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I wonder what this implies for the future of media (audio, photos, video) in general? Do we only consume media that has been signed by the creator and verified

I wonder what this implies for the future of media (audio, photos, video) in general? Do we only consume media that has been signed by the creator and verified by an authority that we trust, e.g., a "blue checkmark" for media? Do we know how effective the SSL certificate verification has been in browsers at influencing consumer behavior?

ur-whale 7y ago
Why does that matter? Or have you entirely given on critical thinking?
- cityiguana 7y ago
  Critical thinking only helps you determine what could happen, not what actually did happen.
- ASDF2001 7y ago
  I feel like this question is just a cheap snide remark. The current political moment provides a lot of evidence for why a technology like this introduces these questions. A technology where we can fake any type of photo or video is dangerous in a world where tweets dominate the news cycle.
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review the site guidelines and don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
plopz 7y ago
> Do we know how effective the SSL certificate verification has been in browsers at influencing consumer behavior? Considering how EV is essentially dead, I would assume it hasn't been very effective.
brightball 7y ago
We do know that people don't care about trust indicators. They care about warnings for danger, but they don't care about trust indicators. Trust indicators are essentially, something for companies to sell. Because everybody isn't going to pay for the trust indicator and we're going to consume plenty of things that don't have it, the indicator is basically just noise. It's why EV failed and we're about to see it repeat with this BIMI technology in the email world IMO. On the other hand, if you get a big giant danger warning that stands out because everything else doesn't have it...it gets attention.
- localhost 7y ago
  While I agree that a giant danger warning will get attention, it also implies that someone needs to be the arbiter of "danger". And given how eagerly the giant Internet co's have embraced being gatekeepers, I don't hold out a lot of hope for this approach.
  - brightball 7y ago
    Agreed. In this particular situation, that's really difficult to do too.
  - toss1 7y ago
    Yes, and not only that, on the other end, when the danger indicators become too frequent, they end up merely being seen as noise. ( E.g., see California cancer warnings on just about everything -- makes it hard to distinguish between the <thing that will kill you now> vs the <thing that may increase your chance of a curable cancer by 1/10^6>, so it all gets ignored. )
mc32 7y ago
It’s gonna have to be better than a blue check mark. A blue check mark only says this account/person has our imprimatur. Nothing more. There are people who don’t have who are better disseminators than those who have them. That would be terrible. Basically it would turn media into versions of Xinhua or former Pravda. Only approved voices and opinions get the “authenticity” mark.
RandallBrown 7y ago
In Neal Stephenson's latest book, that seems to be how he gets around the fake news problem. The near future world signs everything with a personal identifier so they can prove they what people are seeing is genuine. I imagine these identifiers could be extended to things like security cameras and things too so that there could be some verification that the video footage hasn't been doctored. All of this of course relies on the general public getting the knowledge and tools to seamlessly do this verification on a daily basis. In the book it's mostly taken care of using google glass style wearables.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  For anyone else not up to date, Neal Stephenson's latest novel is Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: https://www.nealstephenson.com/fall,-or-dodge-in-hell.html https://www.nealstephenson.com/fall,-or-dodge-in-hell.html
- slg 7y ago
  The primary problem with fake news is not that people are fabricating evidence. Sure, that does happen on occasion but it is relatively rare and is usually debunked pretty quickly. The biggest issue is that there are sources that can't be trusted and consumers don't have the skills or tools to identify those untrustworthy sources or simply don't care that their sources might be biased. Fixing the first problem (which is all some type of signing certificate could hope to do) doesn't accomplish much if we can't also addresses the second problem.
  - air7 7y ago
    Imo the problem with fake news is that by the time it's debunked (if), its effect has already happened and can't be undone.
    - slg 7y ago
      That is really just a symptom of the second problem. Fake news can spread pretty far before it is debunked, but the fake news has to start somewhere. Maybe people get it from some untrustworthy news site, social media, or directly from the mouth of a habitually lying politician, but it almost never originates from a legitimate news source that has the skills, tools, and motivation to better assess the authenticity of the news. If people put less faith in those untrustworthy sources and waited for actual journalism to be done before reacting, fake news would be less of a problem.
wuliwong 7y ago
The ability to fake photos has been around for a while and it hasn't been a big deal. People overall have proven savvy enough to mostly discern real from faked. My prediction is that the same will be true for ML faked videos.
- air7 7y ago
  That's what I thought too until I saw The Shining staring Jim Carrey. https://youtu.be/HG_NZpkttXE https://youtu.be/HG_NZpkttXE
- tonylemesmer 7y ago
  For quite a while and probably still now, advertising photos were/are routinely doctored without people realising (e.g. fashion or makeup models). This was a scandal a few years ago certainly in the UK. The outcome was for plus size models to be more frequently featured. So in some cases it can go unnoticed and be a serious problem.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Besides, look at how many reddit submissions are just an image of a headline, or an image of a picture + caption. Not even a link to a source. Yet thousands of upvotes and reactions to it, taking it at complete face value. To worry about fake photos/videos seems out of touch with the current state of the internet. People will upvote and bicker about a screenshot of the text of a tweet. Why even bother with ML when an image of an outrageous sentence is enough?
koonsolo 7y ago
I have the same feeling, but if you look at photo's, they've been edited for decades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...). Photo editing became "household" at least a decade ago. So if you think of that, I can't see why the perception of video's in 3 years would be different than photo's today.

