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Comment by V__ | Hacker News Reader

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Photoshop has existed for decades. How is this different enough that we need to spend this much time worrying about it, when we didn't previously?

It took skill to create a convincing Photoshop fake. It could absolutely be done, but the people who'd taken the time to develop those skills usually didn't employ them to do things like this. They'd go on to master something else, or use their skill to make money.

Creating convincing fakes has now been placed within reach of random 14-year olds, so it's not surprising that we're seeing more of it.

It reminds me of the rise of script kiddies. When it stopped taking an expert, and could be done by middle schoolers, things finally started to change. You used to be able to bypass windows login by just hitting cancel.

We can see an analogy to the legality of deepfake content itself. For now anyways, it appears that deepfake content itself is not illegal. Only the impact of distribution of it can have legal remedies (and criminal implications).

Similarly in the arena of public attention, only the impact of an "event" has value. The combination of Swift as the target, and internet punching bag Twitter/X is a surefire way to ignite a firestorm.

That said, I think prior iterations of deepfaking and fake celeb porn lacked the degree of exposure to really force a proper discussion of what role platforms should actually play. Like, when it was just a bunch of people on 4chan photoshopping faces around, and you had to go to like 3rd page of search results to find it, the impact was clearly low, and no one cared to really think through what should happen.

Now we have a situation which is acting like a forcing function. What are the differences (if any) do deepfake porn have with photoshops (or just drawings...). What is the quality of them that substantiates a different response (if any?). If there aren't, then maybe we got our initial response to photoshopped porn wrong (and got away with it because the scale didn't matter), and we need to revisit.

I’m fairly confident people have always taken issue to their likeness being manipulated into compromising and inappropriate images.

Since before computers and photographs.

Because now everyone with half a brain can create hundreds of these images in minutes, whereas previously it took substantial time investment and skill.

> Is it really that hard to imagine what this might do to teenagers or otherwise vulnerable people?

Its been happening to teenagers and otherwise vulnerable people since deepfakes existed (well, before that, but specifically deepfake/AI porn as opposed to other fakery), and been directly involved in multiple suicides and a huge explosion of extortion scams.

There are regular news articles about it.

I am not sure why you had to take this to a straw man racial place? While this is obviously problematic its likely societal attitudes will change as this becomes commonplace. Also, attitudes towards sex are changing in America. In 20 years there will be sitting US senators who have real onlyfans accounts now. Fake videos will be something that society has to accept and will likely rapidly get over

Only, this has already been happening to those people. But when it happens to Taylor Swift, everybody from Elon to Satya flinches. And I don't expect this to change. She's apparently the queen of the US now, and it sickens me. I mean, I'd good on them for taking action... but I have zero faith that anything remotely like this would occur if my niece got a similar treatment.

Congress already started to act before the Taylor Swift stuff, based on a high school kid in NJ making fakes of a classmate.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/sharing-deepfake...

> She's apparently the queen of the US now, and it sickens me.

Why ?

> I mean, I'd good on them for taking action... but I have zero faith that anything remotely like this would occur if my niece got a similar treatment.

Wouldn’t you want the same response for anyone victimized online like this ?

I don’t get your reaction

>> I have zero faith that anything remotely like this would occur if my niece got a similar treatment.

Note that I didn't say that I wouldn't want something done for my niece. What I'm saying is that Taylor Swift is being treated like royalty; to the point that she's actually supplanted the british royalty in the headlines*. I see this datum not in a pattern of protecting vulnerable people on the internet, but in a pattern of Taylor Swift blablabla.

* not to say that I want those stories back... I don't even mind some celebrity drama in the headlines, but it's so monotonous when the media is so focused on a single person

Funny, she rarely makes it into my filter bubble. I know her concerts are expensive, and she got out of a bad record deal by re-recording some albums, but that’s about it. I think there was drama about a guy she was dating who was maybe racist or something. Anyway, I’m not trying to imply you’re seeking it out, intentionally or otherwise, but it’s interesting how different our experiences can be online. Bizarrely, I see way more posts about Meghan Markle, and I’m not from the UK, so I’ve got no idea why.

Ironically the “it sickens me” response is probably exacerbating the problem for this user

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