Tag: cnn

Deepfakes & The Choice to Be Deceived

Immediately after the 2016 election, many Americans discovered just how much fake news they were sharing via social media.  And for about ten minutes, the term fake news had a specific and literal meaning; it referred to fabricated stories made to look like news, and which serve either as clickbait to generate ad revenue or as mischief to fan the flames of political discord.  But then, the president co-opted the term as a way to dismiss any reportage that does not jibe with his myriad, fact-challenged narratives, and fake news no longer means anything at all. 

Now, the unreal is about to get a lot more real—and more dangerous.  The technology known as “deepfakes” enables fairly unsophisticated users to produce video evidence of events that never happened.  As highlighted in this CNN report on the subject, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) raises the very plausible fear that, in this next election cycle, we are going see video clips showing elected officials and candidates doing and saying things that are entirely fake, but which look absolutely real. “I believe this is the next wave of attacks against America and western democracies,” Rubio stated in a hearing with the Director of National Intelligence.

And that’s not necessarily the worst effect of deep fakes, at least with regard to news and politics.  As, Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert interviewed in that CNN report, observes, an equal—if not worse—hazard confronts us when people inevitably cry “deepfake” on visual evidence that is indeed factual.  Think about how often President Trump changes his story on just about everything and is then checked against his own prior statements captured on video.  All he, or his spokes-minions, have to do is recite the incantation “deepfake,” and the record is expunged in the minds of millions.  Not that this same folly will not occur among other segments of the electorate, but Trump provides the most obvious, stark, and timely reference in this regard.

Naturally, the anticipation that deep fake technology will be used as a weapon of information warfare leads to the assumption that the remedies will also be technological.  The Pentagon has already called the potential abuse of deepfakes a threat to national security, and Farid makes the logical prediction that social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube will need to deploy deepfake detection software to warn viewers.  But it also stands to reason that faking software will only improve, quite possibly to the extent that it cannot be detected by counter-fake technology.  And even then, can any kind of technical metering overwhelm the psychological instinct to believe what we want to believe?

The truth about our fallibility, as filmmaker Errol Morris’s tells us, is that believing is seeing, and not the other way around.  While images can inform, they just as often lie like crazy, not only because we are hardwired to see what we want to see in recorded images but also because, as Susan Sontag writes,  “…the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.”

Consider the recent story that began with a viral video clip that appeared to show MAGA hat-wearing teenagers openly mocking a Native American at a rally in Washington D.C. Then, a second video capturing the same events revealed a much broader context that at least alters the original narrative about those kids’ behavior, and possibly undermines it altogether.  Either way, it is impossible to imagine how the addition of deepfakes into this already-volatile environment will not make matters worse.  So, what is the solution to this new form of sophisticated, weaponized information?  

No doubt, there is more than one answer to that question, but, as I’ve opined in the past, I think the only hope is a cultural shift in us as information consumers and not a technological fix on the part of the platform owners.  This might mean, as it did for me, abandoning social platforms as a primary source for “curated” information.  But no matter how we choose to filter information, we have to stop pouncing on every photograph and video clip as evidence to support our “deep stories.”  At the same time, professional journalists must stop trying to keep pace with the shrieking frenzy of social media.

For instance, I initially heard about that D.C. clash on CNN, when they cited the first viral video as evidence that a mob of teenagers had indeed assaulted a Native American elder.  The anchor reporting the story even editorialized with a scornful word or two about the kids’ conduct.  But then, CNN followed up, reporting that a second video shows a “different side of the encounter,” and they hosted an interview with Nathan Phillips (the Native American), which also skews the story considerably from the way it was originally reported.  But does CNN’s follow-up do enough to build any kind of consensus around the truth?

When I first started this blog, the trending videos at that time were coming from the cellphones of Occupy Wall Street attendees, usually depicting apparent acts of police brutality against allegedly peaceful protestors.  Clearly, such incidents did occur, but at the same time, the omnipresence of cameras—especially at a movement that quickly devolved to activist tourism—helped to foster an illusion that the people’s images are the “real” truth, even to the extent that citizen journalism has eroded trust in professional journalism.  

