Lawmakers Worry About Rise of Fake Video Technology (thehill.com)

Lawmakers are concerned that advances in video manipulation technology could set off a new era of fake news. Now legislators say they want to start working on fixes to the problem before it's too late. From a report: Technology experts have begun to sound the alarm on the new software, which lets users take existing videos and make high-quality altered video and audio that appears real. The emergence of the technology opens up a new world of hoaxes driven by doctored audio or video, and threatens to shake faith in the media even further. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the most vocal members of Congress on tech issues, painted a grim picture about what the advances could mean for the future of discerning truth in media. "Since we can't rely on the responsibility of individual actors or the platforms they use, I fully expect there will be a proliferation of these sorts of fictions to a degree that nearly drowns out actual facts," Wyden told The Hill. "For those who value real information, there will still be some reliable publications and news outlets, and their credibility will need to be guarded all the more intently by professional journalists," he added.

Comments

Re:Threatened

[AmiMoJo]

I welcome news that challenges my world view, However if I cannot trust it (because other then truth they are pandering to other world views), I need to default back to my world view.

Trust isn't binary, it's a scale. I tend to trust the BBC quite a lot, for example, because although I don't always agree with their characterisation of events the factual stuff is usually right, and they post corrections.

There has been a push by those who benefit from fake news to make people think that one mistake makes a source completely untrustworthy to the point where you can safely ignore anything it says that contradicts your preferred reality. The BBC make an error once, CNN made some misleading statements, therefore they are fake news and no better than Brietbart or Infowars. And hay, at least Infowars isn't part of the dreaded MSM, at least they give you the real news that others dare not speak... And you are a smart guy, you can tell fake from true, so why not watch a bit of Fox and decide for yourself?

In reality prolonged exposure to Fox et. al causes brain damage that reduces a person's ability to smell bullshit.

who knows perhaps Fox News is actually a real source of truth

It definitely isn't. Stick to NPR.