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Comment by Guest9812398 | Hacker News Reader

I think people overestimate the concern of fake videos. Consider photos for comparison. There have been fake photos of well known people for decades online, many of which are indistinguishable from reality. It doesn't lead to much confusion or issues in our everyday life. We just assume every noteworthy image is fake unless it comes from, or is cleared by, a credible source. The same will apply to video.

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> We just assume every noteworthy image is fake unless

Who is we? How do you know this? Citation needed. I think it is a very small portion of the population who actively operates under this assumption for photos. I would guess 5-15% but I don't know. Surely it is not most people though, or everyone.

Just because you/your friends do something doesn't mean other people do, or even most people do. I'd guess that for a great number of things that it would often be the opposite for technical people; often the things we do are things most people don't do.

I think people underestimate the coming confusion from video.

> It doesn't lead to much confusion or issues in our everyday life.

I mean, I think it does. I think it leads to massive issues in society where people don't know what is real or not without even knowing it. Magazine photos of people are well-known to be touched-up at a minimum, but how many people in a population actively think about that when the look at the cover?

I would posit that our society has been heavily damaged by the proliferation of fake photos.

Okay. Name a specific negative incident stemming from fake photos, off the top of your heard. (No googling or otherwise searching for an example.)

That one tabloid that showed those fake, grossed out "images" of Hillary during the last election cycle. Not linking the image because your requested no links allowed. These were displayed by the millions at grocery store checkouts across America for months leading up to the election. They portrayed a sick, ill woman who looked like she was dying. Completely fake photo.

Next: Why did you ask for a specific 'incident' when I clearly described that the problem is a general, societal problem that arises in specific instances every single time someone looks at a photo that they think is real but isn't? I could also cite a specific instance from earlier today when I saw a stack of magazines at the store and felt like a slob in my normal clothes and non-digital face and existence. Happens billions of times a day.

Edit: Since I really prefer to provide citations, I have since Googled for my example to provide context for other readers. Rest assured I wrote out my initial comment first.

https://qz.com/1369399/david-peckers-national-enquirer-ami-t...

I didn't say no links, I said you had to remember the incident off the top of your head.

Also: 1) The Quartz link you provided does not say the photos are fake. 2) "[N]egative incident stemming from fake photos" requires more than "fake photo existed."

Alright, I did remember the incident off the top of my head, I abide by your weird rules.

1) The photos are fake, I did not say the Quartz was the source of the information that the photos are fake, I was showing the photos. Are you suggesting the photos are real? They are not real.

2) I was attempting to have this conversation without being political. Fine - I consider the election of Donald Trump to be a negative thing, and I consider the evil tactics of lying and cheating to get him to be more likely to be elected to also be negative consequences. (If you don't consider these to be negative consequences, then fine - but surely you understand that some people do, and that's not what we're here to discuss.)

And for the magazine photos - I felt sad. So do millions of other people every day. That is also a negative consequence. (Again, if you disagree that this is a negative consequence, then fine - but lots of us think it is a bad thing.)

The line between a completely made-up depiction and a real one isn't necessarily the important one. The photos of Hillary Clinton were real enough, but carefully selected and post-processed to make her look as unsympathetic as possible.

Does a photo of a candidate scowling or sneering constitute a genuine portrayal of their appearance and personality? If so, why not make that scowl or sneer just a bit more menacing or disgusting, if your publication is in the opponent's corner?

A better example might be this one: http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/darkened_mug_shot/

Imagine what it's going to be like when the tools are good enough to do more than just airbrush or darken a static image, but not yet good enough to create entire "fake news" segments from scratch. It's absurd to think that ML-based tools won't be used to turn a real audio or video recording into something different that you and I will incorrectly assume is still real.

That's when things are going to get scary. I'm sure this tech is coming soon to an election near you.

I have a few friends who shared a poorly Photoshopped picture of Hilary Clinton shaking hands with bin Laden. That helped reinforce some of their nutty beliefs during the last election cycle.

An example of how dangerous video can be is the faked Planned Parenthood video from a couple years back. That actually led a guy to shoot some people in a PP clinic.

How about the faked photo of John Kerry speaking with Jane Fonda?

You probably don't think it's likely because when done properly, subtly and constantly, you don't notice.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.moillusions.com/media-manipu...

> Name a specific negative incident stemming from fake photos

You're looking at the problem the wrong way if you think this is just about specific incidents.

Something can have a large negative effect without giving arise to a specific incident. There can be more systemic effects, like people seeing fake photos that feed into their pre-existing likes and dislikes, and (to them) validates and reinforces those views.

Childhood disordered eating, including diagnosable anorexia, is on the rise for young women, and some studies have linked this to photoshopped images of women setting impossible cultural ideals.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792687/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-photoshopping-is-a-ma_b_5...

Like fake photos, these will be most highly leveraged among the undereducated. Websites like Snopes will probably help serve as an outside point of reference in many cases; however some people are not really open to criticism of whatever is their current mental model and can just as easily see another point of reference as opposition propaganda as reliable analysis. Alex Jones is an example of one with this psychology--he has such a strong trust in his original sensory-experience-analysis-system that you're better off taking other approaches than making a frontal assault on the citadel of this subjective information-interpretation experience, which is so highly knotted up with his sense of self and personal creativity.

Fortunately this kind of lopsided/over-weighted psychological subsystem will never speak to everyone, and humans are as a group becoming more resilient in the face of such imbalance. The internet has in many ways been extremely helpful in serving as a sort of blowoff valve for psychological gifts that have spun out of balance.

>We just assume every noteworthy image is fake unless it comes from, or is cleared by, a credible source. The same will apply to video.

As the inauguration crowd size debate proved in January of 2018, there are problems now with even credible sources on trivial things.

That's the 1-2 punch that I think might be more problematic. OK maybe you're right and people assume it is fake unless it is from a trustworthy source, but the trustworthy sources have dramatically shifted in the last--oh I'd say 18 years.

Which credible sources disagreed about the crowd size?

The media vs the POTUS. The POTUS ought to be a credible source.

The default approach to a medium shifting from trust to distrust is a significant change.

Sure - so the effort switches to attacking the credibility of sources. That just pushes people further and further towards only believing the news sources they already believe, no matter how far away from a neutral and reasonable interpretation of the facts they have gone.

I’m going to have to ask for a citation on photoshopped imaged not being taken seriously. We routinely see people being duped by them on twitter, but it’s even more insidious in the form of Facebook advertisements that aren’t publically shared for people to debunk.

Are there any examples of fake photographs being used in this way?

Do fake videos add any more credibility to this kind of misinformation?

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