Live data from Hacker News

Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

reuters.com

31–40 of 151 posts

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#31
Truth is too important to let the public decide what is true. I think that twitter doesn't have enough resources to bear this burden alone. So it is better if the state give a helping hand. A dedicated ministry of truth should be there when Twitter cannot hold the line against the ever more devious deceptions. Also since a lot of the speech online is hate speech we should probably also make a state organization that helps people to love each other. A ministry of love.

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#33
post #19
post #13

1. how is this not a slippery slope? 2. have we completely given up on critical thinking and education? 3. free speech vs not so free speech. i guess we're choosing "not so free"?

> 3. free speech vs not so free speech. i guess we're choosing "not so free"? Well, to be fair, it's all free speech. The guy who uploaded the deep fake exercised his right to free expression to do so, and the private company that labeled it a deep fake also exercised their right to free expression. Technically speaking, this is an example of the radically open and unregulated nature of free speech in the private sec…

The private company argument holds no water when they selectively apply their standards to promote their ideologies. At that point they're not an unbiased content platform but a biased publisher and need to be regulated as such. So the government needs to force these companies to decide are they 8kun or CNN?

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#34
post #6

Would not surprise me when, eventually, browsers are going to mark content as fake. If there's DBs of ad networks, there might also be DBs of deepfakes.

If anything looking for "unreal" patterns to the pixels would probably work better than a database and even that has limits. I know before the moral panic of deep fakes started there were subreddits with them on movie scenes and they had obvious distortions in flesh tones.

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#35
There are obvious cases of deceptive media, where things are simply made up, but the most invidious ones are just "differential spin" and very hard to pin down.

The recent Harry/Megan fiasco has provided a great set of examples on how the same action can be reported as a positive or negative depending on the paper's preferred spin: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markl...

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#36
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep fakes are a thing. Fake news are a thing. Not sure what's achieved by pointing out some fantasized "hysteria" of the media about it, especially when that bundles up everyone in the same basket, although some of these are actually relying on these methods to push their views. Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. It's not a free pass of course, it does see…

> Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. it's pretty incredible how we went from "give people the benefit of the doubt" to "people are manipulated".

I admit I could have phrased it better. What I implied is that the end result has been that people got manipulated by such techniques (which I don't blame them for, as these methods have been engineered to be extremely persuasive and credible-looking).

I did not imply that everyone was de-facto manipulated by those. Only that it can already happen.

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#37
post #35

There are obvious cases of deceptive media, where things are simply made up, but the most invidious ones are just "differential spin" and very hard to pin down. The recent Harry/Megan fiasco has provided a great set of examples on how the same action can be reported as a positive or negative depending on the paper's preferred spin: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markl...

Goodness! The avocado one was two stories fewer than eighteen months apart. It almost looks like they were intending to get caught.

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#38
post #35

There are obvious cases of deceptive media, where things are simply made up, but the most invidious ones are just "differential spin" and very hard to pin down. The recent Harry/Megan fiasco has provided a great set of examples on how the same action can be reported as a positive or negative depending on the paper's preferred spin: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markl...

This article and looking through the examples was one of the more interesting (and specific) descriptions of what's happening with them w.r.t. the British media.

I see why they're in Vancouver.

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#39
post #3

This seems like an insanely hard problem with many false positives/negatives. But of course the media hysteria against tech and fake news might eat it up and praise twitter. Nice PR move for non techies.

Deep fakes are a thing. Fake news are a thing. Not sure what's achieved by pointing out some fantasized "hysteria" of the media about it, especially when that bundles up everyone in the same basket, although some of these are actually relying on these methods to push their views. Attempting to label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise. It's not a free pass of course, it does see…

>label these so people aren't manipulated by it is something that deserves praise.

Except for all the purposefully manipulative things they allow on their platform and don't label or attempt to debunk.

You could say they're targeting the biggest problem first, but twitter isn't going to touch politician's tweets or the mainstream news en mass. If you're worried about the average twitter users' critical thinking skills, don't you think those important-sounding sources of information should be THE key targets of a anti-misleading or anti-manipulative campaigns?

Re: Twitter to label deepfakes and other deceptive media

#40

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.

> 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.

Post reply on HN