In an amazing move for democracy and the pursuit of truth a typical move where Facebook is trying to pretend it’s not purposefully being an authoritarian threat, Facebook has decided to ban deepfake videos. If you’re unfamiliar, these can make a person in a video say and do something they didn’t using AI and other technology I don’t understand. Most importantly, they look real to us.
You may remember one of Nancy Pelosi visibly drunk going around last year (I’m not going to link to that trash). Well, under Facebook’s new policy, that video is still cool, because it doesn’t make her “say new words.” OK.
“This policy does not extend to content that is parody or satire, or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words,” Facebook said.
The social media giant told Reuters that as part of its new policy it will not remove a heavily edited video that attempted to make U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem incoherent by slurring her speech and making it appear like she was repeatedly stumbling over her words.
Perhaps most notably, the ban has an exception for comedy and satire. That won’t totally negate the rule in any way I’m sure.
There’s one last workaround to Facebook’s new rule: comedy. For good reason, Facebook permits people to post satire and parody. Unfortunately, this rule is often exploited by fake-news purveyors and other sites adept at straddling the line between comedy and misinformation.
Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, for doing your part to protect democracy.
A Facebook executive went in front of Congress today (I’m sure so they can say “why you break law?” and Facebook say “OMFG did we break that?” and then for them to promise to add a line in the TOS and move on). At least some lawmakers were pretty fucking annoyed with him. From Joe Biden’s spokesperson, following the hearing:
“Facebook’s policy does not get to the core issue of how their platform is being used to spread disinformation, but rather how professionally that disinformation is created. Banning deepfakes should be an incredibly low floor in combating disinformation. Today’s announcement falls short of the mark again.”
This seems fine.
Not a big fan of his comedy but he’s right about FB being a propaganda machine.
Yeah he is SPOT FUCKING ON. That part about not giving pedophiles and bigots and misogynists a platform to spread their views AND target their victims is so right.
Another big problem on top of the ones already listed above is that Facebook runs its moderation unit like a sweatshop.
They won’t hire enough screening employees, won’t pay them appropriately, won’t pay enoungh for training, and won’t limit the workload to reasonable levels. Which means that decisions get delayed, then get about five seconds of review, and then get decided on dubious grounds by undertrained employees.
Like any poorly run semi-monopoly (think GM in 1973) Facebook treats product quality simply as a cost, Management bonuses increase by an ongoing campaign to degrade quality to the lowest possible level that doesn’t effect output.
So when the next coordinated deepfake attack on a Democrat hits, expect Facebook to take days to react, after which the damage is done. It’s all going to happen based on Facebook’s nearsightedness. Zuckerberg is too naive to know what Toyota and Honda did to GM in the 1970s, and too full of himself to listen to anyone who tries to tell him.
Oooh yeah. Good point also. Even if they wanted to do the right thing, they can’t really. “treats product quality simply as a cost” – that’s really well-put.
The scarier(?) thing is poor counties and municipalities use that brat’s thing because it’s free. So do schools.
Think on that for minute.
Ugh I didn’t think about that!