's really just more of the same, but on steroids. People have always bought snake oil, and people have always believed whatever confirms what they already believe.
33
@Steve Fankuchen. I recommended your comment. But did I really?
@Steve Fankuchen
“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”
― Alfred Korzybski
2
We have always had challenges to our ability to divine the truth. While "facts" may be objective, communication is often subjective, with the intent to persuade, not simply relay the facts. While new technologies may be more persuasive in convincing us that something actually happened - is a fact - our obligation for critical thinking has the more power than it did before, aided by technologies as well.
In the end, our judgment informs our actions, which informs our character. That has not changed.
4
nothing on the internet should be taken at face value. the default position on content should be that it is fake.
12
That isn't the scariest world - the scariest world is the one where almost everything can be taken to be true by people who would rather believe something than know something.
21
Context is everything! Want to know why Trump and his minions love the uneducated? Quality education that teaches critical thinking is the key and it just got even more political.
77
@JRD have you been to a public school lately? Critical thinking is definitely not taught and sometimes punished.
We tried to teach our children that there is right and there is wrong, and to know the difference. And I told them that lying is the worst kind of wrong. Lying ruins everything, I told them.
Years later, I am still trying, in the midst of our sick and faltering civil society which pushes against me relentlessly, to take my own advice. I even find myslef lying to myself, though perhaps my most-revered maxim is Marcus Aurelius' "I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured".
We do not know, and never shall, about what was possible for us.
7
Sorry but I feel she could have explained her point without using language in the first 5 seconds of the video. NSFW please!
2
@Kelly clutch those pearls hard enough, and they will become diamonds.
If you come to Washington and want a friend, get a dog. If you look at the internet and want the truth turn off your computer. Now, as always, truth in communications is hard to get and is found in the rare peer reviewed or journalistically edited newspapers and articles. The advent of deep fake and then deeper fake media is a good thing because it will end the blind ignorant trust of the masses in whatever they see. Once all "popular" media is disenfranchised and made a laughing stock there will only be a few outlets that can stand against the tide and demonstrate the integrity of truthful editing. They will no longer be lost in the background noise of me too ism that is practiced today. In other words the media of the future will have to prove themselves just like the media of the past did and those who want to know the truth will cluster around the handful of outlets that have standards. The rest of the hoi polloi can listen to their televised delusions while they drink their beer and be exploited by the intelligent who have taken the time to know the facts.
Communications have always organized themselves this way into low brow, middle brow, and high brow. Our entire media world is an exercise for the low brow and they can have it. They will soon only be talking to themselves.
4
As is pointed out here, the liars are as old as the hills. The problem is the gullible rube who believes them. This appears by polling to be about 43% of the voting public and 90% of the republican party.
Let common sense prevail. If it doesn't sound or look right, it probably isn't. Do your research, then vote Democrat in 2020.
23
Yes, these deepfakes can usually be disproven, but they still can be dangerous. All you have to do is imagine a video of the President broadcast in the moments after a big national disaster. We might not have the time or resources to immediately discredit a fake.
10
@Madeline Conant
The radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds?"
1
The author says to not worry about deep fakes, but then goes into the concept of the Liar's Dividend. Won't it be the case that people can already claim stuff is faked? And won't people tend to believe them more and more over time, especially when it suits them?
If that is the case, isn't this not a panic but a justifiable serious concern?
6
Deep Fakes may actually prove to be a blessing in disguise as more and more of us will feel it necessary to see something or someone in person in order to avoid being faked out by a video or audio. This world certainly could use more personal interaction. It's also worth noting that courts for years have not permitted someone to offer a photo or video into evidence without having a live person testify under oath that the photo or video accurately depicts what the photo or video purports to depict. If the above is not enough, then let's make it a crime to create a fake video, audio or photograph without clearly identifying them as fakes.
Jay Orchard (Disclosure: Not my Real Name)
15
@Jay Orchard. How do we KNOW it's not your real name?
I urge anyone who uses social media, even in a cursory manner, to rewatch the last 60 seconds of this video. In short, social media platforms must figure out how to label these shallow and deep fakes. And users need to be vigilant about not sharing them.
Otherwise, we will not trust anything and democracy will implode.
