Porn Gets Deep(faked) | The New Normal-ization | Kremlin Clickbait Crackdown
September 1, 2020
The Good News
- Born in the storm: Louisiana hospital staff stayed behind to care for 19 babies as Hurricane Laura hit (CNN)
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
— Albert Einstein
“Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent”
The Internet in Deep Trouble
(Fabrice Coffrini via Getty Images)
Pornographic deepfake videos that demean and humiliate women have long been relegated to dedicated deepfake porn communities. But as the videos have become more popular in 2020, they’ve been moving into the mainstream. Now every month some 1,000 non-consensual and explicit deepfake videos featuring the faces of female celebrities are uploaded to the world’s biggest pornography websites. The videos are surrounded by advertisements, getting millions of views, and generating lots of money. Porn companies aren’t removing the videos, and so far nothing is being done about it.
Three of the biggest porn websites are XVideos, Xnxx, and xHamster. A Czech holding company owns both XVideos and Xnxx, the number one and number three biggest porn websites in the world. Celebrities like Natalie Portman, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift have been victimized by the deepfake videos, which first began emerging in early 2018 from Reddit. One 30-second video using actress Emma Watson’s face appears on all three of the biggest porn sites; it has been viewed more than 23 million times.
Giorgio Patrini is CEO and chief scientist at Sensity, the deepfake detection company formerly known as DeepTrace. Although the porn videos are widely thought to harm and humiliate the women placed at their core, Patrini says the websites don’t see it as a problem. He adds that Sensity is increasingly seeing deepfakes being made for other people in the public realm, such as Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube influencers.
The underlying artificial intelligence technology needed to make the videos has quickly advanced; it’s also getting cheaper and easier for people to make them. In one recent example a security researcher using open-source software and spending less than $100 created video and audio of Tom Hanks. The tech advancements have led to increased fears around deepfakes being used to manipulate political conversations — and the legal options for people featured in the videos have not kept up with the technology.
“I think we’re going to be seeing [the technology] applied very soon with much larger intent to private individuals,” Patrini says. A legal scholar who specializes in pornography regulations and sexual abuse images agrees. “What this shows is the looming problem that is going to come for non-celebrities,” she says. “This is a serious issue for celebrities and others in the public eye. But my long-standing concern [is] what is coming down the line.”
(Raddad Jebarah via Getty Images)
- Senior US and Israeli officials arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday to finalize a pact marking open relations between Israel and the Gulf state. It was the first official Israeli flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE.
- White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien are heading up the US delegation. The trip is historic in that the deal normalizing diplomatic relations is the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years.
- Upon their arrival, the officials told Palestinians it was now time for them to negotiate peace, and not be “stuck in the past.” “They have come to the table,” Kushner said. “Peace will be ready for them … soon as they are ready to embrace it.”
- Kushner also said that Washington could help maintain Israel’s military edge while advancing its ties to the UAE. Israel and the UAE will discuss economic, scientific, trade, and cultural cooperation on the visit. Direct flights between the two countries will also be on the agenda.
- Israeli officials hope the two-day trip will produce a date for a signing ceremony in Washington, perhaps as early as September, between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. That could give President Trump a foreign policy boost ahead of his re-election bid in November. (Reuters)
The Kremlin’s Clickbait Crackdown
- 22-year-old Yegor Zhukov, a leading Russian opposition blogger, was severely beaten by two unidentified men near his home Sunday evening. He was taken to the hospital for treatment, and a Kremlin spokesman said police were launching a criminal investigation into the assault.
- Zhukov, who is also a political commentator on Russian radio, was arrested last August during protests against the exclusion of independent and opposition candidates from Moscow council elections. In December, he was given a three-year suspended jail term for “inciting extremism.”
- Earlier on Sunday, Zhukov said on his YouTube channel that he had been rejected for a master’s course on cinema at Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics, after initially being accepted for it. He linked that rejection to this political activity.
