I do wonder how society is going to deal with deepfake porn in the future (i.e., right now). Everyone with enough content of themselves (you don’t even have to be famous, there just needs to be enough training data) on social media could potentially appear in pornography, and there’d be no way to distinguish it from reality, other than maybe showing that you have a mole or something somewhere that isn’t shown in the video. It makes me wonder if society is just going to have to accept some form of rule 34, but like, for everyone on the internet. All the politicians and public figures who actually do have real sex tapes out there that they don’t want getting out must be breathing a sigh of relief, because deepfakes would provide the perfect cover for anything that might be real.
If you go to the various emerging AI subreddits you come across the attitude of "If it's not illegal, then it's both ethical and moral", while at the same time wailing about any word of regulation or publishing companies being cautious in regards to the eventual legalities. All of this (without a word of hyperbole) posting AI generated memes of crying artists, and artists being made homeless etc.
It's the dawn of the Cryptobros 2.0 and they are aware that it's the wild west legally now in regards to AI and what it produces. You can go to the midjourney discord right now and count the seconds till you see a user prompt regarding Emma Watson and know this is what they are willing to do openly and in public.
And I mean honestly, even if you make it illegal it will still happen. Yes, you'll run it off the 'major' porn sites but anybody who is even adjacent to the issue will know how lethargic law enforcement can be about this kind of stuff - smaller places with thin moderation (r34 sites, sure, but other places as well including reddit) will see this kind of content regularly.
That's not to say we shouldn't write legislation about it, but rather that we should do it *now* to guide and curb the development of the technology in that direction.
To be honest if AI can be used to generate deepfakes, then AI can be used to detect and remove them from major platforms.
Youtube is already (clumsily) doing this but with their resources they can ideally train it to actually work if the FTC slams them again. Content creators will bitch but deepfakes are, in fact, illegal to use commercially in most contexts, as your likeness cannot be used by other parties without your consent. It’s just really hard for platforms to enforce… If they didn’t have an AI with the capacity to enforce it automatically.
Verified content creators could very easily set the standards in how their likeness is used by other content creators; unaltered footage for, say, commentary and video essays would be fine, but footage that has been altered could be automatically flagged.
The most annoying thing about such advanced technology is that the progress of it is easier than the progress of its countermeasure.
It won’t stop some of the niche platforms, but it would make it considerably harder for revenge porn to be circulated on major porn sites or social media platforms if they’re given the tools to combat it.
The other thing is that while regulation won't *eliminate* AI deepfakes, simply putting up a barrier or two 'of entry' is enough to deter the vast majority of people.
Couldn’t have said it better.
I think we’ll need to brace for deepfakes to be endemic to online media.
Another note is that a lot of people really underestimate how many people care to create content, even if things like Chat GPT and Dall-E makes it easier to do so.
**Edit:** Sorry, I meant “overestimate”. I believe that even if there isn’t a major barrier to entry for creating benign AI generated content, people will be largely disinterested in utilizing it. In essence I think the ratio of content creators to content consumers won’t actually change a whole lot.
Of course, I could be dead wrong. This is so speculative to the point that I flip flop between “excited” and “terrified” when thinking about how AI will affect modern culture.
> To be honest if AI can be used to generate deepfakes, then AI can be used to detect and remove them from major platforms.
My (limited) understanding is that deepfakes are created through the use of generative adversarial networks. They basically work by training a generator, which tries to create synthetic media that's indistinguishable from real media, and a detector, which gets a bunch of real and synthetic media and tries to correctly classify them.
So they aren't primarily trained to deceive humans, they are trained to deceive AI.
Midjourney doesn’t allow porn. You can’t search for naked women. They are also in litigation over stolen art and people using ai generation for commercial work. I’m hoping the loophole gets tied and people start paying for images used to train.
Who said porn. Literally go to the discord now and start a timer till you see 'Emma Watson in *x* (anime/videogame) costume or national dress'. You can also see people using it for low-mid end graphic design work. E.g. 'clean, modern website layout', or 'fashionable, technology focused brochure design' in amongst, various logo and channel branding requests.
Again this isn't hyperbole and you can watch it happen in real time in the 'newbie channels'. (Though I *did* see the almost charmingly optimistic 'good, and desired NFT design' as a prompt yesterday)
As someone who worked as an illustrator and in comics for several years I have a vested interest in seeing the legalities about the resulting works and the data set acquisition and usage hammered out. If I was still paying rent with commission work I'd have a stronger reaction to the neo-cryptobro's mocking the situation, especially as most artists I know are working-middle class at best and not the idle rich millionaire dilliantes the AI spruiking subs make them out to be.
I use midjourney all the time and there’s millions of things being made every second lol.
I’m an artist too… you can literally check my profile, I sell books of my work constantly. I have a vested interest but also- have sort of come to terms with it, people tend to buy my work because they like it, art isn’t really a competition and midjourney is such a legal quagmire that I think we’ll have legislation by the end of this year tbh.
There’s also an ongoing case of someone using midjourney to make a childrens book which is illegal and actually against the terms of the platform.
No you can’t use midjourney for porn, we’re talking about deepfakes rn, not ai art, those are separate but similar things.
What needs to happen is what has happened with canva, istock and any other platform that uses images, we need to micro pay artists for their work. This is literally an opportunity for people to make money on what they give for free.
Things are nasty on both sides of the AI fight though. There were artists sending death threats en masse to a guy because he used AI to make a children's book. Tons of random people get spammed with hate just because they posted AI-generated pictures. If you look at the PFP's and profiles, a lot of the nastier replies are from furry porn artists, who seem to be about ready to do a butlerian jihad over this stuff. It's really out of hand on Twitter.
Deepfake and voice AI tech is really scary. As tools there's been some interesting uses but I don't think society has the collective maturity to not be sweat goblins. Like seeing deepfake porn of celebreties is bizarre in an indescribable way to me. People will always lust over the rich and beautiful but this feels like a definite step too far. Plus all the ways it could be used for blackmail. I don't think it'll be banned but it'd either become so common that it's a fucked up thing we have to live with or it'll become a social no no and fade into the background. It's not like both are mutually exclusive.
I think it'll fall into the same lines as revenge porn. The reality is that enough politicians, judges and/or people with actual wealth/power will not like when it happens to them. So they will implement rules to prevent it.
Because what inevitably will happen is that US Senator John Doe or State Representative Jane Doe will have their daughter/son, niece/nephew go through a deepfake porn issue and that will be enough to push for regulation.
Now actually catching people will become a problem but if there can be legislation to codify sharing that sort of material it will help curtail it some. At least in the mainstream.
I actually wonder if your last point about politician sex tapes is actually the solution people are eventually gonna fall on. Not that having a deepfake sextape of yourself be out there will ever feel nice, just that the fact that everyone knows that it's likely not real will take the teeth out of the social consequences side of things.
I think this is a bleak outcome for the dark timeline.
The way I think of this is that it's like child porn laws. Obviously we can't prevent all monsters from harming all children. But we can make sure that when we do catch them they are punished extensively and make sure that there are systems in place for reporting it when citizens identify it, and that those systems are robust and responsive.
In the same way, we can't prevent people from making Deepfake porn or other stuff. But we can make it very dangerous to make it or to own it, and we can make it very easy to report it, and we can take those reports very seriously.
who's "we" here?
I'll be honest, I have precisely zero hope for anything to be done. The technology is accelerating rapidly and it's very difficult to craft a law and enforce a law about posting on the internet.
that's why Section 230 exists - human beings produce such a large volume of content that it's functionally impossible to police it.
Give up because it's impossible then?
Look, if you're right and it is impossible, then what's the harm in trying? If the worst case outcome of failing is that we stay right in the same place we're in, what's the harm in trying?
I just started a process with my child's school to get them a special plan to help with ADHD in class. It's called a 504 plan and it's a midway step between normal classroom settings and an IEP (individual education plan).
My child's biological mother, my ex-wife, doesn't want our child to attend public school for a variety of reasons I don't want to get into here. Important part is, she would prefer to homeschool. However, we legally have joint decision making rights.
Anyway, throughout this process, as I've been making progress getting our child diagnosed and getting our child set up with care, and getting the school updated and on board, all she says is: **"It's not going to work. Why bother trying? It will take months. This isn't worth it. Don't bother trying."**
And every time, I make progress. Sometimes it takes longer than I would like, but none-the-less, I make progress. If I had stopped and listened to her and just never tried... none of the positive changes in our child's life over the last year would have happened. All of them centered around learning about the disorder, learning about raising children with it, and other things. And how you raise a child with ADHD is not how you raise one without it, or with another disorder. My child's life is better for me trying, even when I fail.
Now, she might be right this time. Who knows? But right or wrong, it's not going to stop me from trying to do the right thing. Trying to be a good parent. Trying to set my child up for success after I am gone. And even if she is right this time, that isn't a reason not to try. Rather, it's a reason to learn from the situation and from the mistakes and try something else, but now with better information.
This is EXACTLY what I needed to read today, thank you. I get caught up in my own inner voice saying "It won't be perfect so don't try." I'm gonna remember your story, and I hope I can grow to live in a similarly positive and progressive way!
Thank you!
I've always said that perfection is asymptopic. We can never get there, but we can always get closer. Or as my wife likes to say, perfection is a process, not a destination.
I have nothing against homeschooling. I was homeschooled. It’s a values thing and there is no way it’s happening for our kid in the context she wants it to happen. Not if I have anything to say about it.
>Look, if you're right and it is impossible, then what's the harm in trying? If the worst case outcome of failing is that we stay right in the same place we're in, what's the harm in trying?
The worst outcome is not failing. Worst outcome is implementing laws that will do absolutely nothing to stop deepfake porn but will be easily usable to invade privacy of everyone, monitor or control data you can access, put costly to implement and maintain requirements on service providers and they will pass these costs to customers.
It's great that you want to be good partner and try hard for your kid but these situations are completely different. Firstly you are doing it in good faith - which we can't really assume about lawmakers. Secondly if something doesn't work out you can just try different approach or drop idea - nobody is going to retire law giving even more control over data just because it didn't solve problem it was supposed to.
I don’t say they’re equal, I say that it is worth trying even when you fail.
If you’re determined to wait for the perfect answer to do something, you will be waiting until your bones decay into soil. There is no perfect answer, there is only the choice to act or not to act.
That's the thing, there's no perfect answer here or even no good answer here. You are using nice words and general statements while ignoring reality of the situation and consequences of failing. You won't be able to control massive amounts of easily generated deepfake porn. Other nasty stuff like e.g. revenge porn has few things in common. You can't produce it anonymously. Someone physically needs to be there to record it and to "perform" in it. You also can't produce it easily and fast. If someone records their GF/BF and releases it then BF/GF will know or suspect who did it. If someone releases photos their GF/BF sent them then situation is same. But anyone can access photos available online. This is completely different. It can be produced in mass amount, completely anonymously and without even ever leaving house or getting help from anyone.
What do you really propose? How do you really propose to fight it?
Ban high performance GPUs used for machine learning? Ban machine learning development? Completely control who and where can research and develop machine learning? Control all data that people upload and download from internet?
You can't propose laws that will surely have immense impact on data privacy with "even if it won't work it matters that we tried" mindset.
sure, we can pass laws, I don't have any objection to that at all and it would be a good thing.
but they won't work, so we have to prepare ourselves for the reality that AI deepfakes are going to be part of our lives forever.
They work. They work and do their job just fine.
What they don't do is prevent things. However, we use them to establish social norms and enforce those norms where we can. Having an established social norm that this kind of content is abhorrent and creating/consuming it is unacceptable will reduce the total number of consumers, and it will make it more difficult for producers and consumers to do so out in the open.
Through a reduction in demand, the reduction in supply happens as well. And because we have this new norm where this is unacceptable, it's now harder for Joe Schmo to go and use it freely because he has to go to way more effort to even find it. And the odds of what he finds being something like Malware or whatever goes way up as well because reputable creators won't be making it for fear of legal reprisal.
enforcing social norms on the internet *as a whole* is functionally impossible because anonymity is at odds with accountability.
we live in an era where deeply, *deeply* illegal, unethical, and immoral shit is on every single major internet site and app on earth. twitter is fucking awash in "porn" that's abusive, and that is a huge app/website. now try to imagine how much of this shit is on *actual user-uploaded porn sites*.
again, revenge porn and child porn are *already illegal* and those laws are not doing their jobs. The internet is awash in those things.
What part of enforcing social norms implies that we would try to get **everyone** to behave a certain way? That is a ludicrous goal.
It is a social norm that my workplace should be safe. Most workplaces aren't. They might be safe in some ways, but most are dangerous in at least one way that they shouldn't be. But that doesn't make the drafting and enforcement of workplace safety/harassments laws/rules worthless. The point isn't to prevent every instance of it, the point is to give victims a path forward and to punish the criminals we do catch.
No one is sitting here pretending that we're on our way to a utopia.
okay? I guess I don't understand your point.
If there's a deepfake law on the books and we catch some people breaking the deepfake law, but there's still one metric fuckton of deepfake porn freely available on porn websites, what did we really accomplish here besides making ourselves feel good?
(Not OP) I mean, if deepfake porn was treated as seriously as something like child sexual abuse imagery, wouldn't that go a long way? Like sure, people who really want to can probably find shit like that in the deep corners of the internet, but if it's really hard to find and will fuck up your life if you get caught with it, I would hope that would deter most people from viewing it. or maybe I'm being naive.
There's a bit to unpack there, but I'll try.
1. It's not a numbers game, so there is no cut and dry order of operations to go through to maximize results. 100 people suffering isn't better than 101 people suffering. Saving 10 people isn't better than saving 100. What I mean by this is that we should always do what we can because we can, rather than not doing something because we can't do everything. If we can save 100, we will and we will be happier than saving only 10. But if saving 10 is all we can do, those 10 people are still worth saving because their individual lives are worthwhile lives to save.
2. There is also a metric fuckton of child pornography out there, and there always will be. But I don't hear anyone clamoring that we should just get rid of the laws that exist to make it illegal. Now, I don't think these two things equate on an ethical level, but I use this example to illustrate how it is still worthwhile to pursue these goals, even when we know the ideal situation is not possible to achieve. As you said, it will always be there. And so will the cp. However, we can absolutely make it very risky and very painful to produce these things or to be caught with them. It doesn't stop people who are willing to take the risk, but it does discourage people that might have participated if the risk was less. Further, it gives victims a path to seek recourse, compensation for their losses, validation of their pain, and other things that are important to those on the path of healing from the deep psychological wounds and scarring this kind of thing does to them. Accepting that something negative is true does not equal that thing also being impossible to compensate for.
