[ducttape12]

You don't need advanced AI to create hyper realistic deep fake news. You just need to take a picture of X candidate, stick a made up quote beneath them, and put it on Facebook. There's enough people on social media who will share that without verifying it.

[vectorEQ]

agree. it's more a problem of lack of critical thinking&reading (because this is generally not taught during education) than anything else.

The problem with these kinds of censorship actions is that there is literally no end to it, and it will never solve the real root cause of the problem. It will just suck up resources and people/institutions will keep complaining that they got into trouble because someone took a tweet as a truth...

[hombre_fatal]

You can see this on Reddit. Notice how many submissions are just an image + caption (no source) with thousands of people reacting to it at face value.

I always chuckled at the idea that deepfakes are going to be the problem which a simple jpg already works today and is more effective than video because people will actually click it.

[45ure]

The fake-ness is even more effective, if the said candidate is the originator and controls the narrative.

[pferde]

If a person makes up a quote and distributes it with their own picture, is it really a made-up quote, is it "fake"? :)

[bilekas]

"So proud to be the Man of the year 2020" - Me

Its fake, just because I said it, doesn't make the content true.

[dTal]

This seems to be a language drift worth nipping in the bud. It's not "fake". It's a lie. When something purports to be something it's not, "fake" is an adjective describing that thing. "Lie" is the adjective that describes the claim.

If you tweet that you are Man of the Year 2020, you are fake, a phony. The tweet, on the other hand, is simply a lie.

[bilekas]

But the content is the article in this case. The content is fake.. No ? Maybe I have messed up the semantics.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but is it not valid in this context to correlate "lie" with "fake" ?

[dTal]

There is overlap, but the distinction is that "fake" things contain implicit lies about their nature.

Your example, a correctly attributed but false announcement about yourself, is not itself "fake" in any way - it's just a lie. There's no question over what it is - an assertion made by you.

But the original example:

"You just need to take a picture of X candidate, stick a made up quote beneath them, and put it on Facebook...

...creeps into "fake" territory because the image is an object with an implicit lie about its origins and motivation. The implicit lie - "I was created in order to raise awareness of a disturbing truth about candidate X" - is distinct from the explicit lie (candidate X said <thing>). Hence the superficially superfluous act of putting the text on a picture, instead of just tweeting "candidate X said <thing>".

The distinction is even more stark with the followup addition: "the fake-ness is even more effective, if the said candidate is the originator and controls the narrative." Here the explicit lie remains identical, but the implicit lie deepens considerably ("look at the fibs the crazy opposition is spreading around").

[baddox]

Huh? Then how is anything “fake”? That counterfeit Rolex is a real physical object.

[dTal]

It purports to be something it's not. It says "Rolex" on it.

[shrikant]

A few years back (I think around early 2013?), 4chan ran a targeted campaign to superimpose quotes by Hitler onto random celebrity images pandering to specific communities and get them highly upvoted on related subreddits.

They achieved a reasonable degree of success, so I suppose lulz were gained.

[Bartweiss]

Which also begs another question about the lines around 'fake'. If you put a quote next to a picture of someone who didn't say it, is that deceptive? "Well sure, the entire point of 4chan's stunt was to deceive people".

Alright, fine. What if the attribution is just plain mistaken in a misleading way? What if you put an inspirational quote next to someone it applies to, instead of the speaker? If the speaker couldn't possibly have said it, or the quote is famously from someone else, so the goal is comedy? Or the countless pictures misattributing that "...fire inside me..." quote which escaped from Fallout: New Vegas? (Is the deceptiveness different when it's shared as a mistake vs meme vs prank? Can your algorithm tell?)

Twitter's put at least some thought into that, thankfully. They talk about "significantly" altered content and whether it's "shared in a deceptive manner". But good lord is that a fuzzy thing to decide or automate.

[DarthGhandi]

Many famous quotes are misattributed, taken out of context or simply a person repeating a common trope of the time that has existed for generations before them.

Basically what most consider the famous words ever said by X person would fall under these rules.

[brlewis]

> There's enough people on social media who will share that without verifying it

This is so true! I was on twitter recently and one of the recommended tweets was a factual statement without any source. I was shocked that only maybe 1 or 2 out of hundreds of replies said anything about not being able to confirm the statement. The vast majority of replies were about what the statement did or didn't prove.

If you know anybody who's deeply into facts, evidence, and rational discourse, please point them toward my latest project, https://en.howtruthful.com/ and have them watch the introduction video linked at the bottom of the page. After looking at twitter I'm thinking it will be hard for me to find people like that.

[eanzenberg]

Yeah, deepfakes are a red herring. Manipulating photos is easier and cheaper with photoshop, but most photos dont even need to be manipulated to become a meme. Just capture and caption the photo.