The reality is that divisive content is, from a financial perspective, a win for social media platforms. This constant appeal to a near-future of perfectly streamlined technological solutions distracts and deflects from the grim realities we presently face. To be sure, there are many experts who are doing important security research to make the detection of fake media easier in the future. But on its own, it is unclear that this would help fix the deep-seated social problem of truth decay and polarization that social media platforms have played a major role in fostering. If we continue to frame deepfakes as a technological problem instead of something rotten at the core of the attention economy, we leave ourselves just as vulnerable in 2020 to misinformation as we were in 2016.

Source: The Guardian June 24, 2019 06:00 UTC