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Video is not to be trusted since 1896 and the first of Melies' movies. The only difference is that the skills and computation power necessary to make it realis

Video is not to be trusted since 1896 and the first of Melies' movies. The only difference is that the skills and computation power necessary to make it realistic enough are now much more accessible.

Swenrekcah 7y ago
That ‘only’ difference is phenomenal. Previously the stakes had to be enormous, now they can be trivial. So now you can’t trust video for the most trivial stuff, but we rely enormously on the trustworthiness of video/audio in all communications except the smallest town interactions.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  Maybe it's a good thing that common people will finally learn to distrust the kind of propaganda that governments and corporations have been able to sneak into unsuspecting populations since the emergence of mass media.
  - Bjartr 7y ago
    More likely is people will believe videos that they agree with and disbelieve ones they don't, much like today.
    - TuringTest 7y ago
      True, but automated people removal won't change any of that.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Scale, rate, and levels of achievable detail matter. In 1896, a small handfull of people could conceivably alter film in a time-consuming process to achieve then-believable (and now generally laughable) results. In 2020, billions of computers worldwide can alter video streams to levels requiring extremely good detection methods, or defeating even those, in realtime. "Photographic evidence" was at one point in time a gold standard. The era of analogue recordings -- that is, analagous to the ground truth -- created a period of high-detail, high-fidelity records of facts, in the original sense of events. Rather than relying on testimony, witnesses, hearsay, or small fragments of physical evidence, there were records of still or moving images, audio, and more. But with that came increasing capabilities to edit those records, general perception of which generally strongly trailed capabilities. It was the creator of uber-rational detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, who was taken in by fabricated "fairie" photographs: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559519/cottingley-fairy-photos-fooled-arthur-conan-doyle-sold https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559519/cottingley-fairy-... What's changed though is the level of skill required to doctor content (none, with available software), the speed at which the alterations can be accomplished (realtime), and the detail and convincingness of the alterations (high). A hydrogen bomb does the same thing that Greek Fire does, at scale. The gas turbine does the same thing the ox does, at scale. Mustard gas does the same thing a bee does, at scale. Scale matters.

Video is not to be trusted since 1896 and the first of Melies' movies. The only difference is that the skills and computation power necessary to make it realistic enough are now much more accessible.

Swenrekcah 7y ago

That ‘only’ difference is phenomenal. Previously the stakes had to be enormous, now they can be trivial. So now you can’t trust video for the most trivial stuff, but we rely enormously on the trustworthiness of video/audio in all communications except the smallest town interactions.

TuringTest 7y ago
Maybe it's a good thing that common people will finally learn to distrust the kind of propaganda that governments and corporations have been able to sneak into unsuspecting populations since the emergence of mass media.
- Bjartr 7y ago
  More likely is people will believe videos that they agree with and disbelieve ones they don't, much like today.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    True, but automated people removal won't change any of that.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Scale, rate, and levels of achievable detail matter. In 1896, a small handfull of people could conceivably alter film in a time-consuming process to achieve then-believable (and now generally laughable) results. In 2020, billions of computers worldwide can alter video streams to levels requiring extremely good detection methods, or defeating even those, in realtime. "Photographic evidence" was at one point in time a gold standard. The era of analogue recordings -- that is, analagous to the ground truth -- created a period of high-detail, high-fidelity records of facts, in the original sense of events. Rather than relying on testimony, witnesses, hearsay, or small fragments of physical evidence, there were records of still or moving images, audio, and more. But with that came increasing capabilities to edit those records, general perception of which generally strongly trailed capabilities. It was the creator of uber-rational detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, who was taken in by fabricated "fairie" photographs: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559519/cottingley-fairy-photos-fooled-arthur-conan-doyle-sold https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559519/cottingley-fairy-... What's changed though is the level of skill required to doctor content (none, with available software), the speed at which the alterations can be accomplished (realtime), and the detail and convincingness of the alterations (high). A hydrogen bomb does the same thing that Greek Fire does, at scale. The gas turbine does the same thing the ox does, at scale. Mustard gas does the same thing a bee does, at scale. Scale matters.