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(deleted my original comment, because I think this thread is a more suitable place to reply) > Oh, it was camera footage, so we can automatically trust it desp

(deleted my original comment, because I think this thread is a more suitable place to reply) > Oh, it was camera footage, so we can automatically trust it despite the fact that the project doing it is inherently untrustworthy. Agree. I was interested in fringe politics as a social phenomenon and I've been following it for a year or two. I now see CNN as a media outlet largely serving their interest groups. But see RT, Project Veritas, etc., as "second-order propaganda" serving their respective interest groups by selectively "exposing" targets for their political utility, not because they care about truth, it's half-truth, half-falsehoold. Meanwhile, the accusations of the mainstream media are made against them, not because they care about truth, but because their existence damaged the mainstream's own interest. It's all biases vs. biases all the way down. If someone spends enough time and effort while maintaining rationality, it's possible to extract a great deal of useful information from the sum of all these propaganda. I think it's what open-source intelligence is largely about. But I don't want to waste time doing this. Nowadays, I view many things in politics as mere talking points without make judgements, and get most of my news from Hacker News (which is, of course, heavily biased towards the Silicon Valley). > Deep fakes are going to rock your world. Definitely. I think most (internet-savvy) people will eventually learn it and ignore things like that. In Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG (second season of the TV animation), one group of politicians for their personal interests within the government, has launched a conspiracy to intensify a military conflict (against the refugee uprising) that involves nuclear weapon. The protagonists from Section 9, a national security agency that operates independent from the executive, saw the truth from the satellite footage, had the following dialogue. > "How do we stop it? Can we post the video footage online?" > "No. Video footage nowadays is seen as completely unreliable to this day." Since most video footage "exposure" themselves are propaganda or hoaxes. Released in 2000s, it portrayed and predicted our world remarkably well, and it'll give you a lot of inspirations of what would the future society look like.

starfallg 7y ago
>> "No. Video footage nowadays is seen as completely unreliable to this day." >Since most video footage "exposure" themselves are propaganda or hoaxes. >Released in 2000s, it portrayed and predicted our world remarkably well, and it'll give you a lot of inspirations of what would the future society look like. I think the current situation is a bit more severe than what was portrayed there. It's not that video footage is unreliable, but that it is unconvincing. All evidence is interpreted through the eyes of tribalism first and foremost, while truth is relegated to the back, because how information is disseminated now exploits our natural behavioural patterns in a negative way. That is the core of the rot in our great age of "(dis)information".
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Great comment. > It's not that video footage is unreliable, but that it is unconvincing. Why not both? It's a mixed bag. Unreliability can be one problem. For example, "quoting one's words" is a common type of political videos on YouTube, they're mainly a few-second or few-minute of video segments that quote someone's words, and makes a point about it. Some of these videos are mostly reliable, but some other videos intentionally remove the relevant context and mislead the viewers to draw another conclusion. Because of the existence of misleading videos, my first response to any of them is distrust until it's proven reliable. The same principle applies to expressing a statement of something by a politician - is it true or is it misleading rhetoric? This is why fact-checking becomes more and more popular. But the issue of reliability is greater than objective facts, you can fact-check data but you cannot fact-check the framing or context. As technology marches on, the issue of unreliability will become greater, e.g. DeepFake. Unconvincing can be another issue. For example, some activists have been warned us about mass surveillance for a decade based on reliable evidence. Both work together.
  - jonhohle 7y ago
    When the fact checkers have the same bias as the original authors, what point is there? Without penalty of perjury or some other penalty the loudest voices will control the “facts”.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      Yes. I've read your US gun range footage comment. Perhaps a potential solution would be: full freedom of speech, but less freedom of the press, e.g. you can post whatever you want online until someone sues you, just like today, but media outlets should not be allowed to do the same without facing consequences.
  - starfallg 7y ago
    Yes, you are right in that unreliability is a separate but related problem. Maybe I should have phrased it differently. The main issue we have the people who are not convinced of a source regardless of reliability. And even further, questioning reliability has become a strategy for dismissing an unfavourable source and has been weaponised. This is evident when people take the example of a single error made by a source that they believe are biased against them while dismissing all of the errors and falsehoods from source that they believe favour them. This win-at-all-cost attitude in politics is killing any real discourse and along with it goes decency in public life. Politics is no longer about good governance, but instead another activity that people participate in to satisfy their tribal urges.
KirinDave 7y ago
> I now see CNN as a media outlet largely serving their interest groups. But see RT, Project Veritas, etc., as "second-order propaganda" serving their respective interest groups by selectively "exposing" targets for their political utility, not because they care about truth, it's half-truth, half-falsehoold. Meanwhile, the accusations of the mainstream media are made against them, not because they care about truth, but because their existence damaged the mainstream's own interest. It's all biases vs. biases all the way down. Wait. "Second-order" propaganda? What's "second order" about it? This is directly how these machines work. The only remotely novel thing about Project Veritas is that it has absolutely no news credibility at all, whereas CNN, Fox and RT can and do occasionally support real journalism as well. > Since most video footage "exposure" themselves are propaganda or hoaxes. I've yet to see a deep fake that holds up under scrutiny at high definition. It may be a matter of time, but I'm not sure we are "there" yet. Its also worth noting that there is actually a cool use of blockchain-like technologies here. Until such time as deep fakes can be done perfectly in real time, a certification of video being taken close to the time of an event is still a very good indicator, and pubic blockchains are one of the best ways to do this. We don't even need proof of work to make this service! Outside of a specific time horizon (which you can tune), the trust is in the historical consensus which can't realistically be altered!
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  > Wait. "Second-order" propaganda? What's "second order" about it? This is directly how these machines work. The only remotely novel thing about Project Veritas is that it has absolutely no news credibility at all, whereas CNN, Fox and RT can and do occasionally support real journalism as well. I used "second-order propaganda" as a catch-all term for propagandists that say "Everything you know is wrong, [exposing some cases of propaganda, can be real], see, these are propaganda and manipulations! But don't worry, just listen to my propaganda." I don't imply that there is anything new here. > I've yet to see a deep fake that holds up under scrutiny at high definition. It may be a matter of time, but I'm not sure we are "there" yet. I was describing a hypothetical scenario in the future. > Its also worth noting that there is actually a cool use of blockchain-like technologies here. Until such time as deep fakes can be done perfectly in real time, a certification of video being taken close to the time of an event is still a very good indicator, and pubic blockchains are one of the best ways to do this. Upvote. You proposed an interesting question: "how do we certify that a video is real in the future?", with a solution. If you have time, please write a blog post.

