In a survey conducted by Pew Research Center at the end of last year, about 64% of Americans believed fake news stories were the cause of a great deal of confusion surrounding current events. Not surprisingly, 23% said they have shared a fake news story before, whether it was to their knowledge or not. America is just one country compared to nearly 200 other countries. There’s no telling how big the numbers are for people who share fake news from other parts of the world.
One would think with the advancement of technology, when the ability to verify a news story is easier than ever, that it wouldn’t be this way. There’s no need to do extensive research to verify a story. Sometimes just one or two pieces of evidence can easily prove a story to be false. Regardless, people such as our own politicians aren’t doing much to help with this issue. Donald Trump himself shares fake news, proving how quick one is to reflect on something they know nothing about.
Just last year, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, and Stanford University collaborated on a research project to show just how easy it is to manipulate an audience. Entitled “Face2Face,” the researchers reenacted the facial expressions and conversation of a person by using a face tracking method. The footage shows a few of the researchers making weird faces, anything from a frown to raising their eyebrows, and having a regular conversation. Any facial expression they made or conversation they had would match with whomever was on the actual footage. Manipulating footage like this can make important figures such as politicians look as if they’re making faces or saying words they’re not really saying.
The most haunting part about this research is not only how it can be done to footage that already exists, but how it can be done to live footage as well. One person commented under the video saying, “We all realize that this is a weapon, right?” Certainly, not all weapons are in the form of guns and knives. Sometimes the biggest weapon is sitting right in people's computers. It’s not a just a weapon for politics, it’s a weapon for crime investigations too.
A documentary entitled The Central Park Five told the story of five black and Latino teenagers who were falsely accused in 1989 of raping and severely beating a white female jogger in Central Park. Trump spent $85,000 to publish full-page ads in four New York City papers to bring back the death penalty. “Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” Although he never referred to the teenagers by name, it was quite evident that he was talking about them. Fourteen years after the teens’ sentences were vacated, a single suspect named Matias Reyes admitted to the brutal attack. To this day, Trump stands by his theory that the five teenagers were the real suspects.
Let’s assume technology in 1989 was as big as it is today. Someone could’ve easily altered the evidence by using the face tracking method. Trump only went to four papers in New York City. If the evidence for the case was altered, he could’ve paid papers around the world to advertise the demand to execute those five teens for a crime they never even committed. If face tracking becomes popular in the near future, it could possibly change the way crimes are investigated. The criminal justice system already has a long history of unfair practices, and this face tracking method can put wrongly convicted suspects on the line.
With the current threat of a nuclear war, fake news is more dangerous than ever before. It’s very unlikely that people will stop publishing, posting, and discussing fake news. However, altering fake news, such as through the face tracking method, can really change the game of how fake news is put out.
Glo. First off, the video that you included in your blog post fits perfectly with your message and what your'e trying to say. I notice that you have a good format of your paragraphs as they contain both long and short paragraphs which keeps helps keep the reader intersted in reading on. Very informational post!
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