________ ________ ________
2019-08-15 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
Shane wrote[1] of the unsettling / _/ / /
implications of deep fakes on politics and \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
journalism and he makes a very good point, / \/ \/ / \
however I'm not sure the end result will be / _/ /_ _/
a bad thing. /- / _/ /
\________/\________/\___/____/
Caution, blue-sky thinking ahead.
The media already lies, the media is an industry built on lies. Journalism
may have once been about the facts and the truth but that is no longer the
case and likely hasn't been the case for a long while but people still believe
it because the signs are too subtle or too far between for people to care.
They'll be outraged for a hot minute but then go right on doing what they were
doing.
Exposing lies, calling for correction, counter-articles, etc are hammers on
the walls of the Fourth Estate, for sure, and some people do take notice but
by that same analogy something like AI driven deep fakes are a nuke. A
relentless flood of disinformation, non-partisan and unaffiliated would poison
the media at it's root and it would become completely untrustworthy. A
vestigial stream of nonsense, unarguably useless.
And in a post-Journalism world who would people turn to for guidance and
information? Community. We'd move away from broadcasts and talking heads to
town halls and trusted leaders. People you know, people you can question,
people who are held accountable and in turn hold you accountable.
Leadership becomes tangible again. People become closer again.
Now I know, I know. That's a pretty unlikely scenario. TV, journalism and
the corrupt news media will never go away and some people will believe what
they're told no matter how clown shoes stupid it is.
But I can dream.
The world works so different face-to-face. The shrieking, the posturing,
the harassment, the call-outs, all of that poison you see online just doesn't
happen, doesn't work or doesn't matter when you're standing in a room of your
peers. Even on the phone, that one layer of anonymity stripped away, people
are generally far more civil and genuine.
Step back and you can see that, everyone I've ever spoken to that quit
social media - REALLY quit, not just rage quit for a hot minute then slunk
back - has found it so liberating, they started feeling a genuine connection
to people again and found it welcoming and warm instead of a constant
battleground or race to the bottom.
Anyway, I'm just rambling and getting off-topic now, we all know how I feel
about social media and people's general behavior online.