starfallg 7y ago

>> "No. Video footage nowadays is seen as completely unreliable to this day." >Since most video footage "exposure" themselves are propaganda or hoaxes. >Released in 2000s, it portrayed and predicted our world remarkably well, and it'll give you a lot of inspirations of what would the future society look like. I think the current situation is a bit more severe than what was portrayed there. It's not that video footage is unreliable, but that it is unconvincing. All evidence is interpreted through the eyes of tribalism first and foremost, while truth is relegated to the back, because how information is disseminated now exploits our natural behavioural patterns in a negative way. That is the core of the rot in our great age of "(dis)information".

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Great comment. > It's not that video footage is unreliable, but that it is unconvincing. Why not both? It's a mixed bag. Unreliability can be one problem. For example, "quoting one's words" is a common type of political videos on YouTube, they're mainly a few-second or few-minute of video segments that quote someone's words, and makes a point about it. Some of these videos are mostly reliable, but some other videos intentionally remove the relevant context and mislead the viewers to draw another conclusion. Because of the existence of misleading videos, my first response to any of them is distrust until it's proven reliable. The same principle applies to expressing a statement of something by a politician - is it true or is it misleading rhetoric? This is why fact-checking becomes more and more popular. But the issue of reliability is greater than objective facts, you can fact-check data but you cannot fact-check the framing or context. As technology marches on, the issue of unreliability will become greater, e.g. DeepFake. Unconvincing can be another issue. For example, some activists have been warned us about mass surveillance for a decade based on reliable evidence. Both work together.
- jonhohle 7y ago
  When the fact checkers have the same bias as the original authors, what point is there? Without penalty of perjury or some other penalty the loudest voices will control the “facts”.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    Yes. I've read your US gun range footage comment. Perhaps a potential solution would be: full freedom of speech, but less freedom of the press, e.g. you can post whatever you want online until someone sues you, just like today, but media outlets should not be allowed to do the same without facing consequences.
- starfallg 7y ago
  Yes, you are right in that unreliability is a separate but related problem. Maybe I should have phrased it differently. The main issue we have the people who are not convinced of a source regardless of reliability. And even further, questioning reliability has become a strategy for dismissing an unfavourable source and has been weaponised. This is evident when people take the example of a single error made by a source that they believe are biased against them while dismissing all of the errors and falsehoods from source that they believe favour them. This win-at-all-cost attitude in politics is killing any real discourse and along with it goes decency in public life. Politics is no longer about good governance, but instead another activity that people participate in to satisfy their tribal urges.

KirinDave 7y ago

> I now see CNN as a media outlet largely serving their interest groups. But see RT, Project Veritas, etc., as "second-order propaganda" serving their respective interest groups by selectively "exposing" targets for their political utility, not because they care about truth, it's half-truth, half-falsehoold. Meanwhile, the accusations of the mainstream media are made against them, not because they care about truth, but because their existence damaged the mainstream's own interest. It's all biases vs. biases all the way down. Wait. "Second-order" propaganda? What's "second order" about it? This is directly how these machines work. The only remotely novel thing about Project Veritas is that it has absolutely no news credibility at all, whereas CNN, Fox and RT can and do occasionally support real journalism as well. > Since most video footage "exposure" themselves are propaganda or hoaxes. I've yet to see a deep fake that holds up under scrutiny at high definition. It may be a matter of time, but I'm not sure we are "there" yet. Its also worth noting that there is actually a cool use of blockchain-like technologies here. Until such time as deep fakes can be done perfectly in real time, a certification of video being taken close to the time of an event is still a very good indicator, and pubic blockchains are one of the best ways to do this. We don't even need proof of work to make this service! Outside of a specific time horizon (which you can tune), the trust is in the historical consensus which can't realistically be altered!

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
> Wait. "Second-order" propaganda? What's "second order" about it? This is directly how these machines work. The only remotely novel thing about Project Veritas is that it has absolutely no news credibility at all, whereas CNN, Fox and RT can and do occasionally support real journalism as well. I used "second-order propaganda" as a catch-all term for propagandists that say "Everything you know is wrong, [exposing some cases of propaganda, can be real], see, these are propaganda and manipulations! But don't worry, just listen to my propaganda." I don't imply that there is anything new here. > I've yet to see a deep fake that holds up under scrutiny at high definition. It may be a matter of time, but I'm not sure we are "there" yet. I was describing a hypothetical scenario in the future. > Its also worth noting that there is actually a cool use of blockchain-like technologies here. Until such time as deep fakes can be done perfectly in real time, a certification of video being taken close to the time of an event is still a very good indicator, and pubic blockchains are one of the best ways to do this. Upvote. You proposed an interesting question: "how do we certify that a video is real in the future?", with a solution. If you have time, please write a blog post.