- Others have linked Zhukov’s attack to the poisoning of Russia’s most famous opponent leader, investigative blogger Alexei Navalny, who became violently ill after drinking a cup of tea at an airport in Tomsk, Siberia before boarding a flight back to Moscow. Navalny remains in intensive care in an induced coma in Germany, after being flown out of Russia nine days ago. (BBC)
Additional World News
- Dancing around a deal: New Chinese rules could complicate a sale of TikTok’s US business (CNN)
- Facebook, Google, Big Tech Line Up for New Nationalist Tech War With China (Foreign Policy)
- What They Saw: Ex-Prisoners Detail The Horrors Of China’s Detention Camps (Buzzfeed)
- Himalayan salt: India accuses China of ‘provocative military movements’ near border (Guardian)
- A child in Taiwan was caught in a kite and swept high into the air (CNN)
- Emmanuel Macron’s big Beirut challenge (Politico)
- Drug Cartel Now Assassinates Its Enemies With Bomb-Toting Drones (The Drive). The high eye in the sky.
COVID-19
- I’m Optimistic That We Will Have a COVID-19 Vaccine Soon (Atlantic)
- What Data Are Being Collected About COVID-19 And Who Is Using It? (Forbes)
- How Covid-19 could affect the 2020 Senate elections (Vox)
- Coronavirus cases are on the rise again across more than half of the US (CNBC)
- Life’s one big Groundhog Day now, isn’t it? I mean, it’s technically August. But the neverending madness and uncertainty of 2020 has us all wondering: when will this dreadful winter end? Hopefully soon (*crosses fingers*). But until then, I think we all could use an extra boost of energy to keep on keepin’ on.
- Thankfully, we have Verb Energy. Their energy bars have as much caffeine as an espresso and just 90 calories, providing the extra boost you need to make the days feel even just a bit more exciting. Like, making it through the fifth Zoom call of the afternoon or staying awake while binging Netflix.
- Lucky for you, they’re letting Daily Pnuters try their bars totally risk-free – snag 50% off their Starter Kit here.
Congress Gets Boxed Out of Their Briefs
- The Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe, has informed the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence that his office will no longer conduct in-person briefings on election security issues. Instead, the office will provide written updates to congressional panels.
- The bombshell announcement comes just slightly over two months ahead of the presidential election. Earlier in August, the top intelligence official on election security issued a statement saying China, Russia, and Iran are seeking to interfere in the 2020 US election.
- The warning prompted a backlash from Democrats on Capitol Hill who have continued pushing for the public release of more information about the nature of those efforts. Last week, officials charged with protecting the 2020 election said they have “no information or intelligence” that foreign countries, including Russia, are attempting to undermine any part of the mail-in voting process.
- That statement contradicts President Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that foreign adversaries are targeting mail ballots as part of a “rigged” presidential race. When asked about Ratcliffe’s decision to halt in-person briefings, Trump said Saturday that the DNI “got tired of” information leaking “so, he wants to do it in a different form.” At an event in Texas, Trump said: “Director Ratcliffe brought information into the committee, and the information leaked.”
- Responding to Trump’s accusations about leaks, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff tweeted, “As usual, President Trump is lying and projecting. Trump fired the last DNI for briefing Congress on Russian efforts to help his campaign. Now he’s ending briefings altogether. Trump doesn’t want the American people to know about Russia’s efforts to aid his re-election.” (CNN)
Stay Vigilant of Extreme Vigilantism
- Many people were surprised to see a video showing what police did last week when the 17-year-old white teenager — who killed two people and seriously wounded another with an AK-47 at an anti-racist protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin — walked toward them with his arms raised trying to surrender.
- The police ignored him and continued rolling down the street in their armored vehicles. The shooter was eventually arrested the next day at his home in Illinois. Others who had seen an earlier video showing police essentially deputizing the 17-year-old may not have been surprised.
- The shooter had been walking the streets of Kenosha carrying his assault rifle alongside other armed white men, a local self-styled militia formed for the purported purpose of protecting property from protesters.
- “We appreciate you guys, we really do,” a cop can be heard telling the group over a loudspeaker before tossing the shooter a bottle of water. In reality, antagonistic right-wing vigilantes have been a constant, menacing presence at protests against police brutality. They have shot protesters, attacked them with cars, and beaten them while police often looked the other way.
