deep fake concerns - a question to you all

[stockrex]

If it is on the news, regardless of outlet, it is most likely a well positioned propaganda item.

Source could be anything, anyone with an agenda. For example: Big businesses pay so called journalists to write fabrications to sway the general public.

One could correlate just about anything with anything, but that does not mean one can conclude the dependency of one causing the other.

Fake stuff has always been there, fake ads, fake news, fake claims, what I worry about is the general mental health of the population, what does it take for one to believe that the boogie man will come tonight. Many of our fellow citizens do.

 

[Job]

You only control yourself. Throw away the tech gadgets. No more "deep fake" for you. I have thought about throwing it all away many times, but the tech is addicting. The whole thing is a big world wide addiction. Everybody is in a screen all the time.

 

[Sam_Julier]

I'm not inclined to worry about this as much as the OP or pin it on the "unbridled ambition blinding youth from seeing the consequences of their actions." That doesn't mean it's not a concern and deserves to be watched. I avoid digital media like the plague.

My antidote is to read as much as possible. For world news it's The WSJ, NY Times and The Economist. For State and local the CTMirror and the New Haven Independent.

I do not watch TV. Ever. I have no idea how to work the thing. I could care less.

Then I make up my mind.

Most of the kids I know are incredibly responsible and hard working. Just like their parents. And the ones with children are doing an excellent job of raising them.

Sam

 

[atikovi]

Scammers steal millions from people on Craigslist now who are stupid or greedy thinking they can get a 30,000 mile 2015 Honda delivered to their door with a 10 day money back guarantee for $2500. There will always be people who fall for fakes and those that create them. There are programs now that can detect Photoshopped pictures so next there will be programs that catch this stuff.

 

[Lapham3]

Journalism has suffered in a large way as editorial type reporting has migrated all over . The Northwestern University Journalism School pres was mentioning the other day that they still teach it the 'right way', but activist fellas pay scant attention these days.

 

[KrisZ]

I find it quite intriguing how the article linked makes it sound like these "young" people are doing it just to show they can. OP seems to believe this is the case. Now that is a deep fake right there. Trying to pin this on naive young people doing things without any thought for the consequences. Who is funding them? They look to be operating from some nice office and have plenty of staff. This is not some geeks doing it from their parents garage, It's fully funded and backed operation. By whom? Now that's a good question.

This technology is simply another stepping stone into manipulating public, which is already being done quite skillfully.

 

[Mad_Hatter]

Originally Posted by atikovi
Scammers steal millions from people on Craigslist now who are stupid or greedy thinking they can get a 30,000 mile 2015 Honda delivered to their door with a 10 day money back guarantee for $2500. There will always be people who fall for fakes and those that create them. There are programs now that can detect Photoshopped pictures so next there will be programs that catch this stuff.

Problem is those that are prone to being faked are the ones least apt to use such software/programs. The metadata is there for anyone to see, you just have to want to see it.. problem is a good chunk of the population doesn't have the desire (lazy) or wherewithal (too dumb/"low information") to fact check something....

I've traveled all around the world and sad to say, by in large Americans are some of the stupidest people on this planet.

 

[supton]

I'm not very tech savvy at all, but I recall reading about encryption once, and more recently been looking at multi-factor authentication. I wonder if some way could be fixed so that data could be streamed but encrypted. Like both sender and receiver have to have the proper key, or it just doesn't work. How to get to that point, and making it hack-proof, I have no idea. I guess that's essentially a paid-for service, not stuff out in the public. But there would be the point. You get what you paid for, and if you didn't pay, you probably didn't get anything of value. Newspapers and the nightly news didn't do their bit for free in the past, yet for some reason we seem to think they oughta be free today--yet utterly unbiased and unswayed by whatever forces allows them to be "free".

Used to be, you could look around and look for a majority opinion. Now that anyone can copy & paste it's too easy to lose any sort of majority vote (not that majority ever meant right, but you get the idea--loony ideas were usually overshadowed by more legitimate ideas).

Might wind up having to go back and having to pick news outlets and who you're going to trust. Maybe some day we'll have to bring back public flogging for people knowingly passing fake news.

 

[emg]

Originally Posted by supton
Might wind up having to go back and having to pick news outlets and who you're going to trust.


We already do that. It's just that the news outlet is less likely to be a newspaper or TV station than a web forum or some random guy's blog. Last I heard, CNN's average viewer age is around 70.

Other than our local paper, I only go to dinosaur media sites when following a link from a blog or a forum. I consider them about the least reliable source of news today.