This is not to say that amateur video cannot tell us anything.  Surely it can.  But the inexorable deployment of deepfakes, which will probably be most effective when disguised as citizen journalism, will be all the more hazardous if we cannot trust real journalists to provide context, corroboration, or correction for what we think we’re seeing.  In this regard, CNN’s own deepfakes reporting might serve as a cautionary tale to its main news desk (and every other news organization) that the visual “evidence” they obtain via social media and other outside sources should be treated with a level of scrutiny as though it were mere rumor.  And, as consumers, we should begin to do the same.

Photo by kiosea39

Social Media Shorthand

This is a theme I’ve certainly written about before; it is in fact, the theme that started this blog — the idea that the expansion of stuff through communications technology can lead to a reduction in the very benefits meant to be yielded by the expansion in the first place.  CNN’s insistence upon providing round-the-clock speculation about the missing Malaysian airliner is just the latest absurd example demonstrating how 24hr news can yield less actual reporting than the years when TV news was limited to just a few hours a day.  This, perhaps counterintuitive, more-is-less phenomenon is not only replicated in the realm of social media, it appears to be exacerbated by the tools themselves, which promise deeper immersion into stuff, but wind up fostering exactly the opposite behavior.  And according to this New York Times editorial about online slang by novelist Teddy Wayne, the shorthand we often use online doesn’t necessarily help.  From the article:

“It takes far more time and energy to express a nuanced reaction to a personal essay than simply writing “Heart” or “Oh, please.” Likewise, when a celebrity does something we disagree with, it is easier to condemn him with a one-word takedown than to empathize with his humanity and communicate a more complex reflection. If you physically handed an article to a friend, or even emailed it, it’s doubtful you would sum it up with one reductive word. But when disseminating it to the masses, we often dumb down our own interpretations.”

I don’t think Wayne means to suggest these monosyllabic habits are a purposeful dumbing down the way a TV executive might want to make a script less literate in order to retain marketshare.  Instead, these slangy fragments, even used by highly educated adults, are just an inevitable by-product of the technologies and interfaces themselves.  The volume and rate at which things go by while we’re probably meant to be doing something else combined with the fact that we may be typing with a single thumb on smart phone is all going to produce concision just this side of a grunt.  What interests me, though, is whether or not these fragmentary exchanges are more than a byproduct and are instead something akin to a force, like the dark matter of the universe causing both expansion and acceleration toward a greater “emptiness.”  A friend or colleague’s endorsement (i.e. share) is a powerful validation; so, if a friend shares a story along with  the note “Terrible” or “Amazing!” or some other context-free comment, does this further increase the probability of one taking a headline and a picture at face value and passing it along with one’s own cursory remark?

Just last week, a well-educated, well-meaning friend on Facebook posted an article about a new, admittedly concerning, bill in Tennessee.  The article was hosted on a website that deals with LGBT issues.  It featured a stock photo of two young men grappling and one of them clearly about to get his face pounded.  The headline stated that the new bill would effectively permit bullying of gay students in public schools as a form of religious expression.  Is it outside the scope of some people’s beliefs?  Not at all.  Is it the kind of thing we might expect to come from certain regions of this country?  Sure.  Do the headline and and photo accurately reflect the language in the bill?  Not quite.  The bill itself certainly should be of concern to those of us who believe the separation of church and state is unambiguous, but there’s nothing I can read in its text that can justifiably be called state-sanctioned bullying of anyone in particular.

Not to get bogged down in that bill per se, the point is that I suspect we all propagate shorthand engagement with social issues from time to time, pushing semi-accurate stories along with a verbal pat on the back or slap on the wrist.  What’s interesting, though, about this Tennessee bill example is that the lead is one of those that can immediately send one into a rage about a matter entirely different from the more subtle and insidious concern that the story actually raises.  On first encounter with the keyhole view of this story on Facebook, a whole movie narrative unfolds in the mind with hicks beating up gay kids while school officials quietly thank God in the background. Meanwhile, as we share, vent a moment of outrage, and move on, we risk missing the subtle story in which the Tennessee state legislature is moving the needle between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause toward favoring more religious influence in public schools. As Wayne writes, “Indeed, fragments are indicative of how quickly we pass judgment while on the Internet without investigating an issue too deeply. We share articles and videos that conform to our prejudices but rarely seek out opposing views, and hardly ever link to them unless it’s to mock them.”