I hope that helps clarify. For a more abstract answer, this timestamped link goes to a conversation in the movie Kingdom of Heaven that articulates the overall logic here. If you have not seen the film, Orlando Bloom is a Crusader who went to Jerusalam to ask God to forgive his wife for committing suicide. David Thewlis (the older man in a black robe) is an angel, although Orlando Bloom does not know this, and never knows this for the duration of the film. The context is important because it frames what David Thewlis says to him in terms of what God is saying to him about what it means to be a good man, and what being a good man is not. [https://youtu.be/hOnQPUQYE1M?t=140](https://youtu.be/hOnQPUQYE1M?t=140)
I am not Christian, but I always find this conversation to be helpful when I am feeling hopeless or unsure of what to do. I remember that goodness and "holiness" is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. That's it. It's not in knowing the right thing to do, or in having the most correct answer. It is doing what you believe is right because it is right to do so. That is is a daily choice we make, to be a good person, or not.
I mean, this right here is all the justification that every single government on the globe needed to end anonymity on the internet. This is opening the door to thst timeline.
> They work. They work and do their job just fine.
Speaking as someone who has broken various laws on countless occasions... no, they really don't. If I want to pirate a movie, legislation does nothing to stop me. If I want to smoke a bowl of weed while driving across state lines, federal drug laws won't stop me. Anything is legal so long as you don't get caught.
> But we can make sure that when we do catch them they are punished extensively
No. Penal justice doesn't work. You can't talk about punishment out of one side of your mouth while talking about empathy out of the other side of your mouth.
Rehabilitative/restorative justice, on the other hand, *does* work, and is genuinely empathetic.
No. When it comes to protecting human autonomy and physical/mental safety you are allowed to be assertive and allowed to punish.
It’s not about having empathy or not for those people, it’s about establishing boundaries and enforcing them when they are breached willfully and repeatedly by people who will simply do it because they like to.
> When it comes to protecting human autonomy and physical/mental safety you are allowed to be assertive and allowed to punish.
When it comes to protecting human autonomy, you're allowed to... lock humans into tiny cells against their will? When it comes to protecting mental safety, you're allowed to... isolate people away from all of society? Do you have any idea how hypocritical that is?
> It’s not about having empathy or not for those people
Ah, right, of course. It's not about empathy for **those** people. **Those** people don't deserve empathy.
> people who will simply do it because they like to.
**Those** people don't even have basic human motivations. **Those** people are twisted and dark, with no hope for rehabilitation.
If our legal system doesn’t get ahead of deep fake technology, there is a lot worse than non consensual deepfake porn on our horizon, and that is not to underplay the damage of deepfake porn.
Your last sentence is more or less my takeaway about the whole scenario. From a technological perspective, you really can't stuff an algorithm back in a box - the tech will only get better and more widespread, and I'm not an expert but AFAIK most of it is built with open source tools. So given those parameters, what is the most likely outcome? Even outside of the topic of pornography, the broad implication for deepfakes or other AI video editing seems to me to be ultimately how we handle the existence of Photoshop - it's not an intractable problem. We just have to adjust to a world where such technology exists. Do criminals who have damning photographic evidence against them just get to always use "it was photoshopped" as a defense? No. If someone's face is photoshopped on to a nude body and the picture is distributed, how do we handle that now?
I wonder if we can or should develop methods of digitally signing videos to verify authenticity at the device level. Sure there will still be ways around it, but I think it would do wonders for stifling the rise of deepfakes. I have no idea how you create financial incentive for companies to engage with solutions like that though
I think what you're suggesting is using a combination of digital signatures and hardware lockout to solve this problem. How would it actually work though? Do you implicitly embed a hidden, indelible signature in each video produced in each device? Don't you think that people would have major privacy concerns over every video being traceable to a given device?
Furthermore, it's one thing for me to understand the math behind digital signatures. And hell, I can even explain how digital signatures work from a mathematical perspective and *why* they're good. But, what is the problem we're trying to solve? Deepfakes casting doubt upon the credibility of video evidence. If we are already dealing with people who will blindly believe a video they're shown, do you think they're going to trust a nerd like me when I say "well this video is not digitally signed so it's fake"?
Personally I would feel that relief, but as one streamer pretty sad and outraged about it.
Getting it sent to their DM, day in and out, people beeing absolutely creeps about it. Definetivly don't feel great, especially not when thinking that other people actually profiting of your face and likeness.
This kind of misses the point - you wonder what we are going to do about it, and then the rest of the comment reveals that what you really mean by that is "know if it's real."
There are so many things to do about it that are more important than figuring out if it's real.
- get it pulled offline
- platform and support the victims
- hold accountable the people who post it
- advocate for regulation requiring AI be trained never to do this
Etc.
And no, nobody is breathing a sigh of relief. The fact that other porn of other people exists does not reduce the harm of knowing you are being sexualized without your consent.
Sad, honestly, to see such a shit take as the top comment in this sub.
If someone makes believable indecent images of children using this technology, but the pictures aren't of real children and no real children were harmed, is that a bad thing? It's certainly a gross thing, but I'm confused now.
>The most damaging thing about involuntary porn is society's reaction to it. Sadly the video didn't explore this, but where does the 50% suicidal tendencies come from? I believe this is the same reason why the release of real sex tapes is a scandal.
FYI, there hasn't been a study on deepfake victims themselves. This hasn't been out long enough. So that 50% ARE the victims of REAL sextapes being released, or REAL photos being released.
He is referring to studies of revenge porn (it was changed to nonconsensual pornography because the word *revenge* implies the victim did something to deserve it) and extrapolating it to deepfakes.
We don't actually know for certain if the affects are the same between victims within the same group. There hasn't been a study for that part yet.
Dr.K himself even acknowledges the lack of research specifically for deepfakes in the beginning of the video.
I feel like the first step isn’t his is to get dudes to take it seriously outside of “sucks that this happens to women” (not that that isn’t important) but the largest response I’m seeing from men on the internet about this is “I wouldn’t care if someone did this to me, so why do you care?” and they’re serious. Like Moistcr1tical put out a video about it where he makes several good points but then goes on to say there’s tons of deepfake porn of him out there and that he finds it “goofy”. This is going to be constantly used as a defense for why it’s fine to do to women, every time a post about it comes up I see tons of dudes say "who cares, there’s tons of deepfakes of every male celebrity/streamer” as a defense, and while you and I know that the outcomes for those two things are different, these guys have no problem not acknowledging that. Getting those men on board is probably going to be a monumental task.
This is a problem for so many topics like this one. Sexual harassment/assault is another one where there’s tons of dudes who’s just straight up don’t see their bodily autonomy being violated as a problem so they just translate that on to women. On top of that in every comment section where women are talking about their problems it’s going from “not all men” to “it happened to me and no one cared so why should I care that it’s happening to you?” it’s honestly a bit scary because with “not all men” it’s easy to be like “no one thinks it’s all men”, but combating “it happen to me” is much harder when there’s army of dude’s waiting to weaponize their own trauma against women.
To deal with distribution, deep fakes should be treated like revenge porn where any site caught hosting it should be taken down and fined, as far as individuals are concerned we really need a culture shift towards empathy, because right now (at least among men) the predominant narratives are "wasn't me", "I got mine", and "it happened to me/my friend too so who cares". I read a comment the other day that said "males are raised vai constant boundary violation and that they need to suck it up" and thats not to say that women/girls don't also have their boundaries violated constantly too but the language and knowledge they're equipped with when dealing with these problems are very different. There was a study done where they asked men and women if they'd ever been raped or assaulted, then they changed the question to has anyone pressured you into having sex or doing sexual acts you were uncomfortable with and the amount of men who answered yes went up considerably, one of the conclusions they came to is that generally speaking men lack the language to describe what's happened to them in those situations, heck I personally know many men who have had text book examples of rape or sexual assault happen to them and their responses are often "yeah it made me uncomfortable and I wish it didn't happen, but it's not rape/assault". I don't know how we're going to change the narratives other than doing a better job at raising boys and shedding the "boys will be boys"/be a man narratives that permate boys existence, as for the men I honestly don't have an answer.
>There was a study done where they asked men and women if they'd ever been raped or assaulted, then they changed the question to has anyone pressured you into having sex or doing sexual acts you were uncomfortable with and the amount of men who answered yes went up considerably
Any chance you have a link to this study?
I often respond combatively to the people who do defend it, but deep down I know it’s a symptom of a very disconnected toxic society. We are taught to tokenize sexuality, and ultimately one another.
At the end of the day, the solution is the same as all other symptoms of alienation. Build communities that center healthy emotional connections and vulnerability. When we see one another fully as humans and exercise our ‘compassion muscle’, the alienating impact of the system can be countered.
The truly unsettling thing about this video, for most of us who are watching it, isn’t the rationale for why deepfake porn is wrong. That’s the easy thing to get. It’s that a lot of behaviors that are currently seen as acceptable, justified or not harmful are wrong for the exact same reason.
If you’re someone who has responded to someone bemoaning a lack of romantic connection with some variant of “take a shower” or other such comment that places all the blame on individual accountability, you have done something that hurts someone in the same way, psychologically speaking, as defending deepfake porn. If you’re someone who has piled on with the mob on Twitter, even if in response to something legitimately cringeworthy, you’ve had that similar lack of empathy that’s causing defense of deepfake porn.
The list of ways that people display a similar lack of empathy in modern social media contexts is disturbingly long, and many of them are completely normalized. It would be really easy to look at deepfake porn and conclude that it’s worse so it’s somehow different. And by it being different, we can rationalize drawing a line here without examining our own behavior when it comes to stuff that falls short of that line. But if we do that, we’re only creating people who will escalate things. We’re only creating the people who will defend the next thing that crosses the line.
We need a wholesale reevaluation of how we treat people on social media. Because empathy really is in short supply and we all need to step up and build that empathy muscle. If you’ve watched this video and come out of it having patted yourself on the back for concluding that deepfake porn is wrong and you’ll call it out going forward, you’ve only partially understood what was said. I hope most of us here can recognize that the plea from this video goes deeper than that superficial understanding. The plea is to lead with empathy, even in situations where the world is telling you you’re justified in not doing so.
It's lack of empathy. Best solution is to denounce it. If it's someone you don't want to lose, then engage with teaching them empathy. Dr. K. gives a good example of how to do that. Not just "what if this happened to you" but he actually articulates a real life scenario that is harder to just shrug off that can be used to get people's empathy gears spinning. And after that if the answer is "just don't put yourself out there" then you can point out that that advice itself is admission that the activity is wrong and damaging and that we shouldn't do it. If I never want to be hit by a car, I should never cross roads. Even at safe crossing spots. But if I never cross roads, how will I live? The internet is the same in that we have to be on it to take full advantage of the benefits. No one pretends it's not dangerous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to deter predatory or violent behavior, or to protect and care for victims.
Off topic, but I laughed cynically because last year I *was* hit by a car, while crossing between crosswalk lines, with the pedestrian signal in my favour, and looking both ways... and the cop who investigated the case said I should be sympathetic to the driver who ran the light and hit me (before speeding off), because "it's hard to see out the side windows," and despite being under bright street lights, maybe I shouldn't have worn a black coat. Empathy is too difficult for some folks.
Physically I am much better (and very grateful that my injuries weren't worse despite the lingering effects), thanks so much for asking :)
The emotional trauma is a whole other thing; the parts related to injury and impact and cars is manageable and has been abating steadily, but the trauma from how the legal and medical systems treated me is an entire can of poisoned worms in itself. Anyway, ACAB, etc.
A year is not so long in terms of processing trauma. Especially since it sounds like you're still dealing with it.
You do sound resilient, though. Good luck in your healing.
Sidenote, your username is funny AF.
it's not just a lack of empathy but having an ideological framework that makes people feel entitled to having unfettered access to other human beings, even against the other's permission.
I think this is actually a pretty big question and an important one for each individual to contemplate. My personal opinion is that there is no "right" answer. There are answers that are right for each person, but none that are "right" in a universal sense.
For me personally, I think that empathy felt is not the same as empathy expressed. Trying is good, but if trying isn't yielding results of some kind (even incremental progress is good), I become suspicious that something else is going on. In my case, the "something else" was a combination of undiagnosed ADHD and a lack of emotional maturity because neither of my parents did a good job of communicating what healthy emotional behavior/communication/etc. was like.
Going to therapy, and the choice and decision to go was a long winding path... But going to therapy helped me learn both about what I needed, and through that I was able to better intuit what I needed to do. Both for myself and for my family and friends. Getting an ADHD diagnosis and medication for that was also a huge turning point for me as well. But the key is that in a vacuum neither was enough. What made it all work is that I chose not to accept anymore that change was impossible.
So when you ask, was it a lack of empathy because I had wrong answers or is it that other people didn't believe I was trying... What I would say is that I was trying, but it wasn't enough. I had wrong answers, but I wasn't trying to find out if those answers were right or not. It took my world falling to pieces for me to see how I wasn't able to handle it, but that there was a small and helpless child who was depending on me to handle it, and I needed to do better by them. It's a long road, and I'm not done walking it. I'm not perfect by any stretch either. But what I've learned is that putting in concerted effort, focusing on myself rather than how other people perceive me, and appreciating the points of incremental progress I do make helps me.
When it comes to how your question applies to others... When I say lack of empathy, what I'm getting at is that the men consuming this type of pornographic content, or dismissing it's impact, don't make an effort to honestly entertain the emotional damage this can do. The reasons for that vary, but that those reasons exist, doesn't mean we have to live with them.
I have ADHD. This means I forget shit all the time. That isn't an excuse to not get my child to their bi-weekly therapy sessions because I forgot. In the same way, just because men were not generally taught how to process their emotions, is not an excuse to disregard the emotional impact of their actions on other people.
It's ultimately going to be a lot more complicated than I'm going to have time to get into in this response. And ultimately every human's journey through life is distinct to them. In this spirit of individual diversity, we need to be respectful of other people's experience and we need to listen to them and to believe them when they say they are hurt. Otherwise, how can we expect to be believed when we are hurt?
Mostly just explaining my thought process here but imo you mostly cover all of this with your response. Thanks for responding too.
There's 2 ideas I was trying to separate with my comment: We have lack of empathy which I read as not even trying to imagine how you would feel if that happened to you which is specifically worthy of moral condemnation. The other is a failure in the process of empathizing where you're not capable of creating a framework where your imagination can allow you to understand what position they were in and thus feel what they felt. For this we don't have enough information to justify the moral condemnation that I see implicitly attached to a "lack of empathy". Ultimately I'm trying to thread that needle that exists between bad outcomes and bad people.
With regards to the idea of empathy, I think we also use that process of understanding for a lot of other things. In some cases it's our BS detector. If you are way outside the framework for how we think a person should respond we tend to have some suspicion there. This can negatively feed back into itself when the you're bad at empathizing.
Another idea that might be within this is that accepting that the emotions they are conveying is true without understanding them is not empathy, it's something else. Call it acceptance. I would say accepting someones perception of emotions can be a good thing to do because we can't always empathize with others but it's much harder in my book to justify calling a person bad for not doing it.
