4 ms·

If you'd asked me a few years ago, I'd have said deepfakes aren't a problem - that lack of media literacy is the problem. We've had photoshop and staged photos

If you'd asked me a few years ago, I'd have said deepfakes aren't a problem - that lack of media literacy is the problem. We've had photoshop and staged photos and impersonators and satirical news for years, after all. And although a tiny fraction of the population falls for hoaxes like bigfoot and astrology and homeopathy, 99% of people manage to sift through this stuff. What I learned from the pandemic, though, is that people are much worse at telling fact from fiction than I expected. It's given me a greater understanding of the people who are very worried about deepfakes - if you think it's more like 10%-30% of the population that are very easily fooled, new technology for fakery is an ominous thing to see.

wonderbore 4y ago
Those are rookie numbers. I think the % of people who can be easily fooled is almost 100%. There are fewer and fewer people who live their lives doubting what they see unless they’re already attached to the opposite of that idea. Most people are not trained to detect deep fakes and certainly most of us here still would fall for a deepfake unless we’re specifically looking for it.
- skybrian 4y ago
  The key here is to pay less attention to the “evidence” and instead ask where it come from. If there isn’t a clear story by trustworthy people about how it came to be, you will need to at least suspect it’s fake. Unfortunately that means that random Internet commenters aren’t going to be trusted.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Holywood level of production has been able to do deep fakes for like a 100 years. Fake videos is nothing new. The main difference is that there might be cheap tailored fakes for noname people like me for small scams.
  - wonderbore 4y ago
    You’re probably replying to the wrong person. I’m just saying that everyone can fall for fake stuff.
munificent 4y ago
It's not just the people who are easily fooled, even the people who aren't fooled end up harmed. First we learned not to trust images in the days of Photoshop: https://www.npr.org/2008/07/11/92454193/on-the-smoky-trail-of-a-faked-missile-photo https://www.npr.org/2008/07/11/92454193/on-the-smoky-trail-o... https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/937832943518715906 https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/93783294351871590... Now with deep fakes, we learn not to trust video: https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/ukraine-warns-russia-may-deploy-deepfake-videos/507-4f18ea66-d5c7-4dac-9d41-2aea6495efdf https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/... But the end result is also that we no longer trust true information either. We have become cynical, detached, disorganized. But each of us ends up somewhat arbitrarily deciding what to believe out of the sea of indistinguishable bits forehosed at us by the Internet, we no longer have any shared experience or consensus to build a functioning society on. Propaganda does not require you to believe it. It's equally effective if you end up believing nothing.
- vivekd 4y ago
  Distrust of any information from an institutional source is a good rule to live by imo and would make the world a better place
  - munificent 4y ago
    Distrust of any information from an institutional source would put all of us back to being hunter gatherers and virtually all of us would immediately die from starvation or poisoning from eating the wrong plants.

wonderbore 4y ago

Those are rookie numbers. I think the % of people who can be easily fooled is almost 100%. There are fewer and fewer people who live their lives doubting what they see unless they’re already attached to the opposite of that idea. Most people are not trained to detect deep fakes and certainly most of us here still would fall for a deepfake unless we’re specifically looking for it.

skybrian 4y ago
The key here is to pay less attention to the “evidence” and instead ask where it come from. If there isn’t a clear story by trustworthy people about how it came to be, you will need to at least suspect it’s fake. Unfortunately that means that random Internet commenters aren’t going to be trusted.
rightbyte 4y ago
Holywood level of production has been able to do deep fakes for like a 100 years. Fake videos is nothing new. The main difference is that there might be cheap tailored fakes for noname people like me for small scams.
- wonderbore 4y ago
  You’re probably replying to the wrong person. I’m just saying that everyone can fall for fake stuff.

munificent 4y ago

It's not just the people who are easily fooled, even the people who aren't fooled end up harmed. First we learned not to trust images in the days of Photoshop: https://www.npr.org/2008/07/11/92454193/on-the-smoky-trail-of-a-faked-missile-photo https://www.npr.org/2008/07/11/92454193/on-the-smoky-trail-o... https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/937832943518715906 https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/93783294351871590... Now with deep fakes, we learn not to trust video: https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/ukraine-warns-russia-may-deploy-deepfake-videos/507-4f18ea66-d5c7-4dac-9d41-2aea6495efdf https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/... But the end result is also that we no longer trust true information either. We have become cynical, detached, disorganized. But each of us ends up somewhat arbitrarily deciding what to believe out of the sea of indistinguishable bits forehosed at us by the Internet, we no longer have any shared experience or consensus to build a functioning society on. Propaganda does not require you to believe it. It's equally effective if you end up believing nothing.

vivekd 4y ago
Distrust of any information from an institutional source is a good rule to live by imo and would make the world a better place
- munificent 4y ago
  Distrust of any information from an institutional source would put all of us back to being hunter gatherers and virtually all of us would immediately die from starvation or poisoning from eating the wrong plants.