[kmeisthax]

Much of that misinformation is also made with far cruder tools than a well-trained GAN. People will be fooled by what they want to be fooled by. Remember how Republicans thought Nancy Pelosi showed up drunk to some political event because someone just slowed down the video? Or the whole wave of cleverly-edited "expose" videos on ACORN and Planned Parenthood done by the Project Veritas guys? The reality is, anyone who believed those videos already had a negative opinion of those organizations and people that jived with the lie they believed.

It doesn't matter if Nancy Pelosi wasn't actually drunk, she's a lunatic anyway!

It doesn't matter if Planned Parenthood wasn't actually selling body parts for profit, they're baby killers anyway!

It doesn't matter if ACORN wasn't actually telling pimps how to file taxes, they're Obama lovers anyway!

The problem is not that it's possible to convincingly falsify video evidence. That's the kind of problem you need to deal with as the judge of a courtroom, and courts already know how to deal with manipulated and falsified evidence in other contexts: strong monetary and criminal penalties. However, we're talking about the people at large, who are not unimpassioned triers of fact but people who have strong opinions that they are angry about. The court of public opinion is not an impartial or fair court, it is a cacophony of angry people shouting into the void until society gives them a perceived win.

Look at QAnon nonsense: 4chan convinced a good chunk of conservative America that Trump is fighting a global child cannibalism ring by just writing a bunch of incomprehensibly long-winded stories. People aren't stupid, they're angry.

[ignoramceisblis]

It's funny you mention the court system as knowing how to deal with manipulated and falsified evidence, but you imply the videos from Project Veritas, &c., were "cleverly-edited exposes," when it is the courts - and even Planned Parenthood, while in a legal case - that have found those videos to be factual, and to not have any particular omissions, and to be valid evidence:

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...

page 10:

> The district court stated, inaccurately, that the CMP video had not been authenticated and suggested that it may have been edited.

> In fact, the record reflects that OIG had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the plaintiffs did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage.

[Planned Parenthood are the plaintiffs in this specific case.]

A bit more information on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POdbu4bp5rQ

Including some of the videos referenced themselves: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCenterforMedicalProgress/videos

[bonchicbongenre]

Re your QAnon comment at the end -- I'm not sure if you saw, but it seems that (as of today) people are defending Q on HN as well :( Is disinformation against HN policies @dang, and if not, shouldn't it be?