
Don’t Worry About Deepfakes. Worry About Why People Fall for Them - anarbadalov
https://undark.org/2018/12/13/how-worried-should-we-be-about-deepfakes/
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scandox
I think this misses the point. Deep fakes will simply make all video and audio
evidence subject to significant doubt. We simply lose a whole body of media as
evidence that most people will accept - the provenance will become all
important.

Like Mattress reviews - all video and audio will become an evidential dead
zone.

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tCfD
Sign all content and post pubkey in as many public records as possible - Would
that help?

~~~
idle_zealot
Only if you trust the owner of the signing key.

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creaghpatr
I'm most worried when we can't evaluate the footage in question. Currently,
the media is advocating regime change in Saudia Arabia on the basis on a video
that has allegedly been reviewed by the CIA (and journalists?) but the
American people are not allowed to see this film.

Meanwhile, we are being blasted with propaganda by the same folks (Vox,
Buzzfeed, et al) that says "Don't believe something is true just because you
see it on video". Does anyone else see the contradiction?

Regime change is a serious and violent consequence for a video provided by an
ally with a strong motive to have MBS removed, and no one is questioning
whether this could be the "killer app" use case of this technology? I think it
could be, but there is no way of knowing unless we see the footage. The
alternative is to trust the CIA.

~~~
codezero
The Saudis themselves aren’t claiming they didn’t kill Khashoggi, only that
MBS was unaware of it. This boils down to semantics, doesn’t it? I’d be a lot
more concerned if they took a position that this was a total farce. They
haven’t. Why do you think some kind of fake video or audio was needed then to
convince world leaders that this has crossed a line?

Also, how are the collective of regular people at all qualified to verify such
a video? There are people whose job it is to do this kind of thing and if we
think that is a broken system, that’s another issue altogether.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This boils down to semantics, doesn’t it?

No, the CIA position that MBS knew about and ordered the murder and that it
was not a rogue operation does not differ only by “semantics” (except in the
sense that every difference in meaning, even the mostvsubstantive, is
“semantic”) from the “rogue operation” cover story that the KSA retreated to
after their “he visited and left the consulate with no problem, if something
happened it had nothing to do with us” story failed and then the “okay, he was
killed in our embassy, but it was not murder, just a fight that he started”
story also failed.

> I’d be a lot more concerned if they took a position that this was a total
> farce.

They did take that position until they realized that it wasn't working.

~~~
codezero
So are you saying they changed their story to fit a false narrative? If so why
would they do that?

Also, if you are saying it was a rogue operation, executed by Saudis, wouldn’t
the Saudis still hold some responsibility?

If say, US special forces or the CIA killed a journalist critical of the US
against the intent of the commander in chief, someone still is going to have
hell to pay.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So are you saying they changed their story to fit a false narrative?

They changed their story from one false narrative (that exculpated them from
any connection) through a series of others (which admitted slightly more
connection in each, but in all cases carefully denied a direct role for the
crown prince.)

> If so why would they do that?

The initial lie was to deflect any blame. The subsequent revisions were due to
the fact that the initial lie was transparently false, so everyone assumed the
worse, so they continued to search for a lie which would both be accepted and
at least mitigate the blame the regime was getting.

> Also, if you are saying it was a rogue operation

I'm not saying that, the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is. That's
the story they've retreated to, all previous exculpatory stories having
failed.

> If say, US special forces or the CIA killed a journalist critical of the US
> against the intent of the commander in chief, someone still is going to have
> hell to pay.

Since MBS is in the middle of massive purges to consolidate his absolute
control under the cover of an anticorruption campaign, having the excuse of a
rogue operation to _also_ use in those purges isn't exactly inconvenient. But,
yes, the “rogue operation” story does naturally bring some blame onto the
government of the Kingdom, which is why it was the third story, and not the
first.

~~~
codezero
I am not assuming you have an opinion or knowledge on this but you seem more
informed than I am. If the Saudis are retreating to this story, what is the
theory on what may have really happened? This back and forth, I thought,
stemmed from the idea that the recording is or could have been faked (unclear
by who, Turkey?), it sounds like, from what you said above, the tape doesn’t
matter except that it caused Saudi Arabia to change its story. If it did, it
sounds like it was a good thing since it made them retreat from as you said, a
transparently false lie.

At this point I’m not sure what my point is any more. Sorry :)

~~~
dragonwriter
> the Saudis are retreating to this story, what is the theory on what may have
> really happened?

The dominant one (and what the CIA has reportedly concluded) is that the Crown
Prince (the effective ruler of the Kingdom) ordered the murder; the precise
motivation isn't (AFAIK) clear; Kashoggi was a critic of the regime with a
significant media impact, but what in particular led to the killing is murky,
but MBS isn't running a warm fuzzy regime that is generally respectful of
human rights and individual liberty, so while them killing a dissident Saudi
journalist abroad is unusual, it's not much outside of their normal patterns;
murdering dissidents (or executing them without an opportunity for presenting
a defense) isn't new, nor is surveillance and harassment of Saudi dissidents
abroad.

> This back and forth, I thought, stemmed from the idea that the recording is
> or could have been faked (unclear by who, Turkey?)

Yes, and that was the initial Saudi claim when Turkey claimed to have tape.
Apparently, some of Saudi Arabia’s defenders haven't caught up with the new
regime story, which no longer denies anything that is believed based on the
tape alone, but only the attribution of the acts captured in the tape to the
command of the leadership rather than rogue elements, which (AFAIK) is not at
all rooted in the tape content itself.

~~~
codezero
Thanks for all this.

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melling
The Moon landing was fake and climate change is a hoax.

You don’t need deepfakes to trick people. Some people are just wired to
believe in conspiracy theories.

~~~
krapp
That's true. People see stock footage from After Effects in a Youtube video or
a lens flare or a bad Maya model and believe it's credible evidence of ghosts
or UFOs or politicians secretly revealing themselves to be reptilians. Not a
lot of people actually need video to be convincing to be convinced by it -
bias is self sustaining.

~~~
melling
15 years ago I worked with a computer programmer who believed the Moonlanding
was fake.

Join any discussion on climate change in the Wall Street Journal and you’ll
see a large number of people who believe it’s also fake.

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nestorD
I have a hard time understanding how deepfake change the game : we could
already use doubles/actors and trick footage if we wanted to forge a video.

We might become more critical of videos but footage from an untrusted source
has never been reliable.

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neuro
Was Saddam's WMD coverage from CNN a Deepfake? I'm curious as to how people
would classify this.

~~~
gandhium
So, about 5 thousand chemical ammunition that were found there are not WMD?

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neuro
These were supposedly accounted for before we went, they're not "The WMD" we
went looking for. These stories are written in a manner to confuse and
mislead. I'm still confused, anyhow, the latest is below

[https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-
s-m...](https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-s-media-
still-cant-get-iraqi-wmd-story-right/)

~~~
gandhium
No, they weren't accounted since US Army found them in all the strange places.