ur-whale 7y ago

Why does that matter? Or have you entirely given on critical thinking?

cityiguana 7y ago
Critical thinking only helps you determine what could happen, not what actually did happen.
ASDF2001 7y ago
I feel like this question is just a cheap snide remark. The current political moment provides a lot of evidence for why a technology like this introduces these questions. A technology where we can fake any type of photo or video is dangerous in a world where tweets dominate the news cycle.
dang 7y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review the site guidelines and don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

plopz 7y ago

> Do we know how effective the SSL certificate verification has been in browsers at influencing consumer behavior? Considering how EV is essentially dead, I would assume it hasn't been very effective.

brightball 7y ago

We do know that people don't care about trust indicators. They care about warnings for danger, but they don't care about trust indicators. Trust indicators are essentially, something for companies to sell. Because everybody isn't going to pay for the trust indicator and we're going to consume plenty of things that don't have it, the indicator is basically just noise. It's why EV failed and we're about to see it repeat with this BIMI technology in the email world IMO. On the other hand, if you get a big giant danger warning that stands out because everything else doesn't have it...it gets attention.

localhost 7y ago
While I agree that a giant danger warning will get attention, it also implies that someone needs to be the arbiter of "danger". And given how eagerly the giant Internet co's have embraced being gatekeepers, I don't hold out a lot of hope for this approach.
- brightball 7y ago
  Agreed. In this particular situation, that's really difficult to do too.
- toss1 7y ago
  Yes, and not only that, on the other end, when the danger indicators become too frequent, they end up merely being seen as noise. ( E.g., see California cancer warnings on just about everything -- makes it hard to distinguish between the <thing that will kill you now> vs the <thing that may increase your chance of a curable cancer by 1/10^6>, so it all gets ignored. )

mc32 7y ago

It’s gonna have to be better than a blue check mark. A blue check mark only says this account/person has our imprimatur. Nothing more. There are people who don’t have who are better disseminators than those who have them. That would be terrible. Basically it would turn media into versions of Xinhua or former Pravda. Only approved voices and opinions get the “authenticity” mark.

RandallBrown 7y ago

In Neal Stephenson's latest book, that seems to be how he gets around the fake news problem. The near future world signs everything with a personal identifier so they can prove they what people are seeing is genuine. I imagine these identifiers could be extended to things like security cameras and things too so that there could be some verification that the video footage hasn't been doctored. All of this of course relies on the general public getting the knowledge and tools to seamlessly do this verification on a daily basis. In the book it's mostly taken care of using google glass style wearables.

EForEndeavour 7y ago
For anyone else not up to date, Neal Stephenson's latest novel is Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: https://www.nealstephenson.com/fall,-or-dodge-in-hell.html https://www.nealstephenson.com/fall,-or-dodge-in-hell.html
slg 7y ago
The primary problem with fake news is not that people are fabricating evidence. Sure, that does happen on occasion but it is relatively rare and is usually debunked pretty quickly. The biggest issue is that there are sources that can't be trusted and consumers don't have the skills or tools to identify those untrustworthy sources or simply don't care that their sources might be biased. Fixing the first problem (which is all some type of signing certificate could hope to do) doesn't accomplish much if we can't also addresses the second problem.
- air7 7y ago
  Imo the problem with fake news is that by the time it's debunked (if), its effect has already happened and can't be undone.
  - slg 7y ago
    That is really just a symptom of the second problem. Fake news can spread pretty far before it is debunked, but the fake news has to start somewhere. Maybe people get it from some untrustworthy news site, social media, or directly from the mouth of a habitually lying politician, but it almost never originates from a legitimate news source that has the skills, tools, and motivation to better assess the authenticity of the news. If people put less faith in those untrustworthy sources and waited for actual journalism to be done before reacting, fake news would be less of a problem.

wuliwong 7y ago

The ability to fake photos has been around for a while and it hasn't been a big deal. People overall have proven savvy enough to mostly discern real from faked. My prediction is that the same will be true for ML faked videos.

air7 7y ago
That's what I thought too until I saw The Shining staring Jim Carrey. https://youtu.be/HG_NZpkttXE https://youtu.be/HG_NZpkttXE
tonylemesmer 7y ago
For quite a while and probably still now, advertising photos were/are routinely doctored without people realising (e.g. fashion or makeup models). This was a scandal a few years ago certainly in the UK. The outcome was for plus size models to be more frequently featured. So in some cases it can go unnoticed and be a serious problem.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Besides, look at how many reddit submissions are just an image of a headline, or an image of a picture + caption. Not even a link to a source. Yet thousands of upvotes and reactions to it, taking it at complete face value. To worry about fake photos/videos seems out of touch with the current state of the internet. People will upvote and bicker about a screenshot of the text of a tweet. Why even bother with ML when an image of an outrageous sentence is enough?

koonsolo 7y ago

I have the same feeling, but if you look at photo's, they've been edited for decades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...). Photo editing became "household" at least a decade ago. So if you think of that, I can't see why the perception of video's in 3 years would be different than photo's today.