Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next? BBC 1 Scotland, BBC 3, BBC iPlayer, presented by Jess Davies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c1mt/deepfake-porn-could-you-b...

Mariam-Webster [online] dictionary.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deepfake

deepfake noun

plural deepfakes

Definition of deepfake

: an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said

Two artists and an advertising company created a deepfake of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saying things he never said, and uploaded it to Instagram.

— Samantha Cole

No law regulates deepfakes, though some legal and technical experts have recommended adapting current laws covering libel, defamation, identity fraud or impersonating a government official. But concerns of overregulation abound: The dividing line between a parody protected by the First Amendment and deepfake political propaganda may not always be clear-cut.

— Drew Harwell

With Mueller warning of future election meddling, [Representative Adam] Schiff said that one of his biggest concerns for future campaigns was the development of deepfake technology—the ability to manipulate videos or audio to change what a person appears to have said. 'How do we prepare against the late distribution of a fraudulent video?' Schiff said.

— Elias Groll and Amy Mackinnon

I watched this late last night. I had to look up what deepfake meant. Obviously, I knew what fake meant. The moron’s moron as President, who also was (I need to say alleged here) a rapist, is probably the prime example. And I knew what porn was or is. I have looked, but it’s not my thing. I’ll not be adding my two cents to Porn Hub’s billions of dollars annual sales. 

I kind of understand why someone gets off on videos of stars having sex, because usually they are very beautiful. I’m curious, which is often a gateway. But using words like ‘video’ shows how old I am. I don’t have or need a smartphone. And if there is such a thing as being objective,  I don’t have the time.

Deepfake Porn is another chapter in the Silicon Valley dictum of break things and move. The law won’t catch up, and is run by useless bureaucrats that don’t understand creativity is the usual crap sold to us as self-evident truth. And by the time it does, they’ll be entrenched with their pirate flags and cool vibes and have made billions.

The get-out-of-jail card is section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, introduced by Congress Representative Chris Cox from California and Senator Roy Wyden from Oregon in 1996, when most people thought porn was something you got from the top shelf of a shady shop in Soho, and the internet was something to do with geeks and creeps.

Section 230 does not mention decency or indecency. It does not mention morals or the trillions of dollars companies like Google, Facebook (now called Meta) or Twitter have a vested interest in maintaining as a baseline in what they term freedom.

‘No provider or user of an interactive computer service will be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.’

In other words, content is yours. Profits are mine. Alex Jones, for example, was fined almost $1 billion for repeatedly lying that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. That figure for damages was based not only on the hurt to the victim’s families but also the profit he’d made by spreading these kinds of lies. He supported the moron’s moron who disparaged mainstream media by calling it ‘fake news.’

Algorithms, as we know, rule the world. Trump spent most of his budget on Facebook messages helped by bots from Russian sponsored hacks that alleged Hillary Clinton was corrupt and should be locked up, from other things, eating children and drinking their blood.

An Apple algorithm or App from their store can also take an image of a face and copy and paste it to pornography. It takes around eight seconds. But like anything else in technology it will get faster with better visuals and audio.  Mr Deepfakes, for example, gets 13 million hits a month. Usually those involved are in the public eye. But, for a few dollars, there was also a side-line in making fakes of someone you might know.

Kate Issacs #NotYourPorn, for example, supports women’s rights. Women should be allowed to say no. But they should also be consulted when and where their images are used. We’re talking consent. Of course her home address was shown online as was her workplace and phone number. Anonymous males felt free to threaten to rape and murder her, and encouraged each other to do so. In Alex Jones’s world freedom has no limits. But they had a new took in their armoury. Deepfake Porn images of Kate Issacs were used to discredit her, to shut her up, to terrorise her.

There was nothing illegal about that aspect of their campaign.  Research showed around 96% of deepfakes were pornographic. All of them (100% excluding statistical anomalies) involved non-consenting women.

Dina, a games geek, and typical girl next door, was surprised when someone showed her images of her having sex. Some of them were obviously not her. Her deepfake breasts, for example, were porn-sized big. She found out the faker was a work colleague. He agreed to take down the images, but wasn’t charged with any offence. He hadn’t broken the law.

 Florida state senator, Lauren Book, is trying to change the law in America as she has in her home county. She too has been a repeated victim of deepfake porn. It seems a no-brainer. But she’s got some of the biggest tech companies in the world lobbying for the status-quo, and self-regulation. You can’t take away their freedom, or you’ll lose your liberty. The meme usually hits those kinds of buttons. Not that we have buttons any more.

Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next? Na, I’m sixty and an old guy nobody wants to look at or listen to. But I can’t say any of this surprised me. When truth is another commodity that can be bought or sold, everyone has a price. Women are seen as fair game.