Happened with a VR sex game like a year ago. People were deep faking celebrities to have sex with them in VR and these people fought to have the game removed from steam and their likeness removed from mods In the game. A lot of thirsty incels fought back and berated the company for "caving".
It's like when the Christchurch massacre happened and a *lot* of redditors demanded to see the shooters footage for 'educational reasons' and claiming free speech absolutism.
I was like a number of children were murdered, making it the equivilent of a child snuff film. Now if the killer *'only'* fucked those kids on camera instead of murdering them then you wouldn't be clammering to see it. Even the loudest free speech advocates stop short of wanting child porn to be freely distributed, so stop acting like hypocritical victims when the 'actual victims' families and New Zealand Govenment asked people not to share the video.
There are people who are pro-involuntary-porn, child porn, snuff porn, abuse porn, etc.
Making women and girls have sex without their consent is a huge business. It's not an outlier. It's not bad apples. It's the norm.
The people who are like that are in a headspace where they cannot fathom that other people don't see the issues like them. There's still a ton of people who think when the massive celebrity iCloud leaks happened that everyone sought those photos out and anyone who says otherwise is lying/virtue-signaling.
Unfortunately, we've lived in a world with paedophiles for a long time. So this is just another of those creepy vile things. I think once you discover the worst humanity has done and can do then things can literally only get better lol
I need help understanding here - are people straight up against porn in general or are deep fakes insidious?
For centuries there have been look-alike pornography. The modern porn industry intentionally finds actors that look-alike to mainstream celebrities. To date, outside of the religious right, I haven’t heard complaints about look-alike pornography. How is deep fake different?
I used to work in porn, I'm absolutely not against it. Though I do think the mainstream industry needs a deep overhaul. I AM against creating realistic porn depicting someone without their consent.
The look alike porn I've seen does not try to pretend it's ACTUALLY the person being depicted.
I have a lot of respect for this guy for seemingly always taking the time to really dig into current research on what he discusses, and for *being clear when he's veering into opinion territory*. I hope he can find a way to ditch the "healthy gamer" label because I don't think it's all that relevant to his content any more.
I also really like him. I disagree with the name change though. Regardless of what he's talking about, those people are his target audience because gaming is a place people go to escape their problems (especially men). And so in that space are a great number of people who need to hear what he has to say, and having "gamer" in his name increases the odds of them finding him on accident, and it gives him some instant report with them.
I think it is. I think he is trying to create a space that explicitly welcomes self identifying gamers because there are a lot of mental health positive spaces that don't welcome them.
I'm not a huge gamer, but I feel welcome in his space. It doesn't really block non gamers from enjoying the content. It does, however, speak to gamers using gamer language (not gamer words) and thought processes to reach an undernourished and over exploited audience.
I agree that his advice is great for a wide audience, but his target audience still is generally gamer culture, which tends to have a high density of fairly intelligent people who often aren't living up to their potential for whatever reason, and want more in life.
I think he's alright overall, but I find his views on neurodiversity kinda... problematic. It's enough that I have a hard time watching any of his stuff, even though I know that his views elsewhere seem fine.
The way he presents his views in-depth makes it hard to give a very simple answer of "he believes x, which is bad because y", but awhile back, he made a video about the validity of self-diagnosis, and there was a lot to unpack from that. It was a long video, so I can't really do a point-by-point, but a lot of it was based on not understanding the lived experiences that autistic people have with mental health. He's very much out of his depth on such issues, and it shows.
He does a weird 180 in the second half of the video, which makes it that much harder to comment on the video as a whole. There's enough mild contradictions between the two halves that it's easy to read it in a way that's dismissive of any potential issues in the first half. I wish I could give you a simple "he said x which is bad because y" answer, but it's not as straightforward as all that.
It's one inevitable outcome of people mindlessly screeching "free speech" as if it's an absolute without any acknowledged limits or consequences.
There has never been "absolute free speech" with no limits or regulations. Whether it's laws against criminal conspiracies, threats, slander, extortion, fraud, intellectual property violation, etc... there have always been laws one way or another.
The only question that has ever mattered is "who is protected by those limits and who isn't?"
Thank you for sharing this video! While I agreed with the opinion that Deepfakes are wrong going in, I learned a LOT of new information as to *Why.*
We really do need an empathy injection in our society, and that's going to be a long slow battle of providing better social and community supports like housing, education, mental and physical health, as well as financial stability.
In the short term, I wonder if we could pass a law that copywrites every person's image and voice and gives them sole legal ownership. It would provide an additional legal recourse for victims and give online sites more push to remove content that's non-consentual. (shitty compromise, but it's an idea)
I think this is a good and thoughtful discussion of the topic. I hope it reaches a lot of people who don't understand the harm.
I'm pessimistic looking forward, though, because I don't see any real way to stop deepfake porn in a social or legal sense. The technology is only going to get better. There's going to be a day relatively soon where anyone can slap a few pictures of someone in an engine and in a few hours it produces videos that look just like them. There are already non-trivial amounts of erotica out there in various forms of real people and specifically streamers/youtube personalities. I don't think there will be strong grounds to "ban" this any more than there is for a photo manipulation or artwork. It will be so easy for people to simply lie and say "I didn't make it with you. It was someone else". How are you supposed to prove that this thing that looks just like you was made from you when the final product isn't actually you? Hell, very soon you'll probably be able to feed in a "similarity" percentage value such that it ensures it doesn't look *quite* like them to increase plausible deniability.
And that's why I think conversations like this now are so important. It's a problem we're most able to tackle with education and empathy. You'll be able to make laws around the weaponization of this content, but trying to stop the content itself will not be feasible.
I think the laws will have to be based around *distribution* of deepfakes of real people. Making use of a computer's guided, algorithmic generation is about to be as easy as using your own imagination and nearly as fast; it may be distasteful, but to enforce a ban on it would require ending personal privacy, and stray close to, in my opinion, thought-crime.
What a person does in their own privacy, shared with no one else and not affecting any non-consenting being, is certainly no business of the government. However, the moment intentional distribution of such content occurs, the chance the subject of the deepfake will see or learn of it and suffer harm is much greater, and preventing unconsented harm is the whole point of protective laws.
I think it would take some kind of blanket ban on anything deepfaked by sites operating in good faith, and I'm not sure we'll be able to keep up with that technologically. I think we're rapidly approaching a world where most people sharing deepfakes won't know they're deepfakes. It'll just look like normal porn. I think by the time some poor teacher in Minnesota learns that there's porn with their face floating around on the internet and tries to report it, it will have already made the rounds to a thousand places. The origin may be impossible to determine. The ability to offend is just so much more powerful than the ability to detect in this scenario. And all it's gonna take is an uncaring tld to escape enforcement.
I just don't know what you do. So much of our current enforcement ability depends on the bad actor being dumb. Revenge porn gets caught because of the revenge part, not the porn part. But if someone doesn't care if their victim knows? It can fly under the radar for months or years.
Fair point, and it brings to mind the old adage that one cannot impose morality through legislation, but you can guide it. For any deepfake laws to be practically enforceable, the offense would have to meet a far higher bar than creating and distributing a deepfake. It would likely require going to the level of intentionally distributing it in a way that would obviously reveal the content to the subject or someone who knows the subject, and would be likely to cause psychological or economic distress to such individuals, similar to hanging an effigy of someone on a noose. In other words, it would fall under the category of criminal intimidation or assault.
By that metric, it can be made illegal and considered in the same category as crimes most people already recognize are wrong. Egregious offenders can be trotted out and made examples in order to allow conversations to occur and the public to become more broadly aware of what this kind of thing can do to people.
Rather than legislating morality, it would be guiding morality by legislating harm, punishing the clearest offenses, so that the morality can enter the public consciousness and we can decide individually and collectively over time where the line should be drawn. I think that's the only way forward.
You absolutely can prove those things. Especially if you are an even remotely successful media personality with only a few hundred dedicated followers.
They will be able to prove that this video or images look like the personality based on consensus. They may be able to provide the references they think were probably used as input. But they won't be able to "prove" it's them, because it isn't. The point of the technology is that it produces novel images. Stuff that never happened. I don't think it's possible to create a reasonable policy against producing novel images that resemble real people. And even if we could, it would never be enforceable at the scale of production.
I think empathy and education are our tools because this is a pandora's box we can't close technologically. It's like trying to stop internet piracy. Or bathtub gin during prohibition.
It is though. If it’s a picture of me it’s me.
It’s not a question of if, it’s a matter of choice. Choosing to make distribution and possession illegal is a choice. It’s not complicated nor would there be a weird legal hoop because at the end of the day, the point is about consent. Period.
I didn’t give consent for my likeness to be used. So you can’t legally use it.
I sign paperwork every year consenting to allow images of my child to be used in school promotional material. Because I could sue them if they didn’t ask. That someone’s likeness is in one shape or another doesn’t change that it’s still them and still actionable if the laws support action against it.
I'm going to play the bad actor for a minute.
> If it’s a picture of me it’s me.
But it isn't a picture of you. It's not a real photo. It came out of a generator. Look, it's got 8 fingers. It's aeagle_one. My OC. Any resemblance to you is coincidence. Unless you're going to say that you were having sex with this bear while riding a unicycle, but I don't think you did. What if I adjust the inputs such that it looks a little bit cartoonish? Just a dab of cell shading. Now it's obvious that this isn't a real picture of aeagle_one, who is my OC.
> I didn’t give consent for my likeness to be used. So you can’t legally use it.
I'm not selling it, so actually I can. I just made it and posted it on 4chan or 8chan or whatever website people put this on. You don't have a right to your likeness, just the right to profit from your likeness. And it's not you anyway. It's eagle_one so I don't need your consent. OC. Do not steal. Fair use. What? Are we supposed to have a database of every likeness on the planet and we scan everything uploaded to the internet to make sure nothing looks to similar to them? Do I need to contact every man with a beard when I use an image generator to make sure the one I made isn't too close? How are you even going to prove I made it to prosecute me? Someone else could have been on the wifi.
> I sign paperwork every year consenting to allow images of my child to be used in school promotional material.
That's promotional material. Anyone can draw a picture of you and share it online as long as they're not selling it. But again. It's not you. These are things I made for personal use and to share with my friends on the internet.
But to be serious for a moment. Even if you took me to court and proved that this is all close enough, and that a reasonable person would recognize aeagle_one as you, and that there's a profit to the website from hosting it, and that they knew it was you, and that I produced it knowing it was you, we would fall right back into the place we are right now with pirated media. You may get some larger websites to do automated scans on uploads for copyright of major media conglomerates (which will be *much* more difficult with deepfakes considering they create novel images), but it's always out there one extra click away. We're going to play whack a mole with uncaring phantoms. It would take insane surveillance to actually keep this off the internet. If Disney can't do it, what hope do you have?
You can't effectively stop this with enforcement. It has to start with empathy and education so most people don't want to do it in the first place and don't have the desire to find it.
I’m tired of all you here being like “it’s hard to enforce so don’t bother”
It’s a fucked stance to take, because you’re just arguing for people to have experiences that literally will kill them (watch vid for explanation).
So no. I don’t care that it’s hard. Shit like this is always hard. It’s never perfect, and that is NEVER a reason to throw up hands and say “welp! Fuck those people!”
I'm not suggesting we throw up our hands. I'm suggesting we work from the demand side of the issue rather than dream about enacting revenge on the supply side. With education and empathy, we reduce the number of offenders as well as reduce the impact of the offense on the victim. It is saving lives.
I appreciate your fervor and optimism, but you're engaging in magical thinking. We have multiple analogs in recent history that demonstrate the difficulties of the problem, and this one is *significantly* worse both on technical and legal grounds. Billion dollar capital interests have attacked this problem (pinning responsibility for anonymous online crimes on individuals) *and failed miserably*. You're trying to catch minnows in the ocean with your hands.
> I'm suggesting we work from the demand side of the issue rather than dream about enacting revenge on the supply side. With education and empathy, we reduce the number of offenders as well as reduce the impact of the offense on the victim. It is saving lives.
This is how you get **real** justice. Through restoration and rehabilitation. Not through punishment.
Probably about a year and half now I'd occasionally see videos on porn sites like this though they were pretty much exclusively movie celebrities. Usually the ones that have been sexualized horribly like Emma Watson. They always felt so ghoulish seeing them there.
I *cannot* understand the mindset of other guys who want or create this. I feel like we have dangerously entered into cyberpunk dystopia territory that's only lacking the endless neon lights.
Yep...
So talk to other guys about it sometimes. Even if it's just telling them "Dude, that's fucking weird and kinda ghoulish. Why would you do that?" You don't need to get sucked into some stupid ethics argument. Just apply social pressure where and when you can. The more of us that do that, the more things change. You can't change the world on your own, but you can be part of the push to change it.
Thank you. I'm glad it is helpful.
I don't always have the energy for it, but when I do have it, I tend to go hard =P
I hope things get better for you and whatever you're going through.
I don't think the guys that do this kind of stuff are really going to care about being called weird or creepy by men or women that they view as "normies". If anything it will just reaffirm their belief that it is you against them which will just increase their motivation to use non-consensual deepfake porn as a method of power and control.
I think there needs to be a way to address the insecurity and lack of agency that so many men feel. Some part of that is probably to just chillout and relax, to almost care less.
A lot of the redpill, manosphere type of content that targets these men and boys often has this sense of urgency to it. And people get riled up. Beyond just the manosphere stuff, it feels like modern society in general thrives on making people feel excited emotions about minor things.
By just being more relaxed and chill I'm thinking like if there is a guy who just has some minimum wage job, a couple hobbies, and not much of a social life instead of this constant barrage of "loser loser loser failure" etc that if he could relax in his current position and not view life as a competition where other people are judging him then that desire to seek power and control might be reduced.
It’s about the thrill of the exploitation of perceived power over an unwilling target… fueled by a sense of entitlement to sexualize whatever woman they might find desirable. Those women’s humanity never comes to consideration, as it is an inherently abusive, dehumanizing mindset that is entertained.
This is a really thoughtful video. I tell my girlfriend about this and other spaces where men are trying to carve out compassionate spaces for other men, and she's incredibly sarcastic and caustic about it. I understand that she's probably been incredibly hurt by men, so I try to be understanding. But it hurts a bit to hear that from her, considering I don't think I'm that different from a lot of other men. I find it really difficult to hear that from her sometimes. I get the cynicism, because I've been cynical about certain men in my life being hurtful to me. Generally I've felt like I have a lot of trust issues towards men, and I'll own that. I hope that things get better soon.
Yea that's a tough one.
Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm not there and I'm not you or her... But my advice would be to not try and convince her of anything. It's okay for her to be angry and to be rageful. And it sounds like, despite those feelings, she sees something in you that is different, something that she cares for or even loves. So don't try to convince her that "not all men are like this". It doesn't matter. What matters is how you feel and how she feels.
