Apparently this is also the anti-vaxxer future since the rendering is so obviously fake he looks like he has mumps.
This is what the Civilization leader version of Obama would look like. Sounds a wee bit too Southern to my ear, too.
It's not perfect OBVIOUSLY but it's by a comedian with what I assume are off-the-shelf tools, not a best effort by a state-sponsored malefactor.
3 is right, and sure it's not perfect, but also (a) it's obviously technology that's only going to get better (quickly), and (b) if you think this is too imperfect to be believable then I'd suggest you spend more time looking through some of the shit that grandma shares on her Facebook feed. This is orders of magnitude better than it needs to be to fool lots of people. Lots of people get fooled by articles from the goddamn Onion.
I don't think it's that most of those people are easily fooled, but rather they've decided they wanted to do something horrible to immigrants or whoever and then they figure out what would have to happen to justify that and then they believe that has happened.
Anyway, we are obviously screwed, but the reason we are screwed is because something like 20% of Americas have decided to try to destroy civil society to get their way.
I think 4 and 5 aren't mutually exclusive and are both right.
I'm just trying to cover up the fact that my attention span is now to short to watch a one minute video to see what the post is about.
My excuse is that I don't click twitter links. Borrow that if you want?
Moby, of course, is right. Ogged is right. Urple is right.
Me, I am part of the problem. My dominant reaction to that clip is amusement. The line "Ben Carson is in the Sunken Place" is funny, but putting that line in Obama's mouth is hilarious.
Agreeing with 4, 5, and 6.
Anyway, what really matters is giving people an excuse for getting that sweet sweet dopamine rush of OUTRAGE! that they crave. This technology is more than good enough for that.
And apparently can outrage multiple ideological demographics at once.
I think it will take a very short time before everyone realises that convincing video can now be faked as easily as convincing still images and convincing text. You could make an absolutely realistic picture now of Obama holding the severed head of Antonin Scalia and it would not fool anyone. Video will be like that.
You could make an absolutely realistic picture now of Obama holding the severed head of Antonin Scalia
Awesome. Where can I get one of those?
Make it yourself. That "you" was directed at you personally. I couldn't do it.
I'd amend 5 last to say that a significant slug of those folks have allowed themselves to be convinced that civil society has already been destroyed. If one genuinely believes that Obama was the worst president ever, then what Trump seems to be trying to do is use the same tools that Obama used to help his people to help your people. If all politicians are liars, then what's the big deal about one more liar, etc?
I agree that this new technology isn' what's going to screw us. Let's take a real example: the Romney 47% tape from the fundraiser. He could have called it fake, but then the waiter could have made the tape available to scientists, who would have called it authentic.
Where can I get one of those?
There's a guy who might paint it for you.
17 is quite extraordinary. Very Russian, though.
I'm going to blog about this at more length, but there is a weird assumption a lot of people have that propaganda must look good to be effective - that production values (really, conformity to certain aesthetic conventions) determine success.
This comes up a lot wrt the Russian campaigns, but it's also true of generalised internet junk. People won't believe it works because it's ugly and it doesn't look "professional". But professional-lookingness is just a set of formal conventions.
The interesting thing here is that very often the same people would be the first to denounce anyone who talks about "civility" or "comity" in political speech for tone-policing. But they practice exactly the same thing in terms of visual design that they reject in terms of language, which is really strange.
AIUI graphic design conventions were largely invented by WWII propaganda departments, which I guess maps onto your language analogy.
20: But, are these people denouncing the propaganda for its design or for its content? I think actually they denounce on grounds of content and discount on grounds of presentation.
I think that does exactly parallel the tone case.
Also, design conventions aren't purely aesthetic, they're signalling protocols too. That too parallels language.
Signalling as in information transfer, not social signalling (though that happens too).
Yes, but what is being signalled is no longer particularly costly to achieve, so its presence or absence isn't informative. And in any case, the signal isn't a signal of the quality of the content.
there is a weird assumption a lot of people have that propaganda must look good to be effective
I hope you're going to point to some examples of people holding this assumption before you start demolishing it. It's certainly not one I would agree with.
I believe the last time this topic came up in threads I was on record as saying, "AAAAAAAAAGHHH!" or somesuch (paraphrasing).
One thing about something like this is that it doesn't have to be authentic enough to pass scientific fraud analysis. It just has to be authentic enough to jolt a market one way or another for a short period of time, so whomever has bought options can make a quick killing.
Like what if some joker made it look like Elon Musk was tripping on acid and randomly decided to take Tesla private? That would rattle the market for Tesla stock enough that foreknowledge of such a prank could make someone a lot of money.
25: If it isn't costly why not do it?
My point is that the conventions actually help convey information. eg., High-quality audio literally takes noise out of the signal; using sentence case makes text easier to read. The noisiness of badly-presented information makes it harder to evaluate the content. (In much the same way that the emotional noisiness of uncivil discourse makes it harder to conduct.)
The President of the United States has made ingenious use of the technology. He doesn't create fake videos (as far as we know). He asserts that real videos he appeared in are faked.
That's going to take all the fun out of the pee tape when it comes out.
When the pee tape is made public, there will be 50 or so versions, identical except with the face and body of a different world leader watching prostitutes pee on a bed. The evening news will show clips of Trump, Hillary, Obama, Pope Francis, and maybe Abraham Lincoln and will report that the Trump one is real and the others are fake. Impeachment will not follow.