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Don’t Worry About Deepfakes. Worry About Why People Fall for Them

25 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

melling 8y ago
The Moon landing was fake and climate change is a hoax. You don’t need deepfakes to trick people. Some people are just wired to believe in conspiracy theories.
- krapp 8y ago
  That's true. People see stock footage from After Effects in a Youtube video or a lens flare or a bad Maya model and believe it's credible evidence of ghosts or UFOs or politicians secretly revealing themselves to be reptilians. Not a lot of people actually need video to be convincing to be convinced by it - bias is self sustaining.
  - melling 8y ago
    15 years ago I worked with a computer programmer who believed the Moonlanding was fake. Join any discussion on climate change in the Wall Street Journal and you’ll see a large number of people who believe it’s also fake.
- trashtester 8y ago
  Most of humanity is completely unable to personally verify the claims made by climate scientists. For most people is mostly a consequence of who they trust and what they want to believe. Deepfakes have the capacity remove one of the few ways to convince "ordinary people", ie video. If only specialists can tell the difference (and perhaps even they), different groups will be able to construct complete alternate realities for themselves. That is likely to lead to war.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Now imagine this for everything, all the time, including all previous videos ever made.
creaghpatr 8y ago
I'm most worried when we can't evaluate the footage in question. Currently, the media is advocating regime change in Saudia Arabia on the basis on a video that has allegedly been reviewed by the CIA (and journalists?) but the American people are not allowed to see this film. Meanwhile, we are being blasted with propaganda by the same folks (Vox, Buzzfeed, et al) that says "Don't believe something is true just because you see it on video". Does anyone else see the contradiction? Regime change is a serious and violent consequence for a video provided by an ally with a strong motive to have MBS removed, and no one is questioning whether this could be the "killer app" use case of this technology? I think it could be, but there is no way of knowing unless we see the footage. The alternative is to trust the CIA.
- codezero 8y ago
  The Saudis themselves aren’t claiming they didn’t kill Khashoggi, only that MBS was unaware of it. This boils down to semantics, doesn’t it? I’d be a lot more concerned if they took a position that this was a total farce. They haven’t. Why do you think some kind of fake video or audio was needed then to convince world leaders that this has crossed a line? Also, how are the collective of regular people at all qualified to verify such a video? There are people whose job it is to do this kind of thing and if we think that is a broken system, that’s another issue altogether.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > This boils down to semantics, doesn’t it? No, the CIA position that MBS knew about and ordered the murder and that it was not a rogue operation does not differ only by “semantics” (except in the sense that every difference in meaning, even the mostvsubstantive, is “semantic”) from the “rogue operation” cover story that the KSA retreated to after their “he visited and left the consulate with no problem, if something happened it had nothing to do with us” story failed and then the “okay, he was killed in our embassy, but it was not murder, just a fight that he started” story also failed. > I’d be a lot more concerned if they took a position that this was a total farce. They did take that position until they realized that it wasn't working.
neuro 8y ago
Was Saddam's WMD coverage from CNN a Deepfake? I'm curious as to how people would classify this.
- gandhium 8y ago
  So, about 5 thousand chemical ammunition that were found there are not WMD?
  - neuro 8y ago
    These were supposedly accounted for before we went, they're not "The WMD" we went looking for. These stories are written in a manner to confuse and mislead. I'm still confused, anyhow, the latest is below https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-s-media-still-cant-get-iraqi-wmd-story-right/ https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-s-m...
    - gandhium 8y ago
      No, they weren't accounted since US Army found them in all the strange places.
scandox 8y ago
I think this misses the point. Deep fakes will simply make all video and audio evidence subject to significant doubt. We simply lose a whole body of media as evidence that most people will accept - the provenance will become all important. Like Mattress reviews - all video and audio will become an evidential dead zone.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Not just new videos. It will instantly render all videos from the history of videos as deniable. What can we do now to establish authenticity of POTUS interviews and declarations for example, when the quotes by themselves are often in need of video evidence as they are surprising. How can any public figure be held accountable for what they say now when in a few years it will all be unverifiable. I fear a lunar landing denialists scenario generalized to every piece of news.
- tCfD 8y ago
  Sign all content and post pubkey in as many public records as possible - Would that help?
  - idle_zealot 8y ago
    Only if you trust the owner of the signing key.
nestorD 8y ago
I have a hard time understanding how deepfake change the game : we could already use doubles/actors and trick footage if we wanted to forge a video. We might become more critical of videos but footage from an untrusted source has never been reliable.