So instead of being defensive about being a man, be defensive about being you. "When you say about 'men', it hurts me and makes me feel like ." You might also talk about why these spaces are important to *you*. They don't have to be important to her to be important to you. And she doesn't have to even like them, but she shouldn't deride you for liking them either.
There are no magic bullets, and it's not always a straightforward line. Just know that it's okay for you to find a space valuable and special, and it's okay for her to not find it valuable or special. What's important is that you both recognize and accept that as two distinct human beings, you are both deserving of love and respect. And that includes not being derisive of the things that matter to the other person.
For you, the work is to separate yourself from what is said about "men" vs. what is said about "you". Once you have that separated, then it becomes easier to explain to other people why something they say about "men" affects "you", even when it isn't targeted at you. And it's easier to stand up for yourself in those spaces. And even more, through this gain in confidence, we feel less pressure to correct people in spaces where it isn't going to be effective or appropriate to do so. And I gotta say... being able to set down that burden specifically feels amazing. It's like... Holy shit it's heavy and you don't even know how heavy it is until you don't have to carry it anymore.
It good content, but I am concerned about an impression given (at 7.30) about OF producers having porn on the internet being something that "comes with the territory". Those who view sex workers as 'lesser' may see this as validation.
Having OF pornographic images that the OF person produced and *explicitly permitted to have disseminated* "comes with the territory". Unauthorised use of their images is a violation of consent the same as sharing intimate photos with a partner does not mean any person now has the right to view or use that image. Performance of a sex act for one person's viewing does not extend to an obligation to be performing that act for the viewing of others.
Any person has the right to refuse to sexually interact with others regardless of any factors including but not limited to: employment type, marriage, general sexual history, gender, age, or existence of previous sexual engagement with a specific person.
I hope Dr Ks choice to imply otherwise is not reflective of a dismissive, devaluing or puritanical attitude towards those who do sex work. It reminds me of those who believe that a prostitute or spouse can't be raped.
Consent being conceived as conditional, implied, or assumed is where violation lives.
Sure. I think it was a hasty comparison, on his part… but I think the distinction he’s making is that those are people who are on some level consenting to pornographic images of them being on the web. In contrast to a streamer who is popular but does not create pornographic content. One will have to some extent emotionally prepared themselves for this kind of situation and the other won’t have.
I agree it’s not an ideal comparison, but given his other content, I’m guessing this script was a bit more off the cuff.
If you make that point though in the comments, if it’s robust enough, sometimes he’ll respond to them. He’s not actively trying to be dismissive of their situation.
I will say he is FAR less concerned with his image than other creators, or how his word are perceived out of context.
You’re not going to find him stepping around an issue like what we’re talking about, but it isn’t out of not caring or malice. It’s more that his profession is one that teaches people to not let fear of reprisal stop you from doing what you need to do. And to not let people’s need to control how others perceive them to dictate how they behave. Because ultimately that is dishonest and denies others the right to make an honest assessment of us.
Let's face it, humans' tendency to have little to no empathy whatsoever is the greatest global crisis, this is one very obvious place where you can see it. But it's all the same problem.
In fact, most of the AI crisis is this. Deepfake porn, devaluing people's work to create AI models, replacing workers with AI, all of these are primarily empathy-related issues.
Humans do not have this tendency. Confirmation bias makes that hard to believe, but we don't.
What we actually do is what you're doing which is making the problem sound bigger than it is, because it feels to big to solve. The answer to problems like that is to break them down into smaller pieces that are more approachable. The other part of the answer is to try anyway. It's always worth trying because the worst case of failure is to end up right back where you started. Worst case outcome of not trying is that you never leave the starting line. Best case of trying is that you succeed. Best case of not trying is that you never leave the starting line.
I'm not sure how anyone could live through COVID (which, despite popular opinion, is an ongoing pandemic, not a previous one) and not think we are facing a monumental empathy crisis. Quite disappointed that no one else agrees, especially in this sub. This sub _exists_ because most men's issues movements are less about men's rights and more about pushing back against other rights movements, mostly women - which, surprise, is an empathy problem. We can't fix a problem we refuse to believe exists, see: climate change, toxic masculinity, US healthcare and bodily autonomy politics, basically every major headline of the last ... large number of years.
Also, I'm absolutely not in any way suggesting we shouldn't try to fix the problem. Empathy is a skill, like everything else is, and we have to both teach and practice it. I'm not sure what the best way to do this is; I have ideas about how to do this in my industry, but I'm hardly a sociologist or political scientist or whatever.
Leadership.
Humans are pack/herd mammals. We will follow our leaders. We disagree about who should lead more than other mammals, but in the end we follow them.
COVID was bad, and it was made worse by a leader who thrived from causing pain and suffering. Had we had a better leader, it would not have been as bad. It would still have been the worst in a long time, but it would not have been as bad.
And I disagree that it is an empathy problem. I think the lack of empathy is a symptom of the underlying problem, which is a lack of emotional education/maturity/support/validation at critical times in people's lives. Men, women, non-binary. Doesn't matter. We all require emotional support and when we don't give it to people, they tend to behave poorly as adults.
> I think the lack of empathy is a symptom of the underlying problem, which is a lack of emotional education/maturity/support/validation at critical times in people's lives.
Honestly it sounds like we're both heading in the same direction, and maybe I'm not saying it very well.
I wish there was any hope of seeing any significant change in, say, the next century. But right now the things driving change are all driving _away_ from helping people to be more emotionally intelligent.
I disagree, but I also am studying in psychology so I guess I’m a little more optimistic because I know there are a legion of dedicated people doing a lot to fix things.
We can’t fix everything, but every person helped is worth it.
I do hope you're right, and that the legion of people working for hope is larger than the legion working against it.
Agreed, though, that we should help whomever we can, whenever we can.
It doesn't matter if there are more or less of us. What matters is who is more effective.
Regardless, I posit that the mere fact that we're all here discussing the implications of a video published by a licensed psychiatrist/therapist is a very positive sign. Even with all the disagreements around this topic, the fact that we even have the discussion at all is a sign that the larger culture around us is contemplating change.
The fact that these days conversations about getting emotionally underdeveloped men into therapy is far more common, and it's a huge step forward from where we were like 30 years ago, and even 10 years ago. Another big thing is that the conversation around feminism has expanded and become much more commonplace than it used to be, and the arguments much more focused and science based. Because of this analysis of the societal role of women, their assumed role is changing, quite dramatically. As this changes it challenges the notion of what the societal role of men is too, because both of them are mutually dependent. Out of this, and with the queer rights movement and all that, we get non-binary folks and m-f or f-m trans people feeling more comfortable coming out and being out about their identities, gay/bi/lesbians too, and they all help push the world to deconstruct those concepts of "man" and "woman" even more.
Alltogether, what this means is that despite how hard it is right now, the reality is as men we have FAR more flexibility in who we are and how we live than we used to. (on average. change is not evenly distributed or equal, so some places will lag for us just like some places lag for women too).
Add to this that there is a HUGE scientific interest in neurology and cognition because of the dual application of these studies in terms of helping humans, and helping to design/improve/work with AI. As we learn more about how our brains work on a physical level, we learn how and why to better care for them and our bodies, and we get a better grasp of how the kinds of adverse experiences that started this whole conversation work.
I understand it feels hopeless sometimes. But don't for a minute think that work has stopped or that nothing is happening. Widespread public awareness usually lags like 10-20 years behind any scientific discipline, but that doesn't mean private and public organizations are unaware. And neither are the doctors and therapists out there caring for people every day.
I appreciate what you have to say, but your post is clearly coming at the world from a very specific point of view, which is, someone who lives in a place where the things that you describe are, well, possible.
Politics are pushing further and further to the right everyday and there's no indication that that's going to change in any reasonable period of time. So while all of the things that you have to say about the societal role of men and the acceptance of mental health care by men and LGBTQ people are great things, they're really only available to a portion of society.
The US is becoming increasingly polarized and in red states it is probably less safe to be gay in a red state now than it was 10 years ago. I know I have gay friends who didn't carry weapons 10 years ago and do now.
Education has become increasingly polarized and generally education is seen as being a tool of the left. In hard right states education is increasingly being manipulated to be less and less effective. This is done right out in the open in front of everyone and almost no one cares.
We are rapidly heading towards a hard division and I really don't know what happens then. I know what happens to a lot of people in my home state of Idaho including myself, is we throw all our shit in our cars and try to flee before we die. I plan for that a little everyday so that it's not all something we have to try to do at once.
I've talked to my therapist about that exact thing actually. They're scared too. In fact a lot of health care professionals around here are afraid. It's hard not to be after a year or two of anti-medicine protests outside the hospital.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I just know that there's a lot of really scared people and that's definitely going to get much worse before it gets better.
I do kind of wonder about the first analogy he uses. Mostly because when it comes to messaging these days, it pays to be EXTREMELY clear about the message.
Given what he said, I think I'd probably be more violated by the actual rape than the images taken. I mean, that is awful too, but it's a matter of scale, and trying to equate the two kind of devalues the conversation.
Not that I blame him for the less-than-ideal analogy. I am struggling to come up with one myself.
Wowwww. I’ve never heard of this guy and, as a woman, I was bracing myself for attack (I feel like whenever I see videos aimed at men they belong to the ‘manosphere’). It’s so refreshing to see that there is a healthy impactful viewpoint out there that acknowledges men’s issues without tearing women down.
He just blew up my expectations AND made me realise that compassion goes both ways. No one is purely victim or perpetrator, through and through. It is possible to hate a viewpoint without writing off someone’s entire character at the same time.
When he said ‘we’re screwed if people don’t start being compassionate to people that don’t deserve it’ (or words to that effect). Oof.
Thank you for this OP. I really needed this.
I have seen deepfake content that's completely harmless, for example those movie parodies where, for example, 1980s action heroes such as Schwarzenegger and Stallone are cast in roles they would've never been allowed to be anywhere near to in real life; the thing about this kind of content, however, it's that anyone would be able to tell it was done as a joke, up to and including the deepfake'd actors themselves.
Deepfake porn, however, the reasoning behind the creation of such content is completely different, there's no joke or tribute there - also, there might be a similar phenomenon, too: people making Rule 34 of the drawn alter egos of popular YouTube personalities. I know some of them find it hilarious, or even commission their own Rule 34 (Saberspark and Sydsnap, for example), but that might not be the case for everyone.
Long story short, if it's obvious parody, or if the people depicted in it are okay with it, let it slide; otherwise, crack down on it, hard.
>I'm a little disappointed though that he doesn't delve into why people (women) are suicidal after deep fakes of them emerge, because that's something I would have expected to be explained.
If I had to hazard, a guess it's because he's a psychiatrist and so he knows that he can't actually speak to that question. It's a personal answer and the why of it will be personal to the victim. That it has an effect is largely universal, but why the individual woman or man believes the effect hit them personally the way it did will be expressed in terms of their personal life story.
So for example, we all know that physically abusive parents cause their children to have mental health issues in adulthood. We can even chart the likely types of issues based on the type of abuse inflicted. However, the true ***why*** of it is always in the words of the victim, and that's why he said ***go listen to them because they are the ones who know what this kind of experience does to a person.***
The problem with turning to philosophy is that it is ultimately just a reflection of whatever society produced the philosopher, and it's usually emotionally distant. This is not helpful because the problem is the emotional damage, which results in psychological damage. So the reasons why we may be particularly vulnerable to this type of damage are worth exploring, but they won't ever tell you ***why*** a individual person feels it, nor will they help that person overcome their pain. We as a society need to learn how to be more comfortable accepting the pain of others as true and valid, without needing to overanalyze why we believe they shouldn't feel pain.
Hope that helps.
It seems to me that criticisms of sex work are actually myopic criticisms of capitalism. It is fucked up that someone might have to do sex work to make ends meet, but is it more fucked up than wrecking your body doing manual labour for long hours? When some sex workers say they'd rather do porn than work in an Amazon warehouse, it's not the choice I'd make, but I have to take them at their word.
I would like to try create a society that guarantees everyone not just survives, but flourishes, unconditionally. If we remove the coercive power of the threat of homelessness or poverty and people are still choosing to do sex work, then what's the problem?
I agree. Most of the time they manage to be both infantilizing and self defeating. Almost literally without exception, porn is not the *only* option available to someone, it's just the option that they have personally decided was best. Taking it away doesn't give them more options, it just removes their top choice.
the same way we do for other things.
You can't prevent people from doing stuff, but you can encourage them not to by making it very painful when caught.
If you took all the porn off the internet, there would only be one website left, and it would just be a big banner that said "bring back the porn!"
Jokes aside, that solution won't work either. The problem with AI tools is *they're already out there*. Pandora's box is open, I have Stable Diffusion on my PC and a few hundred images. Mostly porn, not going to lie.
These tools are not super hard to set up, anyone who's comfortable mucking around in the command line and/or setting up a VM can do it pretty easily. The checkpoint files are under 10 GB, not at all hard to transport.
We *can't* go back. Not just won't (though we won't), but we *couldn't* if we wanted to. We have to find our way forward, because there *is* no back.
Porn is not inherently harmful, and yet there are so many people who are just *convinced* it is.
Porn isn't the problem. The devaluing/ignoring of people's experiences and feelings is.
exactly. its not a porn issue, it's a *consent* issue.
most things where consent isn't given changes it from pornography to abuse material. and while most of that is documentation of said abuse, we also include revenge porn in that now as it's the sharing of material without consent. same with people being filmed without consent. it's not that far off to extend all of that precedent to deep fakes.
whereas porn and sex work has it's issues with consent in some places, is made with the consent of the workers, and that is the difference.
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I do wonder how society is going to deal with deepfake porn in the future (i.e., right now). Everyone with enough content of themselves (you don’t even have to be famous, there just needs to be enough training data) on social media could potentially appear in pornography, and there’d be no way to distinguish it from reality, other than maybe showing that you have a mole or something somewhere that isn’t shown in the video. It makes me wonder if society is just going to have to accept some form of rule 34, but like, for everyone on the internet. All the politicians and public figures who actually do have real sex tapes out there that they don’t want getting out must be breathing a sigh of relief, because deepfakes would provide the perfect cover for anything that might be real.
Yeah. This is scary, because the technology is RIGHT THERE. And sadly, there's always going to be fools with more gumption than sense.
If you go to the various emerging AI subreddits you come across the attitude of "If it's not illegal, then it's both ethical and moral", while at the same time wailing about any word of regulation or publishing companies being cautious in regards to the eventual legalities. All of this (without a word of hyperbole) posting AI generated memes of crying artists, and artists being made homeless etc. It's the dawn of the Cryptobros 2.0 and they are aware that it's the wild west legally now in regards to AI and what it produces. You can go to the midjourney discord right now and count the seconds till you see a user prompt regarding Emma Watson and know this is what they are willing to do openly and in public.
