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This seems like an insanely hard problem with many false positives/negatives. But of course the media hysteria against tech and fake news might eat it up and pr

by zpeti 7y ago

This seems like an insanely hard problem with many false positives/negatives. But of course the media hysteria against tech and fake news might eat it up and praise twitter. Nice PR move for non techies.

klundqist 7y ago
Yeah I'm most concerned about the false sense of security this gives. It won't find deep fakes from unpublished methods.
michaelt 7y ago
> Nice PR move for non techies. Depends if the praise they get for "at least they're doing something/not pretending the problem doesn't exist" outweighs the criticism they get for false positives, false negatives, inconsistency/bias, arbitrary judgements, response times, or labelling so many things fake that it becomes meaningless. Way back in 1994, Time magazine published a photo of OJ Simpson that was photoshopped to make his skin darker [1] - but having some colour-correction of magazine cover photos is inevitable. The line between regular and deceptive colour correction is blurry, and some people will be upset no matter where you try to draw it. [1] https://people.southwestern.edu/~bednarb/su_netWorks/projects/enyioha/O.J.Simpson.html https://people.southwestern.edu/~bednarb/su_netWorks/project...
- makomk 7y ago
  If they get the right false positives, false negatives, and bias, it might enhance their media reputation overall. For example, a while ago the White House posted a video of an altercation with a journalist which a lot of journalists believed had been manipulated to make it look worse than it was. Now, this obviously wasn't true on looking at the video, and indeed a couple of outlets hired video forensics experts who concluded this - but AP managed to find a non-expert who was merely a video editor and confirmed their belief by mistaking signs of frame rate conversion for the video being sped up, and the press ran with it. Meanwhile, there was an a very convincing deceptively-edited video circulating on Twitter which clamed to show parts had been sped up by overlaying the White House version on the original - it was very vivid, with the overlay seeming to jump ahead in fast-moving parts. This was an illusion created by running the videos 7 frames or so out of sync the whole way through and abusing the fact the slight differences weren't noticable in slow-moving parts during normal playback. No-one noticed. Youtube fighter of misinformation Captain Disillusion even helped spread it and gave his approval. My general reckoning is that Twitter would get much more praise for labelling the non-tampered video as misleadingly edited and endorsing the accuracy of the video that was misleadingly edited to make the other one appear that way, than the other way around.
Ragnarork 7y ago
Deep fakes are a thing. Fake news are a thing. Not sure what's achieved by pointing out some fantasized "hysteria" of the media about it, especially when that bundles up everyone in the same basket, although some of these are actually relying on these methods to push their views. Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. It's not a free pass of course, it does seem insanely hard, and it better materializes into something concrete with a real impact that does solve the issues at hand.
- kmlx 7y ago
  > Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. it's pretty incredible how we went from "give people the benefit of the doubt" to "people are manipulated".
  - Ragnarork 7y ago
    I admit I could have phrased it better. What I implied is that the end result has been that people got manipulated by such techniques (which I don't blame them for, as these methods have been engineered to be extremely persuasive and credible-looking). I did not imply that everyone was de-facto manipulated by those. Only that it can already happen.
- finnthehuman 7y ago
  >label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. Except for all the purposefully manipulative things they allow on their platform and don't label or attempt to debunk. You could say they're targeting the biggest problem first, but twitter isn't going to touch politician's tweets or the mainstream news en mass. If you're worried about the average twitter users' critical thinking skills, don't you think those important-sounding sources of information should be THE key targets of a anti-misleading or anti-manipulative campaigns?

by zpeti 7y ago

klundqist 7y ago

Yeah I'm most concerned about the false sense of security this gives. It won't find deep fakes from unpublished methods.

michaelt 7y ago

> Nice PR move for non techies. Depends if the praise they get for "at least they're doing something/not pretending the problem doesn't exist" outweighs the criticism they get for false positives, false negatives, inconsistency/bias, arbitrary judgements, response times, or labelling so many things fake that it becomes meaningless. Way back in 1994, Time magazine published a photo of OJ Simpson that was photoshopped to make his skin darker [1] - but having some colour-correction of magazine cover photos is inevitable. The line between regular and deceptive colour correction is blurry, and some people will be upset no matter where you try to draw it. [1] https://people.southwestern.edu/~bednarb/su_netWorks/projects/enyioha/O.J.Simpson.html https://people.southwestern.edu/~bednarb/su_netWorks/project...

makomk 7y ago
If they get the right false positives, false negatives, and bias, it might enhance their media reputation overall. For example, a while ago the White House posted a video of an altercation with a journalist which a lot of journalists believed had been manipulated to make it look worse than it was. Now, this obviously wasn't true on looking at the video, and indeed a couple of outlets hired video forensics experts who concluded this - but AP managed to find a non-expert who was merely a video editor and confirmed their belief by mistaking signs of frame rate conversion for the video being sped up, and the press ran with it. Meanwhile, there was an a very convincing deceptively-edited video circulating on Twitter which clamed to show parts had been sped up by overlaying the White House version on the original - it was very vivid, with the overlay seeming to jump ahead in fast-moving parts. This was an illusion created by running the videos 7 frames or so out of sync the whole way through and abusing the fact the slight differences weren't noticable in slow-moving parts during normal playback. No-one noticed. Youtube fighter of misinformation Captain Disillusion even helped spread it and gave his approval. My general reckoning is that Twitter would get much more praise for labelling the non-tampered video as misleadingly edited and endorsing the accuracy of the video that was misleadingly edited to make the other one appear that way, than the other way around.

Ragnarork 7y ago

Deep fakes are a thing. Fake news are a thing. Not sure what's achieved by pointing out some fantasized "hysteria" of the media about it, especially when that bundles up everyone in the same basket, although some of these are actually relying on these methods to push their views. Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. It's not a free pass of course, it does seem insanely hard, and it better materializes into something concrete with a real impact that does solve the issues at hand.

kmlx 7y ago
> Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. it's pretty incredible how we went from "give people the benefit of the doubt" to "people are manipulated".
- Ragnarork 7y ago
  I admit I could have phrased it better. What I implied is that the end result has been that people got manipulated by such techniques (which I don't blame them for, as these methods have been engineered to be extremely persuasive and credible-looking). I did not imply that everyone was de-facto manipulated by those. Only that it can already happen.
finnthehuman 7y ago
>label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. Except for all the purposefully manipulative things they allow on their platform and don't label or attempt to debunk. You could say they're targeting the biggest problem first, but twitter isn't going to touch politician's tweets or the mainstream news en mass. If you're worried about the average twitter users' critical thinking skills, don't you think those important-sounding sources of information should be THE key targets of a anti-misleading or anti-manipulative campaigns?