Even ignoring the spin, there's literally no reason to go to a journalist for information when you can get to the original source. Few journalists know much about any subject they report on (trust me, I've worked with a bunch of them), and the rest have to dumb it down to the average person's understanding.

As for 'deep fakes', it's not a surprise that certain people in the public eye have been warning about it lately. We all know what kind of videos they want to be able to deny when they come out.

 

[PimTac]

Originally Posted by Lapham3
Journalism has suffered in a large way as editorial type reporting has migrated all over . The Northwestern University Journalism School pres was mentioning the other day that they still teach it the 'right way', but activist fellas pay scant attention these days.




This is spot on. Activist journalism has taken over. Instead of just reporting the news it's all about intentions and outcomes. It was blown wide open when a certain person who had a 95% chance of winning, didn't.

I still remember the local television weather forecaster in Seattle talk about extremely gusty winds of 20mph. That took away any credence she had.

 

[emg]

Originally Posted by KrisZ
I find it quite intriguing how the article linked makes it sound like these "young" people are doing it just to show they can.


They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

Seventeenth century French philosopher Rene Descartes had such a hard time discerning what was true and what was false that he finally concluded the only thing he couldn't doubt was that he was thinking. From that he came to his famous "I think therefore I am", which of course he got backwards. I know, who cares what some long dead French guy said?

 

[atikovi]

Originally Posted by emg
Originally Posted by KrisZ
I find it quite intriguing how the article linked makes it sound like these "young" people are doing it just to show they can.


They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.


What's pr0n?

 

[Mad_Hatter]

Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by emg

They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.


What's pr0n?

Sequel to Tron?🤔

 

[supton]

Originally Posted by Mad_Hatter
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by emg

They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.


What's pr0n?

Sequel to Tron?🤔

I'm starting to realize that some of you aren't all the web-savvy...

Have you tried googling it? I mean seriously, typing it into google would take the same amount of time as posting online--and you're already online. Cntrl-t for a new tab, type in "pr0n" and voila! results.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by emg
Originally Posted by KrisZ
I find it quite intriguing how the article linked makes it sound like these "young" people are doing it just to show they can.


They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.


What's pr0n?


What rhymes with corn and starts with a "P"?

 

[Alfred_B]

Originally Posted by supton
Originally Posted by Mad_Hatter
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by emg

They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.


What's pr0n?

Sequel to Tron?🤔

I'm starting to realize that some of you aren't all the web-savvy...

Have you tried googling it? I mean seriously, typing it into google would take the same amount of time as posting online--and you're already online. Cntrl-t for a new tab, type in "pr0n" and voila! results.

They are trying to avoid NSFW

 

[supton]

Originally Posted by Alfred_B

They are trying to avoid NSFW

Well, they don't have to click on anything. Many of the links come up with short blurbs. Some places are allowed around work filters, like wikipedia and various dictionaries. Finally, with the proliferation of smartphones I'd think a "safe" method would be to simply look it up on that.

Heh, I'm reminded of the first time I saw the term "NSFW". Didn't know what it meant, at first I thought it meant "not suitable for women". Close enough in most cases! Simple websearch revealed the real answer.

 

[atikovi]

Originally Posted by supton
Originally Posted by Mad_Hatter
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by emg

They were doing it for the pr0n. And anything some guy can do in his basement to make pr0n is something governments have been able to do for years.


What's pr0n?

Sequel to Tron?🤔

I'm starting to realize that some of you aren't all the web-savvy...

Have you tried googling it? I mean seriously, typing it into google would take the same amount of time as posting online--and you're already online. Cntrl-t for a new tab, type in "pr0n" and voila! results.


I thought it was a typo. Everytime I'm on a forum I have to Google some bizzare word I haven't seen before? Why not just spell porn correctly?

 

[supton]

Originally Posted by atikovi

I thought it was a typo. Everytime I'm on a forum I have to Google some bizzare word I haven't seen before? Why not just spell porn correctly?

It goes back a ways, almost 20 years now. Back then, companies started putting in firewalls (or whatever) to prevent any liabilities--like someone looking at NSFW stuff and causing offense to someone walking by. Or just the waste of company time on things not related to work. So keywords would get emails blocked or held up, just like some sites would be blocked. But those early filters were based on keywords, and if you mispelled the word, well you could get around it.

Today it's some cross between slang and comedic effect. I could go out to a car show and post some "car pr0n", which as you might guess, are going to be lots of photos of cars. That only people into cars will enjoy looking at. I guess it's somewhat similar to telling jokes about flatulence or the like. Once in familiar and comfortable company, such things don't cause offense; the effect has long worn off.