Elon Musk posts deepfake of Kamala Harris that violates X policy | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk posts deepfake of Kamala Harris that violates X policy

theverge.com

27 pointsisaacfrond33 comments

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Social media is not journalism.

When Twitter enforced their policies on Trump and other right wing posters Republicans complained about “mainstream” media manipulating elections by suppressing their messaging. Those people ought to be consistent and decry Musks’ shenanigans.

What is interesting to me is that the a great many established accounts on Twitter would love to leave the platform due to it being owned by Musk. They don’t/can’t/haven’t left Twitter due to network effects. How long these users remain on Twitter is a measure of the power of Twitter’s entrenched position. The only real policy on Twitter is whatever Musk wants at a given time. No one should expect consistency in policy enforcement on Twitter.

Every accusation made by the right is a confession.

The ones complaining about media manipulation are the ones manipulating the media.

The ones complaining about coups and violence are the ones attempting coups and committing violence.

The ones complaining about rigged elections are the ones rigging the elections.

The ones complaining about pedophiles and groomers are the ones committing those acts.

Every time. Every. Single. Time.

> Those people ought to be consistent

They are extremely consistent in being extremely dishonest.

I call bullshit. Anybody can leave Twitter and Facebook at any time. Some don’t only because they don’t know how to operate otherwise. That ignorance is not evidence of platform dominance.

The evidence is that there are lots of people who despise Musk and what he has done to Twitter who still use it. That's what speaks to it's dominance and speaks to the network effects it has.

People said the same stupid things several years ago about Facebook. That is still not evidence of either dominance or vendor lock-in. Its just evidence of either addiction or ignorance of alternatives.

To be clear dominance is where one player owns market majority. That is not Twitter. There is lots of evidence on this. Twitter might dominate Truth Social but it still lags far behind Facebook, TikTok, and probably Instagram.

Vendor lock-in is where the cost to switch to an alternative is supremely expensive, such as rebuilding infrastructure from the ground up. That is radically different than the stupidity of not knowing what your options are.

Too many smart, savvy people who despise Musk stay on the platform for it to be believable that stupidity is the reason.

Non sequitur. Your reasoning is that something must be valid because otherwise stupid things cannot possibly be stupid if reasoned by supposedly smart people. That doesn't make sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy

That is not my reasoning. You believe people who despise Musk stay on Twitter because they are too stupid to know of alternatives. You assert this to be true. I believe the reason is something different. We have two opposing beliefs. Neither of us has proof. I believe objective observers will conclude that my reasoning is more likely to be correct. Your belief that it is stupidity that causes people to not go to an alternative platform is not credible is my opinion.

And yet it has similar, if not greater reach and, therefore, power.

That's one of the reasons Musk acquired Twitter.

How well did that work?

If Musk really wanted more attention and adoration like a child he should have gone where the children are and instead purchased TikTok.

He opted instead to go where the young far-right voters are. That's where he expects to exert power by selecting and shifting messages.

He didn't buy 4chan. He bought Twitter. This isn't a matter of conspiracy theory nonsense. Its just him trying to make more money and misunderstanding the market.

Acquiring 4chan would be much too obvious. Also, it would not give neither plausible deniability nor a varnish of legitimacy to the manoeuvre.

It works very well. Go read on Twitter the accounts that are 'Tesla fanbois' - WholeMarsBlog, Teslanomics etc.

At this point it's a cult and the adulation of Musk and whatever he does or says is good. No doubt Musk loves it.

For example, everybody knows Musk is a pretty much non-existent father. He was called lying about stuff no sane person would even try to lie (like for example that his newborn died in his arms... which his wife denied). And yet, any time he shows his latest child with him, all those cult members are posting pictures, texts etc. praising how a wonderful father Elon is. And he shares and likes these messages !

Well... If you come to think of it, being an absent father is a good thing for all those kids. If I were one, I'd prefer he were on a different planet altogether.

I thought deep fakes of politicians and political ads were illegal?

The fact that this article doesn't even link to the post in question is already weird enough.

It's not weird. This is a libelous attack on someone's reputation, so spreading it more (even in a "look at this bullshit" context) could increase the harm. It's journalistic integrity, and it's what I would expect in any case discussing someone's fraudulently made document that attempts to accuse someone else of saying something they never did.

Once it's out there it will keep spreading and there will always be some who believe it and they may for a long time. Reputational damage is permanent. Libel and slander are serious crimes.

You can find it if you try I'm sure.

This is disgusting behavior. It should be prosecuted. And laws need to be updated to make intentionally and knowingly publicly publishing deep fakes without the written consent of the subject a serious felony (using the existing reasonable person standard to determine whether the average joe might be fooled)

So it's this "weird" supercut Musk retweeted by Dave Rubin today?

RT: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1818085240595693728 OP: https://x.com/RubinReport/status/1818083579445866884

But apart from one sentence uttered by Kamala Harris in the begining, I don't see her and I have no idea if this video is AI or not (it doesn't seem like it). I scrolled back to the 28th of July of all his public tweets and there's no video with Kamala Harris. What now? Did he delete it? Did X remove it because of some policy violation? Is it gone because someone called their lawyer?

Looks like we'll never know because the journalist didn't link to their source.

And of course I've gotten quite a lot of exposure to all the other stuff he keeps on ranting about. I didn't know Google News and search suggestions filtered out lots of stuff about Donald Trump (whom I am not supporting/voting for and I'm also not American) so... I don't know if it's that smart of a move to not just link to a probably rather terrible AI video instead.

I remember when it was kinda consensus that journalists are supposed to link to their sources. Maybe I'm just old-school and we're now letting anyone and their horse write articles about politics under the guise of journalism.

If there was some incredibly good AI disinformation campaign on the day of the election, I might be willing to bite the "could increase harm" aspect of this, but in this case, it's quite obvious that this video (that I still haven't seen) is going to sway an election.

Whatever. I'm not even expecting serious journalism from lifestyle gadget magazines like The Verge.

Ouioo up ok I Justin i

> X says that satire doesn’t violate the policy as long as it doesn’t “cause significant confusion about the authenticity of the media.”

If you can't figure out that that deepfake video is satire, something's wrong with you

What a high profile person post a video like that about Elon, on X, and see what happens.

Getting a bit tied of the “they’re just joking” argument.

If it’s supposed to be satire, it’s in very poor taste .

Also, if satire is posted to tens of millions, the odds of someone taking it seriously increase.

Let’s say he posted a video of Harris calling for violent terrorist attack and that 100 people believed her and 10 decide to act on it. Is it Musk’s responsibility that his actions caused 10 terrorist attacks? Could he have predicted it?

Are you trying to suggest it's my fault that video is stupid?

I'm saying that if you have a large audience, you need to play by the same standards we should impose for the press.

Has he done that?

The tools are out there, they should do it.

Rhetoric is often actually that extreme though in current politics. Why muddy the waters further by forcing voters to figure which of the satirical videos are actually real?

Exactly, he knows what he is doing.

Rhetoric is extreme indeed nowadays, but it's always one side saying extreme things about the other side. It's clearly fake just based on the 'extreme self deprecating' direction of it. I don't think it muddies the waters anymore than other political sketches / comics / comedy moments / SNL / whatever you want.

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