3 ms·

Actually, I'm a bit more optimistic about this. One thing that worries me is that everything is becoming immutable, saved forever, and digitally signed. Hard t

Actually, I'm a bit more optimistic about this. One thing that worries me is that everything is becoming immutable, saved forever, and digitally signed. Hard to claim you didn't post something if your account is super secure. You can't go anywhere without cameras taking your picture. And if someone steals your bitcoin or your smart contract has a mistake, your money is gone. You can't argue with an algorithm. And the internet never forgets. (Well, unless it is inconvenient for you, then Murphy's law applies ;-)) There are many such phenomena but I'd say they are all related: They mean you have less wiggle room for mistakes, or social deviance. If you are in a situation where you have to break a law, or if you are just having an affair, chances are someone or something is going to see you. There is no anonymity in the crowd anymore, on the contrary. But this deep fake technology, if it really evolves to be undetectable, can be liberating, if it erodes the trust in pictures. At least the social control mechanisms based on cameras are going to stop working. We were living in a very specific phase of human history, where we learned how to produce pictures from real scenes, but haven't learned yet to easily fake them. I just think this is going to come to an end, and we'll have to adapt. (I hope we'll adapt socially, and not just by cramming DRM into our technology like we tend do to; but that is a different topic.)

notsuoh 6y ago
Indeed. We went from a world where nothing was recorded outside of very fallible memory, to one where everything is recorded, to perhaps one where even though everything is recorded, there’s enough deniability via deep fakes that it doesn’t matter as much that things were recorded.
jackfoxy 6y ago
Everything is not immutable or even becoming immutable. Content is merely endpoints. Unless extraordinary care is taken, like publishing hashes, the response from the endpoints can change over time. Lots of content has changed, for instance on Wikipedia. In theory you could wade through the wiki history. I don't know if that is protected by hashing or not. Lots of content gets shoved down the memory hole.

notsuoh 6y ago

Indeed. We went from a world where nothing was recorded outside of very fallible memory, to one where everything is recorded, to perhaps one where even though everything is recorded, there’s enough deniability via deep fakes that it doesn’t matter as much that things were recorded.

jackfoxy 6y ago

Everything is not immutable or even becoming immutable. Content is merely endpoints. Unless extraordinary care is taken, like publishing hashes, the response from the endpoints can change over time. Lots of content has changed, for instance on Wikipedia. In theory you could wade through the wiki history. I don't know if that is protected by hashing or not. Lots of content gets shoved down the memory hole.