3 ms·

A viral left-wing Twitter account may have been fake all along

13 points by perihelions 3y ago

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
Is this comparison video some kind of a joke? "Multiple photos of same woman reveal remarkably same face on all photos"? The account may not be of her at all, the photos may also be fake. But this comparison is no criteria for this. Smile the same on a few photos and align by feature in Photoshop and they'll all look like that.
- christophilus 3y ago
  It’s unlikely the photos would align exactly: the eyes would shift, the creases would twitch, etc. I’d say there’s a high probability that those are all the same photo.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    I had to double-check if it's April 1st. The eyes look into slightly different directions and have different glares, the lighting of the skin is completely different, the angle is different. And the third photo is even more different than the first two and doesn't match at all. It's frankly amusing how when people decide to look for something, they eventually find it, whether it's there or not. Obviously if you align these photos and then SLOWLY FADE them one into the other, they'll look similar. You see the same effect when training deepfake models from real movie footage of actors. It sorts them by angle and expression, and aligns them by facial features, and you see it's essentially the same exact face in countless photos, because... that's how taking photos of faces works. I made a version which switches between the two photos with alignment, but without fading and it's blindingly obvious those are two distinct photos of the same woman, and nothing really matches pixel by pixel at all: https://i.imgur.com/Iv2u0K8.gif https://i.imgur.com/Iv2u0K8.gif
cainxinth 3y ago
https://archive.is/6gW3F https://archive.is/6gW3F
ineedasername 3y ago
We’ve gone over a critical tipping point and reached the end of trust. As with many things, it happened very slowly over time (decades) and then, relative to the time scale, all at once.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I find everyone remains extremely gullible. But now on top of this, they're also suspicious of things that are not suspicious (such as the nature of these photos), as I've outlined in another thread here. This is an effect of polarization, and basic human needs. Even if a lot of what is out there is untrustworthy, we still feel the need to trust something, and with polarization we simply select to trust what aligns with our existing biases, distrust what doesn't align with our existing biases. I'd say the bottom line is we remain easy to manipulate, and society continues to be very unprepared to deal with the current information climate, mostly because those running society and able to change this climate are also participating in the manipulation and they've found a personal local maximum in this setup after a lot of work and effort, which they wouldn't want disturbed.

13 points by perihelions 3y ago

Is this comparison video some kind of a joke? "Multiple photos of same woman reveal remarkably same face on all photos"? The account may not be of her at all, the photos may also be fake. But this comparison is no criteria for this. Smile the same on a few photos and align by feature in Photoshop and they'll all look like that.

christophilus 3y ago
It’s unlikely the photos would align exactly: the eyes would shift, the creases would twitch, etc. I’d say there’s a high probability that those are all the same photo.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I had to double-check if it's April 1st. The eyes look into slightly different directions and have different glares, the lighting of the skin is completely different, the angle is different. And the third photo is even more different than the first two and doesn't match at all. It's frankly amusing how when people decide to look for something, they eventually find it, whether it's there or not. Obviously if you align these photos and then SLOWLY FADE them one into the other, they'll look similar. You see the same effect when training deepfake models from real movie footage of actors. It sorts them by angle and expression, and aligns them by facial features, and you see it's essentially the same exact face in countless photos, because... that's how taking photos of faces works. I made a version which switches between the two photos with alignment, but without fading and it's blindingly obvious those are two distinct photos of the same woman, and nothing really matches pixel by pixel at all: https://i.imgur.com/Iv2u0K8.gif https://i.imgur.com/Iv2u0K8.gif

cainxinth 3y ago

https://archive.is/6gW3F https://archive.is/6gW3F

ineedasername 3y ago

We’ve gone over a critical tipping point and reached the end of trust. As with many things, it happened very slowly over time (decades) and then, relative to the time scale, all at once.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I find everyone remains extremely gullible. But now on top of this, they're also suspicious of things that are not suspicious (such as the nature of these photos), as I've outlined in another thread here. This is an effect of polarization, and basic human needs. Even if a lot of what is out there is untrustworthy, we still feel the need to trust something, and with polarization we simply select to trust what aligns with our existing biases, distrust what doesn't align with our existing biases. I'd say the bottom line is we remain easy to manipulate, and society continues to be very unprepared to deal with the current information climate, mostly because those running society and able to change this climate are also participating in the manipulation and they've found a personal local maximum in this setup after a lot of work and effort, which they wouldn't want disturbed.