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Where the ultimate onus of responsibility falls doesn't matter much when you've got a bunch of Rohingya hanging from trees because some politician retweeted a f

Where the ultimate onus of responsibility falls doesn't matter much when you've got a bunch of Rohingya hanging from trees because some politician retweeted a fake video.

keiferski 6y ago
If you follow it through, that line of argument makes no sense. If the video weren't fake, would that somehow make the murder of Rohingya acceptable? Of course not. Ultimately you end up back at the beginning: holding people, and not pieces of information, accountable for their actions. That's an issue with civil society, not social media.
- scarmig 6y ago
  Deepfakes have the potential to exacerbate existing issues in civil society. If your husband has just been murdered because of a riot instigated by a deepfake, it's not a great comfort to know that it's not really the "fault" of the deepfake but instead the "fault" of a broken civil society. Plus, deepfakes have the potential to create much more noxious videos than real life. Real life videos depict real life people, flaws and complexities all included; deepfakes will be constructed to depict representations of the target that're most likely to generate inchoate rage of the mob. It's rare that the former happens to be exactly the latter.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Well the world does not operate based upon what is comforting. I thought that it was obvious even before COVID-19 but people keep on missing this. Why not blame the person who confirmed your husband's death at this point if accepting comfortable illusions of someone easy to punish is what we are doing? Without them you would still have some remote hope of survival! The first step of solving a problem is recognizing the actual problem - what we find comforting is only a distraction for rationalization purposes. Better to recognize that microscopic organisms caused the crop failure instead of burning an old woman as a witch.
    - scarmig 6y ago
      Burning a woman as a witch doesn't build any kind of incentive structure to prevent future crop failures. Punishing politicians who incite violence creates the obvious incentive structure for politicians not to incite violence, which results in less violence. This applies both the deepfakes and calls to violence in general. Politicians don't have a particular right to remain in office despite inciting violence, even if it gives them the sads if they face repercussions.
- alcover 6y ago
  If the video weren't fake, would that somehow make the murder of Rohingya acceptable? Your answer is astray. What is at stake is evident : one can now provoke riots and deaths from thin air (and bits).

Where the ultimate onus of responsibility falls doesn't matter much when you've got a bunch of Rohingya hanging from trees because some politician retweeted a fake video.

keiferski 6y ago

If you follow it through, that line of argument makes no sense. If the video weren't fake, would that somehow make the murder of Rohingya acceptable? Of course not. Ultimately you end up back at the beginning: holding people, and not pieces of information, accountable for their actions. That's an issue with civil society, not social media.

scarmig 6y ago
Deepfakes have the potential to exacerbate existing issues in civil society. If your husband has just been murdered because of a riot instigated by a deepfake, it's not a great comfort to know that it's not really the "fault" of the deepfake but instead the "fault" of a broken civil society. Plus, deepfakes have the potential to create much more noxious videos than real life. Real life videos depict real life people, flaws and complexities all included; deepfakes will be constructed to depict representations of the target that're most likely to generate inchoate rage of the mob. It's rare that the former happens to be exactly the latter.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Well the world does not operate based upon what is comforting. I thought that it was obvious even before COVID-19 but people keep on missing this. Why not blame the person who confirmed your husband's death at this point if accepting comfortable illusions of someone easy to punish is what we are doing? Without them you would still have some remote hope of survival! The first step of solving a problem is recognizing the actual problem - what we find comforting is only a distraction for rationalization purposes. Better to recognize that microscopic organisms caused the crop failure instead of burning an old woman as a witch.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    Burning a woman as a witch doesn't build any kind of incentive structure to prevent future crop failures. Punishing politicians who incite violence creates the obvious incentive structure for politicians not to incite violence, which results in less violence. This applies both the deepfakes and calls to violence in general. Politicians don't have a particular right to remain in office despite inciting violence, even if it gives them the sads if they face repercussions.
alcover 6y ago
If the video weren't fake, would that somehow make the murder of Rohingya acceptable? Your answer is astray. What is at stake is evident : one can now provoke riots and deaths from thin air (and bits).