But that happened without deep fakes. Trump just repeats over and over that the media is lying and doesn’t bother with explanations. Sure, deepfakes could make this worse, but it’s pretty clearly not the root of the problem.
And that’s the point. Reality is up for grabs on a level never seen before. It’s not just the crackpots who will start doubting the evidence of their eyes and ears anymore.
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But we’re already there! It didn’t take deepfakes to get us there. The bugs in our heads that cause us to believe horseshit don’t require deepfakes, and that’s why bobtato and I aren’t worked up about it.
Again, the problem isn’t just that deepfakes allow stupid people to believe things that didn’t happen. It’s that the existence of deepfake technology means that fairly intelligent, well-informed people can reasonably begin to doubt all kinds of things that did happen.
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“Deepfake” technology is already being used by scammers over telephone/video calls to con people. It’s going to get weirder.
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And once you start doubting there’s no end to it… But also, I think it’s very important to remember that the real problem here is not the well-informed people, those who are aware that there’s a reason for doubt. It’s the people who are not well-informed for whatever reason. I think people who dismiss deepfakes as just a hysteria need to be aware that the vast majority of people are not particularly interested in politics or other current issues; and also that the use of tools like fake news, deepfakes, etc. is not necessarily to convince people of something, but also to just generally to spread doubt and destabilize/undermine people’s conviction. (Also: that the situation of public vs politics, people’s handling of politics, the degree of freedom of press, the degree of variation in news services that are present in the US are absolutely not universal.)
A lot of people who even care to get the news will just watch or read whatever news they have been watching for ages, regardless of any potential shifts in opinion or even radicalization. They’ll continue to visit the same websites for the same non-political content, and if they come across some political content they’ll skim it and go on their way, taking whatever impression they get from that content with them, without particularly questioning it, or being interested in investigating it. And this is doubly so if it’s something visual, hence all those images of “migrants” photographed to look like an invading army, darkening their skin tone, making them look more threatening, and so on.
Or what happened here during the municipal elections: a local “newspaper” = government propaganda machine published photos of the opposition’s candidates, except the photos have been photoshopped subtly - they were made cross-eyed, given harsher features, darker skin or larger nose (oh yes), moles, etc. Someone just skimming the paper won’t stop and go “huh, have these been photoshopped? I’ll need to look into this!” they’ll just walk away with the vague impression of “huh, what an unlikeable bunch!” Now imagine this except the person watches a gif or a pop-up video with Random Opposition Candidate saying they’ll cut jobs and wages and let all the migrants in and whatnot. Sure, the site will be forced retract it in a week in some footnote, but this won’t affect 90% of the people who have seen it and didn’t give a second thought to whether it’s real or not.
Or hell, just imagine haters of a public figure (Greta Thunberg, etc.) creating deepfakes of them saying bad shit, and the clickbait media eating it up, because they would. Sure, the truth will eventually come out, but that will never ever completely erase the damage that’s been done, especially to the person themselves. Sure, this can and has been done with fake tweets/etc. videos are a whole lot more convincing.
And for the second point, destabilization and spreading doubt is basically the main cornerstone of the Russian fake news method. The point is not to convince anyone of anything, it’s to create unease and distrust - to make people more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, to make them doubt anything and everything that comes from “non-approved” (leftist, liberal, etc.) sources. Add convincing deepfakes to the mix, and the effectiveness will skyrocket.
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It happened that quickly?
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