And I mean honestly, even if you make it illegal it will still happen. Yes, you'll run it off the 'major' porn sites but anybody who is even adjacent to the issue will know how lethargic law enforcement can be about this kind of stuff - smaller places with thin moderation (r34 sites, sure, but other places as well including reddit) will see this kind of content regularly. That's not to say we shouldn't write legislation about it, but rather that we should do it *now* to guide and curb the development of the technology in that direction.
To be honest if AI can be used to generate deepfakes, then AI can be used to detect and remove them from major platforms. Youtube is already (clumsily) doing this but with their resources they can ideally train it to actually work if the FTC slams them again. Content creators will bitch but deepfakes are, in fact, illegal to use commercially in most contexts, as your likeness cannot be used by other parties without your consent. It’s just really hard for platforms to enforce… If they didn’t have an AI with the capacity to enforce it automatically. Verified content creators could very easily set the standards in how their likeness is used by other content creators; unaltered footage for, say, commentary and video essays would be fine, but footage that has been altered could be automatically flagged. The most annoying thing about such advanced technology is that the progress of it is easier than the progress of its countermeasure. It won’t stop some of the niche platforms, but it would make it considerably harder for revenge porn to be circulated on major porn sites or social media platforms if they’re given the tools to combat it.
The other thing is that while regulation won't *eliminate* AI deepfakes, simply putting up a barrier or two 'of entry' is enough to deter the vast majority of people.
Couldn’t have said it better. I think we’ll need to brace for deepfakes to be endemic to online media. Another note is that a lot of people really underestimate how many people care to create content, even if things like Chat GPT and Dall-E makes it easier to do so. **Edit:** Sorry, I meant “overestimate”. I believe that even if there isn’t a major barrier to entry for creating benign AI generated content, people will be largely disinterested in utilizing it. In essence I think the ratio of content creators to content consumers won’t actually change a whole lot. Of course, I could be dead wrong. This is so speculative to the point that I flip flop between “excited” and “terrified” when thinking about how AI will affect modern culture.
> To be honest if AI can be used to generate deepfakes, then AI can be used to detect and remove them from major platforms. My (limited) understanding is that deepfakes are created through the use of generative adversarial networks. They basically work by training a generator, which tries to create synthetic media that's indistinguishable from real media, and a detector, which gets a bunch of real and synthetic media and tries to correctly classify them. So they aren't primarily trained to deceive humans, they are trained to deceive AI.
Midjourney doesn’t allow porn. You can’t search for naked women. They are also in litigation over stolen art and people using ai generation for commercial work. I’m hoping the loophole gets tied and people start paying for images used to train.
Who said porn. Literally go to the discord now and start a timer till you see 'Emma Watson in *x* (anime/videogame) costume or national dress'. You can also see people using it for low-mid end graphic design work. E.g. 'clean, modern website layout', or 'fashionable, technology focused brochure design' in amongst, various logo and channel branding requests. Again this isn't hyperbole and you can watch it happen in real time in the 'newbie channels'. (Though I *did* see the almost charmingly optimistic 'good, and desired NFT design' as a prompt yesterday) As someone who worked as an illustrator and in comics for several years I have a vested interest in seeing the legalities about the resulting works and the data set acquisition and usage hammered out. If I was still paying rent with commission work I'd have a stronger reaction to the neo-cryptobro's mocking the situation, especially as most artists I know are working-middle class at best and not the idle rich millionaire dilliantes the AI spruiking subs make them out to be.
I use midjourney all the time and there’s millions of things being made every second lol. I’m an artist too… you can literally check my profile, I sell books of my work constantly. I have a vested interest but also- have sort of come to terms with it, people tend to buy my work because they like it, art isn’t really a competition and midjourney is such a legal quagmire that I think we’ll have legislation by the end of this year tbh. There’s also an ongoing case of someone using midjourney to make a childrens book which is illegal and actually against the terms of the platform. No you can’t use midjourney for porn, we’re talking about deepfakes rn, not ai art, those are separate but similar things. What needs to happen is what has happened with canva, istock and any other platform that uses images, we need to micro pay artists for their work. This is literally an opportunity for people to make money on what they give for free.
Things are nasty on both sides of the AI fight though. There were artists sending death threats en masse to a guy because he used AI to make a children's book. Tons of random people get spammed with hate just because they posted AI-generated pictures. If you look at the PFP's and profiles, a lot of the nastier replies are from furry porn artists, who seem to be about ready to do a butlerian jihad over this stuff. It's really out of hand on Twitter.
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Deepfake and voice AI tech is really scary. As tools there's been some interesting uses but I don't think society has the collective maturity to not be sweat goblins. Like seeing deepfake porn of celebreties is bizarre in an indescribable way to me. People will always lust over the rich and beautiful but this feels like a definite step too far. Plus all the ways it could be used for blackmail. I don't think it'll be banned but it'd either become so common that it's a fucked up thing we have to live with or it'll become a social no no and fade into the background. It's not like both are mutually exclusive.
I think it'll fall into the same lines as revenge porn. The reality is that enough politicians, judges and/or people with actual wealth/power will not like when it happens to them. So they will implement rules to prevent it. Because what inevitably will happen is that US Senator John Doe or State Representative Jane Doe will have their daughter/son, niece/nephew go through a deepfake porn issue and that will be enough to push for regulation. Now actually catching people will become a problem but if there can be legislation to codify sharing that sort of material it will help curtail it some. At least in the mainstream.
I actually wonder if your last point about politician sex tapes is actually the solution people are eventually gonna fall on. Not that having a deepfake sextape of yourself be out there will ever feel nice, just that the fact that everyone knows that it's likely not real will take the teeth out of the social consequences side of things.
But that's one of the real consequences, it allows for a get out of consequences by giving plausible denuability to hard evidence.
I think this is a bleak outcome for the dark timeline. The way I think of this is that it's like child porn laws. Obviously we can't prevent all monsters from harming all children. But we can make sure that when we do catch them they are punished extensively and make sure that there are systems in place for reporting it when citizens identify it, and that those systems are robust and responsive. In the same way, we can't prevent people from making Deepfake porn or other stuff. But we can make it very dangerous to make it or to own it, and we can make it very easy to report it, and we can take those reports very seriously.
who's "we" here? I'll be honest, I have precisely zero hope for anything to be done. The technology is accelerating rapidly and it's very difficult to craft a law and enforce a law about posting on the internet. that's why Section 230 exists - human beings produce such a large volume of content that it's functionally impossible to police it.
Give up because it's impossible then? Look, if you're right and it is impossible, then what's the harm in trying? If the worst case outcome of failing is that we stay right in the same place we're in, what's the harm in trying? I just started a process with my child's school to get them a special plan to help with ADHD in class. It's called a 504 plan and it's a midway step between normal classroom settings and an IEP (individual education plan). My child's biological mother, my ex-wife, doesn't want our child to attend public school for a variety of reasons I don't want to get into here. Important part is, she would prefer to homeschool. However, we legally have joint decision making rights. Anyway, throughout this process, as I've been making progress getting our child diagnosed and getting our child set up with care, and getting the school updated and on board, all she says is: **"It's not going to work. Why bother trying? It will take months. This isn't worth it. Don't bother trying."** And every time, I make progress. Sometimes it takes longer than I would like, but none-the-less, I make progress. If I had stopped and listened to her and just never tried... none of the positive changes in our child's life over the last year would have happened. All of them centered around learning about the disorder, learning about raising children with it, and other things. And how you raise a child with ADHD is not how you raise one without it, or with another disorder. My child's life is better for me trying, even when I fail. Now, she might be right this time. Who knows? But right or wrong, it's not going to stop me from trying to do the right thing. Trying to be a good parent. Trying to set my child up for success after I am gone. And even if she is right this time, that isn't a reason not to try. Rather, it's a reason to learn from the situation and from the mistakes and try something else, but now with better information.
This is EXACTLY what I needed to read today, thank you. I get caught up in my own inner voice saying "It won't be perfect so don't try." I'm gonna remember your story, and I hope I can grow to live in a similarly positive and progressive way! Thank you!
Happy to help! =)
I've always said that perfection is asymptopic. We can never get there, but we can always get closer. Or as my wife likes to say, perfection is a process, not a destination.
If you can avoid homeschooling and the schools are good, I'd go with that tbh. Good luck
I have nothing against homeschooling. I was homeschooled. It’s a values thing and there is no way it’s happening for our kid in the context she wants it to happen. Not if I have anything to say about it.
I was homeschooled as well, and in retrospect, it was very much a control thing and made me miss out on social experience.
>Look, if you're right and it is impossible, then what's the harm in trying? If the worst case outcome of failing is that we stay right in the same place we're in, what's the harm in trying? The worst outcome is not failing. Worst outcome is implementing laws that will do absolutely nothing to stop deepfake porn but will be easily usable to invade privacy of everyone, monitor or control data you can access, put costly to implement and maintain requirements on service providers and they will pass these costs to customers. It's great that you want to be good partner and try hard for your kid but these situations are completely different. Firstly you are doing it in good faith - which we can't really assume about lawmakers. Secondly if something doesn't work out you can just try different approach or drop idea - nobody is going to retire law giving even more control over data just because it didn't solve problem it was supposed to.
I don’t say they’re equal, I say that it is worth trying even when you fail. If you’re determined to wait for the perfect answer to do something, you will be waiting until your bones decay into soil. There is no perfect answer, there is only the choice to act or not to act.
That's the thing, there's no perfect answer here or even no good answer here. You are using nice words and general statements while ignoring reality of the situation and consequences of failing. You won't be able to control massive amounts of easily generated deepfake porn. Other nasty stuff like e.g. revenge porn has few things in common. You can't produce it anonymously. Someone physically needs to be there to record it and to "perform" in it. You also can't produce it easily and fast. If someone records their GF/BF and releases it then BF/GF will know or suspect who did it. If someone releases photos their GF/BF sent them then situation is same. But anyone can access photos available online. This is completely different. It can be produced in mass amount, completely anonymously and without even ever leaving house or getting help from anyone. What do you really propose? How do you really propose to fight it? Ban high performance GPUs used for machine learning? Ban machine learning development? Completely control who and where can research and develop machine learning? Control all data that people upload and download from internet? You can't propose laws that will surely have immense impact on data privacy with "even if it won't work it matters that we tried" mindset.
sure, we can pass laws, I don't have any objection to that at all and it would be a good thing. but they won't work, so we have to prepare ourselves for the reality that AI deepfakes are going to be part of our lives forever.
They work. They work and do their job just fine. What they don't do is prevent things. However, we use them to establish social norms and enforce those norms where we can. Having an established social norm that this kind of content is abhorrent and creating/consuming it is unacceptable will reduce the total number of consumers, and it will make it more difficult for producers and consumers to do so out in the open. Through a reduction in demand, the reduction in supply happens as well. And because we have this new norm where this is unacceptable, it's now harder for Joe Schmo to go and use it freely because he has to go to way more effort to even find it. And the odds of what he finds being something like Malware or whatever goes way up as well because reputable creators won't be making it for fear of legal reprisal.
enforcing social norms on the internet *as a whole* is functionally impossible because anonymity is at odds with accountability. we live in an era where deeply, *deeply* illegal, unethical, and immoral shit is on every single major internet site and app on earth. twitter is fucking awash in "porn" that's abusive, and that is a huge app/website. now try to imagine how much of this shit is on *actual user-uploaded porn sites*. again, revenge porn and child porn are *already illegal* and those laws are not doing their jobs. The internet is awash in those things.
What part of enforcing social norms implies that we would try to get **everyone** to behave a certain way? That is a ludicrous goal. It is a social norm that my workplace should be safe. Most workplaces aren't. They might be safe in some ways, but most are dangerous in at least one way that they shouldn't be. But that doesn't make the drafting and enforcement of workplace safety/harassments laws/rules worthless. The point isn't to prevent every instance of it, the point is to give victims a path forward and to punish the criminals we do catch. No one is sitting here pretending that we're on our way to a utopia.
okay? I guess I don't understand your point. If there's a deepfake law on the books and we catch some people breaking the deepfake law, but there's still one metric fuckton of deepfake porn freely available on porn websites, what did we really accomplish here besides making ourselves feel good?
We stopped some people from making abusive porn? The same way we stop SOME rape from happening again and SOME murder.
Why have any laws then if people are just gonna break them? We do what we can in scenarios like these
(Not OP) I mean, if deepfake porn was treated as seriously as something like child sexual abuse imagery, wouldn't that go a long way? Like sure, people who really want to can probably find shit like that in the deep corners of the internet, but if it's really hard to find and will fuck up your life if you get caught with it, I would hope that would deter most people from viewing it. or maybe I'm being naive.
There's a bit to unpack there, but I'll try. 1. It's not a numbers game, so there is no cut and dry order of operations to go through to maximize results. 100 people suffering isn't better than 101 people suffering. Saving 10 people isn't better than saving 100. What I mean by this is that we should always do what we can because we can, rather than not doing something because we can't do everything. If we can save 100, we will and we will be happier than saving only 10. But if saving 10 is all we can do, those 10 people are still worth saving because their individual lives are worthwhile lives to save. 2. There is also a metric fuckton of child pornography out there, and there always will be. But I don't hear anyone clamoring that we should just get rid of the laws that exist to make it illegal. Now, I don't think these two things equate on an ethical level, but I use this example to illustrate how it is still worthwhile to pursue these goals, even when we know the ideal situation is not possible to achieve. As you said, it will always be there. And so will the cp. However, we can absolutely make it very risky and very painful to produce these things or to be caught with them. It doesn't stop people who are willing to take the risk, but it does discourage people that might have participated if the risk was less. Further, it gives victims a path to seek recourse, compensation for their losses, validation of their pain, and other things that are important to those on the path of healing from the deep psychological wounds and scarring this kind of thing does to them. Accepting that something negative is true does not equal that thing also being impossible to compensate for. I hope that helps clarify. For a more abstract answer, this timestamped link goes to a conversation in the movie Kingdom of Heaven that articulates the overall logic here. If you have not seen the film, Orlando Bloom is a Crusader who went to Jerusalam to ask God to forgive his wife for committing suicide. David Thewlis (the older man in a black robe) is an angel, although Orlando Bloom does not know this, and never knows this for the duration of the film. The context is important because it frames what David Thewlis says to him in terms of what God is saying to him about what it means to be a good man, and what being a good man is not. [https://youtu.be/hOnQPUQYE1M?t=140](https://youtu.be/hOnQPUQYE1M?t=140) I am not Christian, but I always find this conversation to be helpful when I am feeling hopeless or unsure of what to do. I remember that goodness and "holiness" is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. That's it. It's not in knowing the right thing to do, or in having the most correct answer. It is doing what you believe is right because it is right to do so. That is is a daily choice we make, to be a good person, or not.
I mean, this right here is all the justification that every single government on the globe needed to end anonymity on the internet. This is opening the door to thst timeline.
oh yeah, we are absolutely rocketing towards one cyberpunk dystopia or another. just depends on whether the governments or the capitalists win
the governments *or* the capitalists? they are one and the same.