25 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

The Moon landing was fake and climate change is a hoax. You don’t need deepfakes to trick people. Some people are just wired to believe in conspiracy theories.

krapp 8y ago
That's true. People see stock footage from After Effects in a Youtube video or a lens flare or a bad Maya model and believe it's credible evidence of ghosts or UFOs or politicians secretly revealing themselves to be reptilians. Not a lot of people actually need video to be convincing to be convinced by it - bias is self sustaining.
- melling 8y ago
  15 years ago I worked with a computer programmer who believed the Moonlanding was fake. Join any discussion on climate change in the Wall Street Journal and you’ll see a large number of people who believe it’s also fake.
trashtester 8y ago
Most of humanity is completely unable to personally verify the claims made by climate scientists. For most people is mostly a consequence of who they trust and what they want to believe. Deepfakes have the capacity remove one of the few ways to convince "ordinary people", ie video. If only specialists can tell the difference (and perhaps even they), different groups will be able to construct complete alternate realities for themselves. That is likely to lead to war.
jobigoud 8y ago
Now imagine this for everything, all the time, including all previous videos ever made.

creaghpatr 8y ago

I'm most worried when we can't evaluate the footage in question. Currently, the media is advocating regime change in Saudia Arabia on the basis on a video that has allegedly been reviewed by the CIA (and journalists?) but the American people are not allowed to see this film. Meanwhile, we are being blasted with propaganda by the same folks (Vox, Buzzfeed, et al) that says "Don't believe something is true just because you see it on video". Does anyone else see the contradiction? Regime change is a serious and violent consequence for a video provided by an ally with a strong motive to have MBS removed, and no one is questioning whether this could be the "killer app" use case of this technology? I think it could be, but there is no way of knowing unless we see the footage. The alternative is to trust the CIA.

codezero 8y ago
The Saudis themselves aren’t claiming they didn’t kill Khashoggi, only that MBS was unaware of it. This boils down to semantics, doesn’t it? I’d be a lot more concerned if they took a position that this was a total farce. They haven’t. Why do you think some kind of fake video or audio was needed then to convince world leaders that this has crossed a line? Also, how are the collective of regular people at all qualified to verify such a video? There are people whose job it is to do this kind of thing and if we think that is a broken system, that’s another issue altogether.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > This boils down to semantics, doesn’t it? No, the CIA position that MBS knew about and ordered the murder and that it was not a rogue operation does not differ only by “semantics” (except in the sense that every difference in meaning, even the mostvsubstantive, is “semantic”) from the “rogue operation” cover story that the KSA retreated to after their “he visited and left the consulate with no problem, if something happened it had nothing to do with us” story failed and then the “okay, he was killed in our embassy, but it was not murder, just a fight that he started” story also failed. > I’d be a lot more concerned if they took a position that this was a total farce. They did take that position until they realized that it wasn't working.

neuro 8y ago

Was Saddam's WMD coverage from CNN a Deepfake? I'm curious as to how people would classify this.

gandhium 8y ago
So, about 5 thousand chemical ammunition that were found there are not WMD?
- neuro 8y ago
  These were supposedly accounted for before we went, they're not "The WMD" we went looking for. These stories are written in a manner to confuse and mislead. I'm still confused, anyhow, the latest is below https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-s-media-still-cant-get-iraqi-wmd-story-right/ https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-s-m...
  - gandhium 8y ago
    No, they weren't accounted since US Army found them in all the strange places.

scandox 8y ago

I think this misses the point. Deep fakes will simply make all video and audio evidence subject to significant doubt. We simply lose a whole body of media as evidence that most people will accept - the provenance will become all important. Like Mattress reviews - all video and audio will become an evidential dead zone.

jobigoud 8y ago
Not just new videos. It will instantly render all videos from the history of videos as deniable. What can we do now to establish authenticity of POTUS interviews and declarations for example, when the quotes by themselves are often in need of video evidence as they are surprising. How can any public figure be held accountable for what they say now when in a few years it will all be unverifiable. I fear a lunar landing denialists scenario generalized to every piece of news.
tCfD 8y ago
Sign all content and post pubkey in as many public records as possible - Would that help?
- idle_zealot 8y ago
  Only if you trust the owner of the signing key.

nestorD 8y ago

I have a hard time understanding how deepfake change the game : we could already use doubles/actors and trick footage if we wanted to forge a video. We might become more critical of videos but footage from an untrusted source has never been reliable.