5
"Part of this is the public realizing their own responsibility."
Yes. Excellent piece. Thank you.
5
"The panic around them is overblown." "The alarmist hype is possibly more dangerous than the technology itself." I don't see how the author of this video can say this about these new technologies when the video itself provides evidence that we are facing a dangerous phase in the development of information technologies. The problem with her recommendation of how to deal with this problem--by being more critical of what we see before sharing--is that the public is already deeply divided about how to evaluate sources of information to verify whether something is real. So how is the public supposed to verify the authenticity of a video, for example, when the epistemic reliability of the criteria for verification is itself so dependent on preexisting political orientations? So the problem is more serious than she realizes and it is not helpful to say that worries about the issues surrounding these technologies are "overblown." I do not at this point have a developed position on how to deal with this problem, but we should start by recognizing that we are indeed facing deep and serious dilemmas created by increasingly accessible technological developments.
17
The place to start developing an immune response to deepfakes is the understanding of the origin of the term "medium/media"- "intermediate agency."
Media is not first-order reality. Media- ALL media- is input that's been pre-processed or edited by at least one interlocutor prior to reception by the viewer or reader. It's relatively easy to recognize that editing function in the case of text and print media, although written narrative retains the ability to guide and potentially mislead through what might be termed "the authority of print." Obviously, it's easy to spin a narrative with trigger labels and factual selection and emphasis. But for all of its semantic noise and concomitant vulnerability to abusive manipulation, it's difficult to lose sight of the baseline fact that written language is encoded media. Text retains the reference quality of a stable time-bound medium that requires actively reflective engagement to process its meaning.
Visual media is inherently much trickier, because 70% of the perceptual faculties in human brains are devoted to the visual sense (in humans who don't have serious visual impairment.) The default bias is to directly take what we see for Reality, even if it's viewed as a photo, or on a screen. Uncritically and reactively, unless we make a serious effort to remind ourselves that the image is a second-order phenomenon- an artifact- and interact by engaging our reflective skepticism. Skepticism that's required now, more than ever before.
3
A technologist who is an expert at using a dangerous technology explains why we shouldn’t worry about the dangerous technology.
5
@Norm Vinson: She doesn't say we shouldn't worry about it. She says it's no more worrying than the technology that's in use already and less worrying that the problem of what society will do about any of it. I think I largely agree with her.
5
One important thing to remember: most "deep fakes", like most other fabricated "facts" can actually be easily disproven. It's a simple a matter of finding the source video and comparing it with the doctored material, and presto, you've revealed those fraudsters.
The real problem is good old fashioned confirmation bias reinforced by group think: people are going to believe what they are already predisposed to believe, not because but rather in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And if they are part of a social group that is ready to believe the same thing and ostracize anyone who disagrees with them, then the individual moral compunction to think critically of a sketchy piece of information will be absent as well.
7
As I think, if not fantasize, there’s beaucoup
issues, and these d things frequently interrelate and
thus mole hills become mountains which bore and
Irresponsibly plowed under/sloughed away.
The www, whatever we call our semi good, always
amazing do hickey, has alleged origin in fear
of the real nuclear option and thus blame
the industrial-military collaboration, as President
Ike rants, on the contrary he tells it
like he perceives our complicated reality is.
Therefore the deceptions, distortions, and lies
are numerous as we the perpetrators/victims
eat it up with spoons and convince our enemies but friends too, sanity/normalcy is subject to photoshop,
terrific propaganda, and yet the gross dysfunction resulting rots brain cells—also known as ... reality.
As a master of political debate, Kelly Anne
knows us, and please just leave her deciphering to the piled higher and deeper gifted who can read ‘n write in elitist academic code, and I acknowledge envy of it all.
1
Where's Groucho when you need him
5
History will be a subjective issue hereonce....
2
Deepfakes are another symptom of a larger, deeper issue - the public's lack of trust in longstanding and vital institutions because powerful people are never held accountable.