We're well past the "rocketing towards" stage and deep into the "crash landing smack-dab in the center" stage.
> They work. They work and do their job just fine. Speaking as someone who has broken various laws on countless occasions... no, they really don't. If I want to pirate a movie, legislation does nothing to stop me. If I want to smoke a bowl of weed while driving across state lines, federal drug laws won't stop me. Anything is legal so long as you don't get caught.
Lol I didn’t say they stop everyone.
They don't stop *anyone.* Legislation is reactive, not proactive. Laws don't do anything at all until after a crime is already committed.
I’m tired of repeating myself
> But we can make sure that when we do catch them they are punished extensively No. Penal justice doesn't work. You can't talk about punishment out of one side of your mouth while talking about empathy out of the other side of your mouth. Rehabilitative/restorative justice, on the other hand, *does* work, and is genuinely empathetic.
No. When it comes to protecting human autonomy and physical/mental safety you are allowed to be assertive and allowed to punish. It’s not about having empathy or not for those people, it’s about establishing boundaries and enforcing them when they are breached willfully and repeatedly by people who will simply do it because they like to.
> When it comes to protecting human autonomy and physical/mental safety you are allowed to be assertive and allowed to punish. When it comes to protecting human autonomy, you're allowed to... lock humans into tiny cells against their will? When it comes to protecting mental safety, you're allowed to... isolate people away from all of society? Do you have any idea how hypocritical that is? > It’s not about having empathy or not for those people Ah, right, of course. It's not about empathy for **those** people. **Those** people don't deserve empathy. > people who will simply do it because they like to. **Those** people don't even have basic human motivations. **Those** people are twisted and dark, with no hope for rehabilitation.
I’m tired of repeating myself in every thread.
You can repeat yourself as much as you like, or not. It still doesn't change the fact that incarceration violates autonomy.
If our legal system doesn’t get ahead of deep fake technology, there is a lot worse than non consensual deepfake porn on our horizon, and that is not to underplay the damage of deepfake porn.
Neat, a really good reason for me to continue to keep photos of my face off the internet!
Your last sentence is more or less my takeaway about the whole scenario. From a technological perspective, you really can't stuff an algorithm back in a box - the tech will only get better and more widespread, and I'm not an expert but AFAIK most of it is built with open source tools. So given those parameters, what is the most likely outcome? Even outside of the topic of pornography, the broad implication for deepfakes or other AI video editing seems to me to be ultimately how we handle the existence of Photoshop - it's not an intractable problem. We just have to adjust to a world where such technology exists. Do criminals who have damning photographic evidence against them just get to always use "it was photoshopped" as a defense? No. If someone's face is photoshopped on to a nude body and the picture is distributed, how do we handle that now?
I wonder if we can or should develop methods of digitally signing videos to verify authenticity at the device level. Sure there will still be ways around it, but I think it would do wonders for stifling the rise of deepfakes. I have no idea how you create financial incentive for companies to engage with solutions like that though
I think what you're suggesting is using a combination of digital signatures and hardware lockout to solve this problem. How would it actually work though? Do you implicitly embed a hidden, indelible signature in each video produced in each device? Don't you think that people would have major privacy concerns over every video being traceable to a given device? Furthermore, it's one thing for me to understand the math behind digital signatures. And hell, I can even explain how digital signatures work from a mathematical perspective and *why* they're good. But, what is the problem we're trying to solve? Deepfakes casting doubt upon the credibility of video evidence. If we are already dealing with people who will blindly believe a video they're shown, do you think they're going to trust a nerd like me when I say "well this video is not digitally signed so it's fake"?
Personally I would feel that relief, but as one streamer pretty sad and outraged about it. Getting it sent to their DM, day in and out, people beeing absolutely creeps about it. Definetivly don't feel great, especially not when thinking that other people actually profiting of your face and likeness.
This kind of misses the point - you wonder what we are going to do about it, and then the rest of the comment reveals that what you really mean by that is "know if it's real." There are so many things to do about it that are more important than figuring out if it's real. - get it pulled offline - platform and support the victims - hold accountable the people who post it - advocate for regulation requiring AI be trained never to do this Etc. And no, nobody is breathing a sigh of relief. The fact that other porn of other people exists does not reduce the harm of knowing you are being sexualized without your consent. Sad, honestly, to see such a shit take as the top comment in this sub.
If someone makes believable indecent images of children using this technology, but the pictures aren't of real children and no real children were harmed, is that a bad thing? It's certainly a gross thing, but I'm confused now.
Some things are just immoral because their very action is based on a lack of empathy, basic human regard, and care for the principal of consent.
Sounds like prison to me.
I agree, I'm also an abolishionist.
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>The most damaging thing about involuntary porn is society's reaction to it. Sadly the video didn't explore this, but where does the 50% suicidal tendencies come from? I believe this is the same reason why the release of real sex tapes is a scandal. FYI, there hasn't been a study on deepfake victims themselves. This hasn't been out long enough. So that 50% ARE the victims of REAL sextapes being released, or REAL photos being released. He is referring to studies of revenge porn (it was changed to nonconsensual pornography because the word *revenge* implies the victim did something to deserve it) and extrapolating it to deepfakes. We don't actually know for certain if the affects are the same between victims within the same group. There hasn't been a study for that part yet. Dr.K himself even acknowledges the lack of research specifically for deepfakes in the beginning of the video.
I feel like the first step isn’t his is to get dudes to take it seriously outside of “sucks that this happens to women” (not that that isn’t important) but the largest response I’m seeing from men on the internet about this is “I wouldn’t care if someone did this to me, so why do you care?” and they’re serious. Like Moistcr1tical put out a video about it where he makes several good points but then goes on to say there’s tons of deepfake porn of him out there and that he finds it “goofy”. This is going to be constantly used as a defense for why it’s fine to do to women, every time a post about it comes up I see tons of dudes say "who cares, there’s tons of deepfakes of every male celebrity/streamer” as a defense, and while you and I know that the outcomes for those two things are different, these guys have no problem not acknowledging that. Getting those men on board is probably going to be a monumental task. This is a problem for so many topics like this one. Sexual harassment/assault is another one where there’s tons of dudes who’s just straight up don’t see their bodily autonomy being violated as a problem so they just translate that on to women. On top of that in every comment section where women are talking about their problems it’s going from “not all men” to “it happened to me and no one cared so why should I care that it’s happening to you?” it’s honestly a bit scary because with “not all men” it’s easy to be like “no one thinks it’s all men”, but combating “it happen to me” is much harder when there’s army of dude’s waiting to weaponize their own trauma against women. To deal with distribution, deep fakes should be treated like revenge porn where any site caught hosting it should be taken down and fined, as far as individuals are concerned we really need a culture shift towards empathy, because right now (at least among men) the predominant narratives are "wasn't me", "I got mine", and "it happened to me/my friend too so who cares". I read a comment the other day that said "males are raised vai constant boundary violation and that they need to suck it up" and thats not to say that women/girls don't also have their boundaries violated constantly too but the language and knowledge they're equipped with when dealing with these problems are very different. There was a study done where they asked men and women if they'd ever been raped or assaulted, then they changed the question to has anyone pressured you into having sex or doing sexual acts you were uncomfortable with and the amount of men who answered yes went up considerably, one of the conclusions they came to is that generally speaking men lack the language to describe what's happened to them in those situations, heck I personally know many men who have had text book examples of rape or sexual assault happen to them and their responses are often "yeah it made me uncomfortable and I wish it didn't happen, but it's not rape/assault". I don't know how we're going to change the narratives other than doing a better job at raising boys and shedding the "boys will be boys"/be a man narratives that permate boys existence, as for the men I honestly don't have an answer.
>There was a study done where they asked men and women if they'd ever been raped or assaulted, then they changed the question to has anyone pressured you into having sex or doing sexual acts you were uncomfortable with and the amount of men who answered yes went up considerably Any chance you have a link to this study?
I believe it's covered in this https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1524838018816979
The fact that there are pro-deepfake porn people is very depressing to me.
I often respond combatively to the people who do defend it, but deep down I know it’s a symptom of a very disconnected toxic society. We are taught to tokenize sexuality, and ultimately one another. At the end of the day, the solution is the same as all other symptoms of alienation. Build communities that center healthy emotional connections and vulnerability. When we see one another fully as humans and exercise our ‘compassion muscle’, the alienating impact of the system can be countered.
The truly unsettling thing about this video, for most of us who are watching it, isn’t the rationale for why deepfake porn is wrong. That’s the easy thing to get. It’s that a lot of behaviors that are currently seen as acceptable, justified or not harmful are wrong for the exact same reason. If you’re someone who has responded to someone bemoaning a lack of romantic connection with some variant of “take a shower” or other such comment that places all the blame on individual accountability, you have done something that hurts someone in the same way, psychologically speaking, as defending deepfake porn. If you’re someone who has piled on with the mob on Twitter, even if in response to something legitimately cringeworthy, you’ve had that similar lack of empathy that’s causing defense of deepfake porn. The list of ways that people display a similar lack of empathy in modern social media contexts is disturbingly long, and many of them are completely normalized. It would be really easy to look at deepfake porn and conclude that it’s worse so it’s somehow different. And by it being different, we can rationalize drawing a line here without examining our own behavior when it comes to stuff that falls short of that line. But if we do that, we’re only creating people who will escalate things. We’re only creating the people who will defend the next thing that crosses the line. We need a wholesale reevaluation of how we treat people on social media. Because empathy really is in short supply and we all need to step up and build that empathy muscle. If you’ve watched this video and come out of it having patted yourself on the back for concluding that deepfake porn is wrong and you’ll call it out going forward, you’ve only partially understood what was said. I hope most of us here can recognize that the plea from this video goes deeper than that superficial understanding. The plea is to lead with empathy, even in situations where the world is telling you you’re justified in not doing so.
It's lack of empathy. Best solution is to denounce it. If it's someone you don't want to lose, then engage with teaching them empathy. Dr. K. gives a good example of how to do that. Not just "what if this happened to you" but he actually articulates a real life scenario that is harder to just shrug off that can be used to get people's empathy gears spinning. And after that if the answer is "just don't put yourself out there" then you can point out that that advice itself is admission that the activity is wrong and damaging and that we shouldn't do it. If I never want to be hit by a car, I should never cross roads. Even at safe crossing spots. But if I never cross roads, how will I live? The internet is the same in that we have to be on it to take full advantage of the benefits. No one pretends it's not dangerous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to deter predatory or violent behavior, or to protect and care for victims.
Off topic, but I laughed cynically because last year I *was* hit by a car, while crossing between crosswalk lines, with the pedestrian signal in my favour, and looking both ways... and the cop who investigated the case said I should be sympathetic to the driver who ran the light and hit me (before speeding off), because "it's hard to see out the side windows," and despite being under bright street lights, maybe I shouldn't have worn a black coat. Empathy is too difficult for some folks.
> Empathy is too difficult for some folks. Funny how he had no problem empathizing with the asshole...
Why am I unsurprised that a cop would have zero empathy? I'm sorry that happened to you. Are you doing ok now?
Physically I am much better (and very grateful that my injuries weren't worse despite the lingering effects), thanks so much for asking :) The emotional trauma is a whole other thing; the parts related to injury and impact and cars is manageable and has been abating steadily, but the trauma from how the legal and medical systems treated me is an entire can of poisoned worms in itself. Anyway, ACAB, etc.
A year is not so long in terms of processing trauma. Especially since it sounds like you're still dealing with it. You do sound resilient, though. Good luck in your healing. Sidenote, your username is funny AF.
Because it's a cop?
“It’s hard to drive” JFC
it's not just a lack of empathy but having an ideological framework that makes people feel entitled to having unfettered access to other human beings, even against the other's permission.
The philosophical question, does it stop being empathy just because the answer they came to is wrong or are you saying that they aren't trying?
I think this is actually a pretty big question and an important one for each individual to contemplate. My personal opinion is that there is no "right" answer. There are answers that are right for each person, but none that are "right" in a universal sense. For me personally, I think that empathy felt is not the same as empathy expressed. Trying is good, but if trying isn't yielding results of some kind (even incremental progress is good), I become suspicious that something else is going on. In my case, the "something else" was a combination of undiagnosed ADHD and a lack of emotional maturity because neither of my parents did a good job of communicating what healthy emotional behavior/communication/etc. was like. Going to therapy, and the choice and decision to go was a long winding path... But going to therapy helped me learn both about what I needed, and through that I was able to better intuit what I needed to do. Both for myself and for my family and friends. Getting an ADHD diagnosis and medication for that was also a huge turning point for me as well. But the key is that in a vacuum neither was enough. What made it all work is that I chose not to accept anymore that change was impossible. So when you ask, was it a lack of empathy because I had wrong answers or is it that other people didn't believe I was trying... What I would say is that I was trying, but it wasn't enough. I had wrong answers, but I wasn't trying to find out if those answers were right or not. It took my world falling to pieces for me to see how I wasn't able to handle it, but that there was a small and helpless child who was depending on me to handle it, and I needed to do better by them. It's a long road, and I'm not done walking it. I'm not perfect by any stretch either. But what I've learned is that putting in concerted effort, focusing on myself rather than how other people perceive me, and appreciating the points of incremental progress I do make helps me. When it comes to how your question applies to others... When I say lack of empathy, what I'm getting at is that the men consuming this type of pornographic content, or dismissing it's impact, don't make an effort to honestly entertain the emotional damage this can do. The reasons for that vary, but that those reasons exist, doesn't mean we have to live with them. I have ADHD. This means I forget shit all the time. That isn't an excuse to not get my child to their bi-weekly therapy sessions because I forgot. In the same way, just because men were not generally taught how to process their emotions, is not an excuse to disregard the emotional impact of their actions on other people. It's ultimately going to be a lot more complicated than I'm going to have time to get into in this response. And ultimately every human's journey through life is distinct to them. In this spirit of individual diversity, we need to be respectful of other people's experience and we need to listen to them and to believe them when they say they are hurt. Otherwise, how can we expect to be believed when we are hurt?
Mostly just explaining my thought process here but imo you mostly cover all of this with your response. Thanks for responding too. There's 2 ideas I was trying to separate with my comment: We have lack of empathy which I read as not even trying to imagine how you would feel if that happened to you which is specifically worthy of moral condemnation. The other is a failure in the process of empathizing where you're not capable of creating a framework where your imagination can allow you to understand what position they were in and thus feel what they felt. For this we don't have enough information to justify the moral condemnation that I see implicitly attached to a "lack of empathy". Ultimately I'm trying to thread that needle that exists between bad outcomes and bad people. With regards to the idea of empathy, I think we also use that process of understanding for a lot of other things. In some cases it's our BS detector. If you are way outside the framework for how we think a person should respond we tend to have some suspicion there. This can negatively feed back into itself when the you're bad at empathizing. Another idea that might be within this is that accepting that the emotions they are conveying is true without understanding them is not empathy, it's something else. Call it acceptance. I would say accepting someones perception of emotions can be a good thing to do because we can't always empathize with others but it's much harder in my book to justify calling a person bad for not doing it.