My photographer friend calls all this “gisting.”  My journalist friend calls the internet the greatest tool for “epistemic closure,” describing its efficacy in providing endless support of one’s pre-existing biases.  Whatever we want to call these superficial interactions with information, with news, even with one another, it seems as though the solution is a conscious choice to force behaviors contrary to the instincts fostered by the technologies.   Or…whatevs.

It’s Always Amateur Hour in the Digital Age

Photo by GlobalIP
Photo by GlobalIP

When the 1991 Gulf War put CNN on the map, that was the beginning of the end.  Ted Turner’s experiment in 24 hour news had found a spectacle — a popular and relatively safe war — that defined the model for how a network can fill a round-the-clock broadcast, even without news to report, and certainly without depth or context.  From the soiling of sleep-deprived Bernie Shaw at the al Rasheed Hotel to young Wolf Blitzer’s insipid repetition of the question, “Will we carpet-bomb Baghdad?” at the Pentagon briefings, CNN was, in my estimation, the true vanguard of the of the inevitable rise of the amateur, who now dominates the digital age.  I would argue that we can draw a line that begins with that Gulf War coverage and ends (or at least pauses) with the Redditors who contributed to the online lynch mob chasing the wrong man as events were unfolding in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Take the worst aspects of 24 hour news — the false value of the scoop, the show business cult of personalities, the general egomania, the political biases — add performance-enhancing drugs, and you get Social Media.  For one thing, both the design and the dynamics of Web 2.0 are dominated by the sensibilities of males 18 – 24, which is the same demographic whence most terrorists, anarchists, and other extremists come.  Okay, most of this demographic is comprised of decent people, but there’s no getting past the fact that males 18 – 24 can be the dumbest creatures on Earth because they’re mostly made of testosterone and ego.  And when we give these beings tools like Reddit and a mission in the form of a thread called “findbostonbombers,” we shouldn’t be surprised when it fosters a virtual posse, who indeed spent many hours pursuing and harassing the family of an innocent young man.

Sunil Trapathi was found dead this week from an apparent suicide, although it is important to note that his taking his own life has not been linked to the online pursuit.  Trapathi, a solid student at Brown University, apparently suffered from depression and had been missing; and his disappearance may have been a factor in the initial rumors that snowballed into the swarm of media and private citizens harassing Trapathi’s parents both at home and on the Facebook page they had created in an effort to search for their son.  So, these careless Redditors and the news “professionals” who followed their lead didn’t contribute to Trapathi’s death, only to his family’s pain and suffering coincident with his death.  In light of the outrage and near martyrdom following the suicide of Aaron Swartz, it may be time for certain Redditors to do a little soul searching AFK, as it were, on the potential for the righteous crowd to do great harm.

Of course, the irony that jams hard in the throat in this case is that Reddit and its users are highly vocal advocates of the “open web” and are not shy about using incendiary, uninformed language to lambaste precisely the kind of surveillance techniques used by trained professionals to track the right guys.  There is literally no end of ill-considered, mathematically impossible, fear-mongering out there on the subject of privacy invasions and government overreach; and while I certainly advocate staying on top of our government, this does not mean that every lummox with a keyboard is suddenly a qualified analyst in forensic criminology.  And I believe if the majority of the people involved in the forum chasing Trapathi were honest with themselves, they’d have to admit that their motives were probably part ego, part cool-factor — what we might call social-media overreach. But this appears to be an underlying orthodoxy of the next generation vis a vis the Web — that nobody in a position of experienced authority actually knows anything, and that the almighty crowd, connected through technology is superior to other systems of social order.  It is a mindset that we might say puts the hack in hacktivism.

Executives at Reddit have publicly apologized for these events, although I’m not sure why, as this is inconsistent with their baseline position and indeed the position of nearly every major stakeholder in the dynamics of Web 2.0.  Not unlike the NRA, the general attitude from Reddit, from Google, from Twitter, etc. is that their technologies are merely tools, and that people will use them as they see fit. “You cannot blame the road,” they will say, “because you were hit by a truck.”  And I couldn’t agree more.  People will use these tools as they see fit, and these tools are well designed to ensure that self-righteous vigilantism, bullying, and, yes, even the messages that inspire young men to make bombs are now part of  everyday life.