Twitter asks for feedback for policy against deepfakes

Twitter is working on policies to curb the spread of deepfake videos and photos. The social network wants to act against ‘synthetic and manipulated media’ with which events are made up or manipulated.

Twitter wants to draft new policy, but first hear feedback from users. Twitter is not yet saying what kind of feedback that is. In ‘the coming weeks’ the company will come up with a feedback method and period in which everyone can contribute to the policy. Twitter announced the changes at a tech conference in California. The plan was also via Twitter itself announced.

Twitter says it is creating the policy because “online behavior is changing.” The new policy covers manipulated media such as photos, videos and audio distributed through the medium, as well as entirely fabricated or created media. According to Twitter, these are media that “have been significantly altered or created in a way that alters its original meaning, or in which it appears that certain events have taken place that did not happen at all.” Twitter says it mainly acts against media when someone’s physical safety is at risk.

The social network is thus following in the footsteps of other tech giants such as Facebook and Microsoft. They also have a policy to stop deepfakes. Facebook fears that deepfakes will be used in the run-up to the US presidential election. Such media can then be used in fake news campaigns to manipulate readers. In addition, deepfake porn is on the rise. In addition, faces of famous actresses are placed in porn videos. It is also not the first time that Twitter has acted against such content. In February, the company already announced that it would ban deepfake porn. Other social media like Reddit do the same.

In addition to Twitter, Amazon is also working on a plan to combat deepfakes. The company says it will partner with Facebook and Microsoft on the Deepfakes Detection Challenge. This is a competition in which scientists and programmers can receive prizes if they can come up with a technological solution for deepfakes. Amazon says it will contribute $1 million to Amazon Web Services as a prize.