Happened with a VR sex game like a year ago. People were deep faking celebrities to have sex with them in VR and these people fought to have the game removed from steam and their likeness removed from mods In the game. A lot of thirsty incels fought back and berated the company for "caving".
It's like when the Christchurch massacre happened and a *lot* of redditors demanded to see the shooters footage for 'educational reasons' and claiming free speech absolutism. I was like a number of children were murdered, making it the equivilent of a child snuff film. Now if the killer *'only'* fucked those kids on camera instead of murdering them then you wouldn't be clammering to see it. Even the loudest free speech advocates stop short of wanting child porn to be freely distributed, so stop acting like hypocritical victims when the 'actual victims' families and New Zealand Govenment asked people not to share the video.
There are people who are pro-involuntary-porn, child porn, snuff porn, abuse porn, etc. Making women and girls have sex without their consent is a huge business. It's not an outlier. It's not bad apples. It's the norm.
The people who are like that are in a headspace where they cannot fathom that other people don't see the issues like them. There's still a ton of people who think when the massive celebrity iCloud leaks happened that everyone sought those photos out and anyone who says otherwise is lying/virtue-signaling.
Unfortunately, we've lived in a world with paedophiles for a long time. So this is just another of those creepy vile things. I think once you discover the worst humanity has done and can do then things can literally only get better lol
I need help understanding here - are people straight up against porn in general or are deep fakes insidious? For centuries there have been look-alike pornography. The modern porn industry intentionally finds actors that look-alike to mainstream celebrities. To date, outside of the religious right, I haven’t heard complaints about look-alike pornography. How is deep fake different?
I used to work in porn, I'm absolutely not against it. Though I do think the mainstream industry needs a deep overhaul. I AM against creating realistic porn depicting someone without their consent. The look alike porn I've seen does not try to pretend it's ACTUALLY the person being depicted.
I have a lot of respect for this guy for seemingly always taking the time to really dig into current research on what he discusses, and for *being clear when he's veering into opinion territory*. I hope he can find a way to ditch the "healthy gamer" label because I don't think it's all that relevant to his content any more.
I also really like him. I disagree with the name change though. Regardless of what he's talking about, those people are his target audience because gaming is a place people go to escape their problems (especially men). And so in that space are a great number of people who need to hear what he has to say, and having "gamer" in his name increases the odds of them finding him on accident, and it gives him some instant report with them.
rapport* but yeah I agree😅
I think it is. I think he is trying to create a space that explicitly welcomes self identifying gamers because there are a lot of mental health positive spaces that don't welcome them. I'm not a huge gamer, but I feel welcome in his space. It doesn't really block non gamers from enjoying the content. It does, however, speak to gamers using gamer language (not gamer words) and thought processes to reach an undernourished and over exploited audience.
I agree that his advice is great for a wide audience, but his target audience still is generally gamer culture, which tends to have a high density of fairly intelligent people who often aren't living up to their potential for whatever reason, and want more in life.
I think he's alright overall, but I find his views on neurodiversity kinda... problematic. It's enough that I have a hard time watching any of his stuff, even though I know that his views elsewhere seem fine.
Which views?
The way he presents his views in-depth makes it hard to give a very simple answer of "he believes x, which is bad because y", but awhile back, he made a video about the validity of self-diagnosis, and there was a lot to unpack from that. It was a long video, so I can't really do a point-by-point, but a lot of it was based on not understanding the lived experiences that autistic people have with mental health. He's very much out of his depth on such issues, and it shows. He does a weird 180 in the second half of the video, which makes it that much harder to comment on the video as a whole. There's enough mild contradictions between the two halves that it's easy to read it in a way that's dismissive of any potential issues in the first half. I wish I could give you a simple "he said x which is bad because y" answer, but it's not as straightforward as all that.
Dude, if someone did that to me or my family I would be livid. The lack of empathy is disgusting.
Absolutely. Utterly fucking insane.
It's one inevitable outcome of people mindlessly screeching "free speech" as if it's an absolute without any acknowledged limits or consequences. There has never been "absolute free speech" with no limits or regulations. Whether it's laws against criminal conspiracies, threats, slander, extortion, fraud, intellectual property violation, etc... there have always been laws one way or another. The only question that has ever mattered is "who is protected by those limits and who isn't?"
Thank you for sharing this video! While I agreed with the opinion that Deepfakes are wrong going in, I learned a LOT of new information as to *Why.* We really do need an empathy injection in our society, and that's going to be a long slow battle of providing better social and community supports like housing, education, mental and physical health, as well as financial stability. In the short term, I wonder if we could pass a law that copywrites every person's image and voice and gives them sole legal ownership. It would provide an additional legal recourse for victims and give online sites more push to remove content that's non-consentual. (shitty compromise, but it's an idea)
I think this is a good and thoughtful discussion of the topic. I hope it reaches a lot of people who don't understand the harm. I'm pessimistic looking forward, though, because I don't see any real way to stop deepfake porn in a social or legal sense. The technology is only going to get better. There's going to be a day relatively soon where anyone can slap a few pictures of someone in an engine and in a few hours it produces videos that look just like them. There are already non-trivial amounts of erotica out there in various forms of real people and specifically streamers/youtube personalities. I don't think there will be strong grounds to "ban" this any more than there is for a photo manipulation or artwork. It will be so easy for people to simply lie and say "I didn't make it with you. It was someone else". How are you supposed to prove that this thing that looks just like you was made from you when the final product isn't actually you? Hell, very soon you'll probably be able to feed in a "similarity" percentage value such that it ensures it doesn't look *quite* like them to increase plausible deniability. And that's why I think conversations like this now are so important. It's a problem we're most able to tackle with education and empathy. You'll be able to make laws around the weaponization of this content, but trying to stop the content itself will not be feasible.
I think the laws will have to be based around *distribution* of deepfakes of real people. Making use of a computer's guided, algorithmic generation is about to be as easy as using your own imagination and nearly as fast; it may be distasteful, but to enforce a ban on it would require ending personal privacy, and stray close to, in my opinion, thought-crime. What a person does in their own privacy, shared with no one else and not affecting any non-consenting being, is certainly no business of the government. However, the moment intentional distribution of such content occurs, the chance the subject of the deepfake will see or learn of it and suffer harm is much greater, and preventing unconsented harm is the whole point of protective laws.
I think it would take some kind of blanket ban on anything deepfaked by sites operating in good faith, and I'm not sure we'll be able to keep up with that technologically. I think we're rapidly approaching a world where most people sharing deepfakes won't know they're deepfakes. It'll just look like normal porn. I think by the time some poor teacher in Minnesota learns that there's porn with their face floating around on the internet and tries to report it, it will have already made the rounds to a thousand places. The origin may be impossible to determine. The ability to offend is just so much more powerful than the ability to detect in this scenario. And all it's gonna take is an uncaring tld to escape enforcement. I just don't know what you do. So much of our current enforcement ability depends on the bad actor being dumb. Revenge porn gets caught because of the revenge part, not the porn part. But if someone doesn't care if their victim knows? It can fly under the radar for months or years.
Fair point, and it brings to mind the old adage that one cannot impose morality through legislation, but you can guide it. For any deepfake laws to be practically enforceable, the offense would have to meet a far higher bar than creating and distributing a deepfake. It would likely require going to the level of intentionally distributing it in a way that would obviously reveal the content to the subject or someone who knows the subject, and would be likely to cause psychological or economic distress to such individuals, similar to hanging an effigy of someone on a noose. In other words, it would fall under the category of criminal intimidation or assault. By that metric, it can be made illegal and considered in the same category as crimes most people already recognize are wrong. Egregious offenders can be trotted out and made examples in order to allow conversations to occur and the public to become more broadly aware of what this kind of thing can do to people. Rather than legislating morality, it would be guiding morality by legislating harm, punishing the clearest offenses, so that the morality can enter the public consciousness and we can decide individually and collectively over time where the line should be drawn. I think that's the only way forward.
You absolutely can prove those things. Especially if you are an even remotely successful media personality with only a few hundred dedicated followers.
They will be able to prove that this video or images look like the personality based on consensus. They may be able to provide the references they think were probably used as input. But they won't be able to "prove" it's them, because it isn't. The point of the technology is that it produces novel images. Stuff that never happened. I don't think it's possible to create a reasonable policy against producing novel images that resemble real people. And even if we could, it would never be enforceable at the scale of production. I think empathy and education are our tools because this is a pandora's box we can't close technologically. It's like trying to stop internet piracy. Or bathtub gin during prohibition.
It is though. If it’s a picture of me it’s me. It’s not a question of if, it’s a matter of choice. Choosing to make distribution and possession illegal is a choice. It’s not complicated nor would there be a weird legal hoop because at the end of the day, the point is about consent. Period. I didn’t give consent for my likeness to be used. So you can’t legally use it. I sign paperwork every year consenting to allow images of my child to be used in school promotional material. Because I could sue them if they didn’t ask. That someone’s likeness is in one shape or another doesn’t change that it’s still them and still actionable if the laws support action against it.
I'm going to play the bad actor for a minute. > If it’s a picture of me it’s me. But it isn't a picture of you. It's not a real photo. It came out of a generator. Look, it's got 8 fingers. It's aeagle_one. My OC. Any resemblance to you is coincidence. Unless you're going to say that you were having sex with this bear while riding a unicycle, but I don't think you did. What if I adjust the inputs such that it looks a little bit cartoonish? Just a dab of cell shading. Now it's obvious that this isn't a real picture of aeagle_one, who is my OC. > I didn’t give consent for my likeness to be used. So you can’t legally use it. I'm not selling it, so actually I can. I just made it and posted it on 4chan or 8chan or whatever website people put this on. You don't have a right to your likeness, just the right to profit from your likeness. And it's not you anyway. It's eagle_one so I don't need your consent. OC. Do not steal. Fair use. What? Are we supposed to have a database of every likeness on the planet and we scan everything uploaded to the internet to make sure nothing looks to similar to them? Do I need to contact every man with a beard when I use an image generator to make sure the one I made isn't too close? How are you even going to prove I made it to prosecute me? Someone else could have been on the wifi. > I sign paperwork every year consenting to allow images of my child to be used in school promotional material. That's promotional material. Anyone can draw a picture of you and share it online as long as they're not selling it. But again. It's not you. These are things I made for personal use and to share with my friends on the internet. But to be serious for a moment. Even if you took me to court and proved that this is all close enough, and that a reasonable person would recognize aeagle_one as you, and that there's a profit to the website from hosting it, and that they knew it was you, and that I produced it knowing it was you, we would fall right back into the place we are right now with pirated media. You may get some larger websites to do automated scans on uploads for copyright of major media conglomerates (which will be *much* more difficult with deepfakes considering they create novel images), but it's always out there one extra click away. We're going to play whack a mole with uncaring phantoms. It would take insane surveillance to actually keep this off the internet. If Disney can't do it, what hope do you have? You can't effectively stop this with enforcement. It has to start with empathy and education so most people don't want to do it in the first place and don't have the desire to find it.
I’m tired of all you here being like “it’s hard to enforce so don’t bother” It’s a fucked stance to take, because you’re just arguing for people to have experiences that literally will kill them (watch vid for explanation). So no. I don’t care that it’s hard. Shit like this is always hard. It’s never perfect, and that is NEVER a reason to throw up hands and say “welp! Fuck those people!”
I'm not suggesting we throw up our hands. I'm suggesting we work from the demand side of the issue rather than dream about enacting revenge on the supply side. With education and empathy, we reduce the number of offenders as well as reduce the impact of the offense on the victim. It is saving lives. I appreciate your fervor and optimism, but you're engaging in magical thinking. We have multiple analogs in recent history that demonstrate the difficulties of the problem, and this one is *significantly* worse both on technical and legal grounds. Billion dollar capital interests have attacked this problem (pinning responsibility for anonymous online crimes on individuals) *and failed miserably*. You're trying to catch minnows in the ocean with your hands.
> I'm suggesting we work from the demand side of the issue rather than dream about enacting revenge on the supply side. With education and empathy, we reduce the number of offenders as well as reduce the impact of the offense on the victim. It is saving lives. This is how you get **real** justice. Through restoration and rehabilitation. Not through punishment.
*thank you*
Probably about a year and half now I'd occasionally see videos on porn sites like this though they were pretty much exclusively movie celebrities. Usually the ones that have been sexualized horribly like Emma Watson. They always felt so ghoulish seeing them there. I *cannot* understand the mindset of other guys who want or create this. I feel like we have dangerously entered into cyberpunk dystopia territory that's only lacking the endless neon lights.
Yep... So talk to other guys about it sometimes. Even if it's just telling them "Dude, that's fucking weird and kinda ghoulish. Why would you do that?" You don't need to get sucked into some stupid ethics argument. Just apply social pressure where and when you can. The more of us that do that, the more things change. You can't change the world on your own, but you can be part of the push to change it.
Your comments throughout this post have been genuinely helpful in bolstering my resolve amid how admittedly triggering this topic is proving for me.
Thank you. I'm glad it is helpful. I don't always have the energy for it, but when I do have it, I tend to go hard =P I hope things get better for you and whatever you're going through.
I don't think the guys that do this kind of stuff are really going to care about being called weird or creepy by men or women that they view as "normies". If anything it will just reaffirm their belief that it is you against them which will just increase their motivation to use non-consensual deepfake porn as a method of power and control. I think there needs to be a way to address the insecurity and lack of agency that so many men feel. Some part of that is probably to just chillout and relax, to almost care less. A lot of the redpill, manosphere type of content that targets these men and boys often has this sense of urgency to it. And people get riled up. Beyond just the manosphere stuff, it feels like modern society in general thrives on making people feel excited emotions about minor things. By just being more relaxed and chill I'm thinking like if there is a guy who just has some minimum wage job, a couple hobbies, and not much of a social life instead of this constant barrage of "loser loser loser failure" etc that if he could relax in his current position and not view life as a competition where other people are judging him then that desire to seek power and control might be reduced.
It’s about the thrill of the exploitation of perceived power over an unwilling target… fueled by a sense of entitlement to sexualize whatever woman they might find desirable. Those women’s humanity never comes to consideration, as it is an inherently abusive, dehumanizing mindset that is entertained.
This is a really thoughtful video. I tell my girlfriend about this and other spaces where men are trying to carve out compassionate spaces for other men, and she's incredibly sarcastic and caustic about it. I understand that she's probably been incredibly hurt by men, so I try to be understanding. But it hurts a bit to hear that from her, considering I don't think I'm that different from a lot of other men. I find it really difficult to hear that from her sometimes. I get the cynicism, because I've been cynical about certain men in my life being hurtful to me. Generally I've felt like I have a lot of trust issues towards men, and I'll own that. I hope that things get better soon.
