I feel like it's a pandora's box. Once it's open it's hard to stuff the contents back in.
Deep fakes pose a major problem, but we can address them by having a framework in place to force publishers and distributors of deep fakes to take note when something is provably a deep fake. Facebook, Twitter, Instragam, YouTube, and other content distributors will be the primary ways that these are shared, and all four of them are the most powerful technology companies on earth with nearly unlimited resources (.. well... minus Twitter...). If Google has the ability to scan every video uploaded and spot patterns to identify copyright infringement, as does Facebook, they should have the ability to use similar machine learning algorithms and pattern matching to identify deep fakes. Sure, some will be harder than others and video makers will try to get around the tools that identify them, but they have to be compelled to do so. We need higher expectations of these platforms, whether that comes from government or public shame, but we need it, and they can implement it.
If YouTube or Facebook tags deep fake videos with something like "This video may be unrepresentative of the truth [Learn More About Deep Fakes]" or something, then I Think it can greatly reign in their influence.
We have to compel the platforms that will make money with these fakes being shared to do the hard work of developing a system to identify them. Technology companies brag about how everything is possible and how they're tackling these difficult problems that noone has ever been able to solve, that their solutions are limitless, but as soon as you ask them to do something that doesn't impact their bottom line positively, they tell you about how hard it is and how difficult it is to do that... Fuck that. Grow a spine and do it.
Beyond the distribution platforms, we'll have to have higher expectations of one another. Don't share faked videos just because they conveniently fit your world view. We do it with fake news and clickbait already, and play mental gymnastics to justify doing it because we believe we're "fighting the good fight against fascism" or something, but just have some personal credibility. Check your sources, read the content of an article not just the headline, double-check where something is coming from. If you promote something that proves to be fake, you're part of the problem... You didn't just "get duped," you were complicit in misleading people. You see this already when someone posts a thread with a really clickbaity title, the content of the article really doesn't serve the point of the title, and it's unreliably sourced ... like 90% of people won't click the article, they'll comment about how much of a travesty it is, and then like 10% will click it, read it, call out the OP, the OP will usually crawl behind a rock and say "I'm just copying and pasting the news article -- they're at fault not me!" Nah, grow a spine, if you're taking time out of your day to share something that's provably not true on another website, that's on you not the site that duped you.
