[rightbyte]

Really? How about not using unofficial channels for statements?

I mean, what is new to this problem. Other than it is somewhat cheaper to pair the fake statement with the person responsible reading it out laud.

Department press release -> Reuters -> News paper -> reader

No signing required. The reader can verify the press release of he wants to.

[carstenhag]

It is different in my opinion.

* Text: You have little (definitive) clue who wrote what. You essentially have to ask the (apparent) writer.

* Photo: You used to have high confidence that a picture shows who appears to be shown. Not 100%, sure, but it's high.

* Video & Audio: You used to have very high confidence that the video including its audio are genuine. It was very difficult to replace video and/or audio.

Nowadays, none is trustworthy by default anymore. You can say: Well, just trust the company or Reuters. Sure, but I don't think anyone cares about this case. It's not controversial. But how will they be able to verify controversial sources?

If they get sent a video claiming to be about Ukrainins killing civilians, and outfits & speech matching that, how can Reuters be sure about anything now? Trust can't be given to the source, nor to the video, nor to the audio, nor to the metadata.

[lostlogin]

> Photo: You used to have high confidence that a picture shows who appears to be shown. Not 100%, sure, but it's high.

I don’t agree. Many important photos don’t show what we think they do.

The Soviet flag on The Reichstag. When it was taken and what it showed are different to the impression you get looking at the photo. It was taken after the event and the signs of looting were removed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_a_Flag_over_the_Reic...

The flag raising on Iwo Jima was the second flag raised that day. It’s not quite the same once you know that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima

The famous ‘Falling Soldier’ photo from the Spanish Civil War is now thought to have been faked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Soldier

There are bound to be loads more, and the faking goes way back. The US Civil War has examples where bodies were dragged around and made more dramatic. Added cannon balls in Crimean War photos etc.

[zie]

This has long been a solved problem out in the real world.

Think back to the Nixon watergate scandal. When the reporters were going to press about that, they made damn sure it was 100% real first. By interviewing varying sources, human trust, etc.

All that really changes is they can't take video and audio evidence as fact anymore. So they have to, in essence, audit the video/audio trail, so they will want to talk to the person that filmed it, make sure the story holds up, etc.

Some technology changes can help with authenticity here, but it's not really a technical problem, it's a human trust problem.

There will be learning curves and maybe one or two of the currently well known and trusted news sources totally burn their brand because they didn't do their homework. Nothing really new though.

[verve_rat]

But that is out of scope of what you are replying to.

If a CFO makes a statement and that is on the company's website we can have reasonable confidence that the CFO made that statement and we can act on it.

Reporting on a video of unknown (possibly unknowable) provenance is a different kettle of fish.

[carstenhag]

Ah I see, I forgot the topic of this specific comment thread. Political Leaders could also have similar problems though.

Example - Dictator A says terrible things on video/audio. Of course it's not going to be shown on their nations' broadcast website or in media.

How can the rest of the world make sure the video that was recorded is trustworthy?

[verve_rat]

The same way we did in the days of print media being the only media?

A network of trusted sources, reporters and newspapers that the public trusts. Eye witness accounts, a preponderance of evidence.

Basically it boils down to the reputation of the individuals involved in the chain of trust.

Personally I'm excited by the prospect that we might get mainstream investigative journalism back in some form.

[0x445442]

> You used to have very high confidence that the video including its audio are genuine.

The physical artifacts yes, but not the narrative they were portraying. The “news” media has been spinning fictional narratives with physically authentic video and audio for a long time.

[georgeplusplus]

>>>> Nowadays, none is trustworthy by default anymore.

Perhaps that is a good thing. Maybe this is a good excuse to stop and consider multiple news outlets, even if it conflicts with our own opinions, for our news sources.

[pixl97]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

The thing about FoF is it gets people to stop believing anything which is very effective for bad actors and far less useful for good actors.

[remus]

This assumes people are consuming news through official channels which I don't think is true in a lot of cases. For many people, news is whatever pops up in their facebook/instagram/twitter feed, and it's relatively easy to slip fake content in there.

[aqme28]

You rarely need a perfect fake because you rarely need to convince everyone, you can often achieve the same goal by just convincing a large group of people.

Also, official channels get hacked too.

[lazide]

It’s trying to solve the social issue of ‘omg react!’ videos and random reshare clips through technical means (proving the clip isn’t original).

Which it won’t. Eventually might be relevant when in a context where someone actually stops and spends time looking at evidence (civil and criminal court cases perhaps?) but those already use chain of custody for evidence because evidence has already been easy to fake for… well forever.

Still should be done IMO though, as it’s cheap and easy and will hopefully make it a little harder (or easier to detect) to do mass faking in the ‘middle’ - like fake IDs for online services, fake blackmail photos, etc.

[dangerface]

What happens when the news paper just makes stuff up because they need a more click baity article? People click links on emails without verifying the sender what makes you think readers will track back through the chain you describe to verify anything?

Don't roll your own authentication.

[rightbyte]

What happens is that the readers lose trust in the newspaper and reads another one.

I guess that is not a new problem either with lying newspapers.

[jasonjayr]

Whistleblowers also can't use official channels.

[Voultapher]

Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/2650/

[thfuran]

I think that's a really bad take. The difficulty of making many categories of lies is radically decreasing. That it has long been possible for a well-funded vfx team to do something doesn't mean nothing will change when it becomes possible for anyone with a cellphone and five minutes of free time to do the same thing.

[cj]

> anyone with a cellphone and five minutes of free time

One could argue that this will be a good thing because deep fakes will be so prevalent (e.g. kids making videos of their parents saying and doing funny things) that the default assumption is that everything is fake until proven not fake.

[macintux]

The default assumption will be, as it mostly is already, that anything you want to believe is true, and anything you don't, is fake.

Thanks to a businessman/politician who turned "news about me I don't like" into "fake news", we got a jump start on that.

[2devnull]

Lower trust societies are better if you enjoy living in a warzone and being oppressed by a tyrannical government.

[pixl97]

> default assumption is that everything is fake until proven not fake.

This is what it's like living under an authoritarian government. "Of course the government is lying", "Of course the politician is lying", "Of course my neighbor is lying", "Of course the company is providing me with a fraudulent product"

This eventually turns into a kind of learned helplessness and is how you create a crapsack nation/world. "Everything is bad, so there is no reason I should do anything good"

I can promise you that you won't enjoy this world we're creating if you don't live in an authoritarian shithole already.

[thfuran]

Why would that be a good thing?