- President Trump has added his endorsement and fanned the flames by routinely demonizing anti-racist protesters as “thugs” and terrorists. There is now real concern that the deadly vigilante violence seen in Kenosha could be replicated elsewhere.
- New data collected since May 27, two days after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, reveals that white vigilantes and far-right actors have shown up to oppose Black Lives Matter protests in the US at least 497 times this year. A staggering amount of violence directed at protesters by the far-right has been documented, including 64 cases of simple assault, 38 incidents of vigilantes driving cars into demonstrators, and nine times shots were fired at protesters.
- This summer, six protesters were hit by vigilante bullets; three died from their wounds. The dataset also includes 387 incidents of intimidation, such as people using racist slurs, making threats, and brandishing firearms. (HuffPost)
Additional USA News
- A week to remember: American fascism reaches a tipping point with Kenosha killings and Trump’s RNC (Slate)
- Trump’s Real RNC Message Is Impunity (Atlantic, $)
- Justice Dept. Never Fully Examined Trump’s Ties to Russia, Ex-Officials Say (NYT, $)
- Want to sell books? Just write a Trump tell-all: 8 juicy details from the new Melania Trump tell-all book (Politico)
- How Shadowbanning Went from a Conspiracy Theory to a Selling Point (Vice)
- Tripping to find tranquility: ‘A Hail Mary’: Psychedelic Therapy Draws Veterans to Jungle Retreats (NYT, $)
- Jerry Falwell Jr.’s fatal miscalculation (CNN)
- ‘Coming here is a necessity’: demand for food aid soars in US amid job losses (Guardian)
Take a Waack At It
- It’s called Waacking, it’s all over Tik Tok, and it’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. It’s the retro club dance from the ’70s that’s become a social media sensation. Those crazy kids on the coasts may think they invented it, but we were doing it in Dallas, too — we just called it the Funky Chicken.
- Those days are long gone for a lot of us. But a few dedicated devotees who’ve mastered the form still tirelessly promote this musical message of self-expression and empowerment. One of the best known is 34-year-old Princess Lockerooo. She’s been a whirling force with a singular focus: to spread the gospel of waacking. For more than a decade, the Princess has performed in competitions and led workshops all over the world.
- This year was going to be huge: she was slated to lead New York City’s annual dance parade down Broadway, host hundreds of contestants at her own festival in Brooklyn, and travel to Brazil and London to judge dance battles. But you know what happened — everything shut down. Fortunately, this frenetic dance style of rapid but contained, artful, and individualistic gestures has translated perfectly to Instagram and TikTok.
- The Princess, whose given name is Samara Cohen, learned her craft from the best — one of the original waackers, Tyrone Proctor. He well knows COVID-19 wasn’t the first virus to nearly wipe out waacking. The form had actually emerged as a social dance, set to disco, in the underground gay clubs of Los Angeles in the 1970s.
- It was the unencumbered expression of gay men of color. But after many of them died of AIDS in the decades that followed, the style largely disappeared. Proctor’s one of the few survivors of that generation. “This isn’t something I just danced through,” he says. “We lived this.”
- A professor of dance in Toronto says while waacking is about pleasure, it’s also about pain “and overcoming it through hyperconfident composure. It’s about what the arms and hands can say, but also what the shoulders know about the spinning of the spine and off-centered heart.”
- We fun-loving dance-crazy Dallas kids didn’t know about all that — we just thought it was a great way to work off a little too much of the bubbly. (NYT)
Additional Reads
- America lost two cultural icons this weekend: Chadwick Boseman Brought Heroes to Life—and Became One in His Own Right & John Thompson Never Backed Down From Anyone (The Ringer)
- Japan Successfully Tested a Flying Car (Vice). Japan finally catches up with the Jetsons.
- The art of the heel: How Pseudoscientists Get Away With It (Nautilus)
- Caged Congolese teen: Why a zoo took 114 years to apologise (BBC)
- 8 Push-Up Variations That Burn Out Every Inch of Your Core and Arms (Well+Good)