Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Unfortunately, while those are good ideas, they’re also cat and mouse games. It’s a bit like saying that client side anti-cheat software makes it harder to cheat in videogames. It does, but you’re looking for an unbeatable test, which doesn’t exist.

Nothing exemplified this problem more than the recent Twitter takeover. On tiktok, fake news was running rampant, and I saw it happen in real time. At one point someone said that a Twitter employee banned Elon on his way out, while showing a screenshot of the “eIon musk” fake account: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRx6G9mG/

There were also actual deepfakes of Elon’s voice that fooled me. I wish I saved it, since it’s highly relevant to this thread. But it only became clear it was a fake when it started saying ridiculous things. They even had a video of Elon talking, and they didn’t have to bother syncing his lips with the audio. Viral clips just need a veneer of authenticity to short circuit our monkey brains.

It wasn’t till I fell for that deepfake that I started realizing how much of a problem we might be facing. The next few presidential candidates might need to put out statements saying “X wasn’t true,” while the majority of people already believe X because they saw it happen live on tiktok.

Yeah, that's all true. This might lead to a revival of professional journalism and actual reporting, however - i.e. if a known reporter with a good track record writes, 'today this presidential candidate said X, and I heard it myself', then that might become a more reliable information source than any audio or video clip.

Ah, but what happens when a deepfake video of that professional journalist starts going round saying 'today this presidential candidate said X, and I heard it myself' that matches the previous deepfake?

I guess the counter (which I think you're pointing out) to that is to publish text to a known-trusted website rather than a video, but I wonder how many folks who get their "news" from TikTok would read it.

That’s when real verified accounts gain value but since now anybody can be verified, it is going to become a problem.

Uhm, I am not sure I get the relationship: if anyone can get verified, that's only a win.

By "verified", I assume Twitter has verified that their identity on Twitter matches their real life identity, and I don't see a problem with anyone having an ability to claim that. What's wrong with Jane Random being verified that she _is_ Jane Random?

If people are basing their trust not on someone's identity and history, but on their celebrity (blue mark so far), that's where the problem is.

The problem arises where an account gets verified as one thing and then changes to become another, this happens all the time with trolls who can make/buy/extort verified accounts.

They then spoof being the real person, and verification then means absolutely nothing cause they are functionally identical to a bypasser.

By having verification be really hard to get, trolls have a lot harder time getting accounts and the problem is smaller in scope.

Allowing identity changes without requiring reverification to keep the "verified" status sounds like a problem with an obvious solution: Require revalidation, or remove the mark.

Having initial validation accessible is not the issue here.

Exactly: I am totally perplexed at all the "see what verifying anyone will result in", instead of "your verification is broken" claims.

It's like allowing verified emails to be changed to another address without reverifying.

I mean, doh.

All the evidence points towwards the opposite: it's more profitable to simply provide entertaining lies. Does nobody remember the Alex Jones fiasco?

It's very much a stretch to compare Alex Jones to normal journalists, as much as most people seem to dislike journalists on this site.

Ah, then I was got by that fake twitter ban joke and didn't realize it till now. In my defense, it's a cute little meaningless stunt that I'd like to imagine myself doing in similar circumstances, though upon a bit of thought it seems unlikely since it could cost you a severance that might be pretty valuable - there a plenty of strings attached to those to keep the severees in line.

I've seen Youtube shorts featuring deepfakes of Elon promoting some cryptocurrency scam a few weeks ago.

There's been a phenomenon of verified accounts basically doing ""suicide by cop"": changing their display name and profile pic to match Elon Musk and then doing a bunch of joke tweets as him, which are great fun until they are caught and banned.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com