Deepfakes Manipulate the Objective Truth

I was going to write something completely different about habit forming, but you will have to wait for that because this is going to be a rant that is flowing off my tongue… And I am frustrated, because the internet has betrayed us all, and we didn’t even see it coming.

The First Lies Online

Growing up in the age of AOL, remember when you would meet random people for the first time online, people you didn’t know, and possibly never would. Remember A/S/L??? I was usually a 19 year old Male from California. And the likelihood that IRL me as a 11 year old boy was actually speaking with a 17 year old female from Indiana… well, I like to believe she was into me… well the 19 year old version of me that wasn’t really me. But it was me. But it wasn’t. It gets confusing.

Point is, this is how it started. Confusion, uncertainty, and inaccuracies online which ultimately led to fact checking sites like Snope, remember Snopes? THE authority on fact. Is that email about the girl with terminal cancer and my email if I forward it on will save her accurate?  They were the trustworthy, factual, authority. But then that wasn’t good enough. We began to have trust issues with businesses and review sites, came about, which of course we learned to manipulate, leading to the sludge of the internet world like ripoff report and consumer affairs.

Basically, what I am getting at is that the internet is an evolving cesspool of information/misinformation. Lots of opinions, personalities, and agendas. And it’s really not all bad, but it’s happening fast. Really fast.  And that’s the scary part.

Today is Even More F#*ed Up

Today, we are in an even more confusing time where having even one truth is not clear. We are in a time where the truth is subjective. Without taking a political side in US politics (FYI, you will never EVER hear me take one… those opinions are for me and me alone… unless you get me drunk… then we probably will start talking about things… but I digress), it still strikes me as odd that we live in a time where a president can literally say something and have a video of said comment, and then have him turn around and say that he did not say what he said which there is video proof of. And people believe him. I don’t care to point out any individual comments, it’s the idea that someone can be objectively wrong based on facts and information, yet, we seem to not be too sure about that.

And this.

This is what set me off on this post. Some of you may know my friend Ari Fuld was murdered by a terrorist back in September. There is a video of it happening… I have seen it, despite my better judgement. But it’s real and it happened. There is only one way you can look at it. Yet, the Jerusalem Post, wrote the following title:

Alleged? As in, it might not be true????

Idiots.

The holocaust was also a bunch of Jews that went on summer holiday too, right? Harsh. #sorryimnotsorry

And I can’t believe I am saying this but it gets even worse. Way worse.

Today it’s deception and manipulation.

We Live in the Manipulation Era

The first time I ever thought about this was when Jimmy Kimmel pranked the world and created a media frenzy during the Sochi Olympics and orchestrated a wolf strolling through the lodge.

Hilarious, yes, but a sign of the future of manipulating the world with misinformation. A sign of how a small amount of people can create so much commotion, how it travels around the world, and its not actually true.

Today we have rigged elections driven by fake news. We have news rooms that have not just different takes on a topic, but opposite fact reporting. We have headlines like the above that are agenda driven and twist or distort the facts. I mean, for real, how in the hell do you expect to trust anything with sites like ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com which simply generates endless amounts of fake faces. FAKE FACES! Images that look like real people but aren’t. Are we seriously arming the robots with this capability? I’ve seen Ex Machina. I’ve seen Westworld. I know how this goes!

We have technology that exists to change facial expressions.

We have technology that exists to put words into people’s mouths.

Have you heard of deepfake before? Basically, everything above combined.

This is real. This exists… well, not really exists… it’s fake.  But it’s real… Its confusing.

What’s Reality Anyway?

What is real anyway? Is there any objective truth?  Is something fact when majority wins? What if the majority is misinformed?

There is a Talmudic story of Rabbi Yosef who died, but then was revived. Basically, he had a near death experience. When he was revived, his father asked him what did you see? And he said:

It’s no wonder it’s so hard to trust anything these days. And no one is taking responsibility for this, which I pointed out in my last post when it comes to YouTube. Facebook and Google sometimes put up notices that there might be issues with the content, but that’s not definitive. Taking a stance takes guts, especially when people will fight everything. I think it comes from a place of fear for all of them. They are terrified of the backlash of offending people, so that must mean that everyone is right.

It’s easy for them to get out of this too because of section 230 of the 1996 communications decency act. It’s a statute that says an internet platform is not liable for things people post on the platform, assuming they are legal.  (Thanks Molly Wood for pointing this out).

Anger. Frustration. Disappointment.

I am all the above. I am angry that this is where we are. I am frustrated that this is what the world has come to, and frankly I am disappointed that we humans have allowed it to get this far without regulation and standardization (and get ready for it, the next post may or may not be about regulation)

That One Objective Truth Does Not Exist Anymore. It’s the reason why there can be conspiracy theorists, anti vaxxers, multiple truths, and on and on. It’s frustrating. We live in a weird time friends. We live in a time where objective truths are not objective. Where people may not be who they are.

And all I know is that we can’t both always be right. Someone is wrong. I long for the days again when there was some sense of objectivity in the world.

Blogging Challenge status: Glad I’ve been blogging. This was a good outlet. 5 out of 12. 7 to go.