Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg thinks it’s ok to post deep fake videos on social media as long as there’s context.
For better or worse, he’s sticking to that position … even after an altered video of the tech CEO showed up on Instagram, the popular social-media site owned by Facebook.
The short clip, created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe in partnership with advertising company Canny, features Zuckerberg framed by a CBS News broadcast chyron that suggests that he’s about to discuss “increasing transparency on ads” in order to “protect elections.” The actual video was taken from a real Zuckerberg post in 2017 about Russian interference in U.S. elections.
“Imagine this for a second: One man with total control of billions of people’s stolen data — their secrets, their lives, their futures,” says the fake Zuckerberg. “I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future.” Note: Spectre is a U.K. art installation by Posters and Howe that showcases and subverts online behavior controls by large corporations and politicians.
A Facebook spokesperson told the publication Motherboard that “we will treat this content the same way we treat all misinformation on Instagram. If third-party fact-checkers mark it as false, we will filter it from Instagram’s recommendation surfaces like Explore and hashtag pages.”
Our review? The video and voice are slightly jarring if you look closely, but could easily be interpreted as real.
Neil Potts, a global policy director at Facebook, recently claimed deep fake videos on FB’s social media platforms would be labeled as “misleading or doctored,” but not taken down. The recent fake video of Nancy Pelosi, which appeared to show the House Speaker slurring her words, is still available on the site, though Facebook announced it would “heavily reduce” its appearances on news feeds and add an informational box linking to fact-checking sites. The Pelosi video had over two million views and 23,000 comments (many of which seemed to treat the video as real) soon after its launch.
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