Big Pharma and the FDA are responsible for anti-vaxxers. Federal and state governments, from Flint MI (the water) to Washington DC (Iraq, Vietnam, Tuskeegee to name a few). The FAA and Boeing allowed the 737 Max to fall from the sky. The Catholic Church's repeated coverups of sexual abuse. Judges letting off accused rapists due to their privileged position in society. A hyper-partisan media ecosystem and its share of gaffes and borderline propaganda from both left- and right-leaning outlets. And corporate America's rapacious greed and insatiable appetite for the cheapest labor possible, while paying as little for it as long as possible, allows resentment to be fomented and misdirected against immigrants. The list is endless.
We are eating each other alive while those at the top are laughing all the way to the bank and living the high life in their mansions and private islands, watching their stock options endlessly rise.
The dystopia is here and it's only beginning.
44
@SM
But these issues of power, money, and its privileges have always existed, much more "successfully" perpetrated and concealed than they are now. Gilded age America was not exactly a paradigm of equality, and the basis for America's wealth was slavery for some. We trusted these institutions for so long, and even went to war for them, because so many did not understand [or didn't want to know] the realities.
At least now we sort of know what's going on some of the time, which is better than not knowing anything at all..
5
@Michael c...yes. steven Pinker's book "Your better angels" explains your point in depth.
Deep fakes are challenging, but not new. Deceptive messages are fundamental parts of democratic societies. Deciphering the messages requires a fulsome update of what passes for information literacy...in elementary schools!
3
Won't it be ironic that the end result of "the information age" may very well be that we have trouble knowing anything?
197
@Dave What did Pogo say:?
We have met the enemy and it is us!
12
@Dave
And utterly horrifying.
6
This is incredibly dangerous and how very physical wars are started from nothing but 0 and 1s. This is the equivalent of Photoshop for human communication. Perhaps the silver lining here is that actual analog experiences and non-digital community will become more important to people in the future and the only trusted encounters we believe in.
5
@JeffB
We can hope.
Thanks for explaining this, Adele.
52
This is all very disturbing -- shallow, deep and any level in between.
I find myself also disturbed by online real estate listings, which may -- or may not -- describe the photos of the home as being 'digitally created,' or 'digitally enhanced.' It started off slowly and infrequently in our market area -- but now, they all pretty much look like they bought the same software.
Don't get me all excited about a house -- only to find that few to none of the photos are 'representative' of the reality.
What is real, what is concrete? What can be trusted?
We live in strange times.
21
@jazz one
I used to photograph homes for Realtors and before turning them over, I would typically Photoshop them to overcome certain deficits by
1. Increasing brightness,
2. Increasing contrast, and
3. rotating the canvas a bit to get proper vertical lines.
Was that wrong? If you were the seller, would you want your home's photos to pop?
2
@jazz one
That is what the old adage is about " seeing is believing".
Now that only works if one is in the same physical space. The other saying " one picture is worth a 1000 words" well nowadays those words are muddy and unclear.
@LarryAt27N
One would always want to show a home in the best way possible, clean and neat, even staging is fine as long as it is not hiding something dangerously wrong. However if you are bringing in extra light to a room that is normally dark. Well if a person was to believe that room had a lot of light and it did not that is false advertising and if that person suffers from mental health issues then they may feel even more depressed in the darker space and so there is that as well to consider. I would not trust a realtor that overly doctored the photos. Your house is one of the largest investments you make and most expensive so yes it can be a problem falsifying the product.
4
Too many people think that they're being smart by cynically dismissing everything as fake and everyone as equally likely to lie. This kind of cynicism is just intellectually lazy, and allows those in power to rule unchecked. Deep fakes will exacerbate this problem.
145
@Kevin McKague
One of the unfortunate aspects of human nature is that most of us have a tendency to believe whatever we're told.
This kind of naivete is also intellectually lazy and grants troublemakers free reign.
Deep fakes will also exacerbate this problem.
Part of this problem is that the truth itself has become unbelievable.
110
There seems to be something deeply American about not trusting anything ever except for the things we like and agree with. You don’t like Pelosi? Well then that video is real. You do like Trump? That video is fake. People say they don’t trust the government but opt pay more in taxes for military style weapons for the police. People claim they don’t trust giant corporations but can’t resist Amazon technology and shopping because it’s “just so convenient.” This video did a very good job pointing out our selective skepticism.
80
@Roman Doyle... excellent point. We already know that facts don't matter in political arguments or voting booths.