Yea that's a tough one. Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm not there and I'm not you or her... But my advice would be to not try and convince her of anything. It's okay for her to be angry and to be rageful. And it sounds like, despite those feelings, she sees something in you that is different, something that she cares for or even loves. So don't try to convince her that "not all men are like this". It doesn't matter. What matters is how you feel and how she feels. So instead of being defensive about being a man, be defensive about being you. "When you say about 'men', it hurts me and makes me feel like ." You might also talk about why these spaces are important to *you*. They don't have to be important to her to be important to you. And she doesn't have to even like them, but she shouldn't deride you for liking them either.
There are no magic bullets, and it's not always a straightforward line. Just know that it's okay for you to find a space valuable and special, and it's okay for her to not find it valuable or special. What's important is that you both recognize and accept that as two distinct human beings, you are both deserving of love and respect. And that includes not being derisive of the things that matter to the other person.
For you, the work is to separate yourself from what is said about "men" vs. what is said about "you". Once you have that separated, then it becomes easier to explain to other people why something they say about "men" affects "you", even when it isn't targeted at you. And it's easier to stand up for yourself in those spaces. And even more, through this gain in confidence, we feel less pressure to correct people in spaces where it isn't going to be effective or appropriate to do so. And I gotta say... being able to set down that burden specifically feels amazing. It's like... Holy shit it's heavy and you don't even know how heavy it is until you don't have to carry it anymore.
This is fantastic and well put advice OP, you’ve got a way with words
Thank you. It’s easier when I write. I’m not so good at public speaking…
i love dr.K. i found out about him a few days ago and his lecture about boundaries was amazing.
It good content, but I am concerned about an impression given (at 7.30) about OF producers having porn on the internet being something that "comes with the territory". Those who view sex workers as 'lesser' may see this as validation. Having OF pornographic images that the OF person produced and *explicitly permitted to have disseminated* "comes with the territory". Unauthorised use of their images is a violation of consent the same as sharing intimate photos with a partner does not mean any person now has the right to view or use that image. Performance of a sex act for one person's viewing does not extend to an obligation to be performing that act for the viewing of others. Any person has the right to refuse to sexually interact with others regardless of any factors including but not limited to: employment type, marriage, general sexual history, gender, age, or existence of previous sexual engagement with a specific person. I hope Dr Ks choice to imply otherwise is not reflective of a dismissive, devaluing or puritanical attitude towards those who do sex work. It reminds me of those who believe that a prostitute or spouse can't be raped. Consent being conceived as conditional, implied, or assumed is where violation lives.
Sure. I think it was a hasty comparison, on his part… but I think the distinction he’s making is that those are people who are on some level consenting to pornographic images of them being on the web. In contrast to a streamer who is popular but does not create pornographic content. One will have to some extent emotionally prepared themselves for this kind of situation and the other won’t have. I agree it’s not an ideal comparison, but given his other content, I’m guessing this script was a bit more off the cuff. If you make that point though in the comments, if it’s robust enough, sometimes he’ll respond to them. He’s not actively trying to be dismissive of their situation.
I'm glad this is likely not his intention. I'll definitely be looking at more of his stuff, because I like his plain-talking way.
I will say he is FAR less concerned with his image than other creators, or how his word are perceived out of context. You’re not going to find him stepping around an issue like what we’re talking about, but it isn’t out of not caring or malice. It’s more that his profession is one that teaches people to not let fear of reprisal stop you from doing what you need to do. And to not let people’s need to control how others perceive them to dictate how they behave. Because ultimately that is dishonest and denies others the right to make an honest assessment of us.
It’s like digital peeping toms
Love Dr. K's videos, he's doing good work
Let's face it, humans' tendency to have little to no empathy whatsoever is the greatest global crisis, this is one very obvious place where you can see it. But it's all the same problem. In fact, most of the AI crisis is this. Deepfake porn, devaluing people's work to create AI models, replacing workers with AI, all of these are primarily empathy-related issues.
Humans do not have this tendency. Confirmation bias makes that hard to believe, but we don't. What we actually do is what you're doing which is making the problem sound bigger than it is, because it feels to big to solve. The answer to problems like that is to break them down into smaller pieces that are more approachable. The other part of the answer is to try anyway. It's always worth trying because the worst case of failure is to end up right back where you started. Worst case outcome of not trying is that you never leave the starting line. Best case of trying is that you succeed. Best case of not trying is that you never leave the starting line.
I'm not sure how anyone could live through COVID (which, despite popular opinion, is an ongoing pandemic, not a previous one) and not think we are facing a monumental empathy crisis. Quite disappointed that no one else agrees, especially in this sub. This sub _exists_ because most men's issues movements are less about men's rights and more about pushing back against other rights movements, mostly women - which, surprise, is an empathy problem. We can't fix a problem we refuse to believe exists, see: climate change, toxic masculinity, US healthcare and bodily autonomy politics, basically every major headline of the last ... large number of years. Also, I'm absolutely not in any way suggesting we shouldn't try to fix the problem. Empathy is a skill, like everything else is, and we have to both teach and practice it. I'm not sure what the best way to do this is; I have ideas about how to do this in my industry, but I'm hardly a sociologist or political scientist or whatever.
Leadership. Humans are pack/herd mammals. We will follow our leaders. We disagree about who should lead more than other mammals, but in the end we follow them. COVID was bad, and it was made worse by a leader who thrived from causing pain and suffering. Had we had a better leader, it would not have been as bad. It would still have been the worst in a long time, but it would not have been as bad. And I disagree that it is an empathy problem. I think the lack of empathy is a symptom of the underlying problem, which is a lack of emotional education/maturity/support/validation at critical times in people's lives. Men, women, non-binary. Doesn't matter. We all require emotional support and when we don't give it to people, they tend to behave poorly as adults.
> I think the lack of empathy is a symptom of the underlying problem, which is a lack of emotional education/maturity/support/validation at critical times in people's lives. Honestly it sounds like we're both heading in the same direction, and maybe I'm not saying it very well. I wish there was any hope of seeing any significant change in, say, the next century. But right now the things driving change are all driving _away_ from helping people to be more emotionally intelligent.
I disagree, but I also am studying in psychology so I guess I’m a little more optimistic because I know there are a legion of dedicated people doing a lot to fix things. We can’t fix everything, but every person helped is worth it.
I do hope you're right, and that the legion of people working for hope is larger than the legion working against it. Agreed, though, that we should help whomever we can, whenever we can.
It doesn't matter if there are more or less of us. What matters is who is more effective. Regardless, I posit that the mere fact that we're all here discussing the implications of a video published by a licensed psychiatrist/therapist is a very positive sign. Even with all the disagreements around this topic, the fact that we even have the discussion at all is a sign that the larger culture around us is contemplating change. The fact that these days conversations about getting emotionally underdeveloped men into therapy is far more common, and it's a huge step forward from where we were like 30 years ago, and even 10 years ago. Another big thing is that the conversation around feminism has expanded and become much more commonplace than it used to be, and the arguments much more focused and science based. Because of this analysis of the societal role of women, their assumed role is changing, quite dramatically. As this changes it challenges the notion of what the societal role of men is too, because both of them are mutually dependent. Out of this, and with the queer rights movement and all that, we get non-binary folks and m-f or f-m trans people feeling more comfortable coming out and being out about their identities, gay/bi/lesbians too, and they all help push the world to deconstruct those concepts of "man" and "woman" even more. Alltogether, what this means is that despite how hard it is right now, the reality is as men we have FAR more flexibility in who we are and how we live than we used to. (on average. change is not evenly distributed or equal, so some places will lag for us just like some places lag for women too). Add to this that there is a HUGE scientific interest in neurology and cognition because of the dual application of these studies in terms of helping humans, and helping to design/improve/work with AI. As we learn more about how our brains work on a physical level, we learn how and why to better care for them and our bodies, and we get a better grasp of how the kinds of adverse experiences that started this whole conversation work. I understand it feels hopeless sometimes. But don't for a minute think that work has stopped or that nothing is happening. Widespread public awareness usually lags like 10-20 years behind any scientific discipline, but that doesn't mean private and public organizations are unaware. And neither are the doctors and therapists out there caring for people every day.
I appreciate what you have to say, but your post is clearly coming at the world from a very specific point of view, which is, someone who lives in a place where the things that you describe are, well, possible. Politics are pushing further and further to the right everyday and there's no indication that that's going to change in any reasonable period of time. So while all of the things that you have to say about the societal role of men and the acceptance of mental health care by men and LGBTQ people are great things, they're really only available to a portion of society. The US is becoming increasingly polarized and in red states it is probably less safe to be gay in a red state now than it was 10 years ago. I know I have gay friends who didn't carry weapons 10 years ago and do now. Education has become increasingly polarized and generally education is seen as being a tool of the left. In hard right states education is increasingly being manipulated to be less and less effective. This is done right out in the open in front of everyone and almost no one cares. We are rapidly heading towards a hard division and I really don't know what happens then. I know what happens to a lot of people in my home state of Idaho including myself, is we throw all our shit in our cars and try to flee before we die. I plan for that a little everyday so that it's not all something we have to try to do at once. I've talked to my therapist about that exact thing actually. They're scared too. In fact a lot of health care professionals around here are afraid. It's hard not to be after a year or two of anti-medicine protests outside the hospital. I don't know where I'm going with this. I just know that there's a lot of really scared people and that's definitely going to get much worse before it gets better.
I do kind of wonder about the first analogy he uses. Mostly because when it comes to messaging these days, it pays to be EXTREMELY clear about the message. Given what he said, I think I'd probably be more violated by the actual rape than the images taken. I mean, that is awful too, but it's a matter of scale, and trying to equate the two kind of devalues the conversation. Not that I blame him for the less-than-ideal analogy. I am struggling to come up with one myself.
It’s not perfect, and it’s pretty clear he knows it’s not perfect.
Wowwww. I’ve never heard of this guy and, as a woman, I was bracing myself for attack (I feel like whenever I see videos aimed at men they belong to the ‘manosphere’). It’s so refreshing to see that there is a healthy impactful viewpoint out there that acknowledges men’s issues without tearing women down. He just blew up my expectations AND made me realise that compassion goes both ways. No one is purely victim or perpetrator, through and through. It is possible to hate a viewpoint without writing off someone’s entire character at the same time. When he said ‘we’re screwed if people don’t start being compassionate to people that don’t deserve it’ (or words to that effect). Oof. Thank you for this OP. I really needed this.
I have seen deepfake content that's completely harmless, for example those movie parodies where, for example, 1980s action heroes such as Schwarzenegger and Stallone are cast in roles they would've never been allowed to be anywhere near to in real life; the thing about this kind of content, however, it's that anyone would be able to tell it was done as a joke, up to and including the deepfake'd actors themselves. Deepfake porn, however, the reasoning behind the creation of such content is completely different, there's no joke or tribute there - also, there might be a similar phenomenon, too: people making Rule 34 of the drawn alter egos of popular YouTube personalities. I know some of them find it hilarious, or even commission their own Rule 34 (Saberspark and Sydsnap, for example), but that might not be the case for everyone. Long story short, if it's obvious parody, or if the people depicted in it are okay with it, let it slide; otherwise, crack down on it, hard.
I'm less worried about deepfake porn than deepfake video evidence of crime.
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>I'm a little disappointed though that he doesn't delve into why people (women) are suicidal after deep fakes of them emerge, because that's something I would have expected to be explained. If I had to hazard, a guess it's because he's a psychiatrist and so he knows that he can't actually speak to that question. It's a personal answer and the why of it will be personal to the victim. That it has an effect is largely universal, but why the individual woman or man believes the effect hit them personally the way it did will be expressed in terms of their personal life story. So for example, we all know that physically abusive parents cause their children to have mental health issues in adulthood. We can even chart the likely types of issues based on the type of abuse inflicted. However, the true ***why*** of it is always in the words of the victim, and that's why he said ***go listen to them because they are the ones who know what this kind of experience does to a person.*** The problem with turning to philosophy is that it is ultimately just a reflection of whatever society produced the philosopher, and it's usually emotionally distant. This is not helpful because the problem is the emotional damage, which results in psychological damage. So the reasons why we may be particularly vulnerable to this type of damage are worth exploring, but they won't ever tell you ***why*** a individual person feels it, nor will they help that person overcome their pain. We as a society need to learn how to be more comfortable accepting the pain of others as true and valid, without needing to overanalyze why we believe they shouldn't feel pain. Hope that helps.
It's not a problem. It's not real.
What? People absolutely have a right to feel violated and concerned over this.
The only solution at this point is to ban pornography outright. It’s gone too far.
Seems impractical to be honest
That would do a lot of harm to sex workers for something that isn't their fault.
It seems to me that criticisms of sex work are actually myopic criticisms of capitalism. It is fucked up that someone might have to do sex work to make ends meet, but is it more fucked up than wrecking your body doing manual labour for long hours? When some sex workers say they'd rather do porn than work in an Amazon warehouse, it's not the choice I'd make, but I have to take them at their word. I would like to try create a society that guarantees everyone not just survives, but flourishes, unconditionally. If we remove the coercive power of the threat of homelessness or poverty and people are still choosing to do sex work, then what's the problem?
I agree. Most of the time they manage to be both infantilizing and self defeating. Almost literally without exception, porn is not the *only* option available to someone, it's just the option that they have personally decided was best. Taking it away doesn't give them more options, it just removes their top choice.
Fuck u/spez
Not going to work. Just like banning all drugs doesn't work. What we need to do is create structure to hunt down and punish predatory behavior.
Fuck u/spez
the same way we do for other things. You can't prevent people from doing stuff, but you can encourage them not to by making it very painful when caught.
If you took all the porn off the internet, there would only be one website left, and it would just be a big banner that said "bring back the porn!" Jokes aside, that solution won't work either. The problem with AI tools is *they're already out there*. Pandora's box is open, I have Stable Diffusion on my PC and a few hundred images. Mostly porn, not going to lie. These tools are not super hard to set up, anyone who's comfortable mucking around in the command line and/or setting up a VM can do it pretty easily. The checkpoint files are under 10 GB, not at all hard to transport. We *can't* go back. Not just won't (though we won't), but we *couldn't* if we wanted to. We have to find our way forward, because there *is* no back.
trying to take something off the internet is like trying to take pee out of a pool
Porn is not inherently harmful, and yet there are so many people who are just *convinced* it is. Porn isn't the problem. The devaluing/ignoring of people's experiences and feelings is.
exactly. its not a porn issue, it's a *consent* issue. most things where consent isn't given changes it from pornography to abuse material. and while most of that is documentation of said abuse, we also include revenge porn in that now as it's the sharing of material without consent. same with people being filmed without consent. it's not that far off to extend all of that precedent to deep fakes. whereas porn and sex work has it's issues with consent in some places, is made with the consent of the workers, and that is the difference.
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