Elon Musk's X is spreading deepfakes of Kamala Harris
www.motherjones.com
Two phony videos seen by hundreds of millions of users appear to violate X’s own terms of service.

Archived version

A video known as a “deepfake” that was posted on X on Saturday appears to show Harris repeating herself over and over again, using a crude audio rendering made to seem like Harris is struggling to finish a complete sentence. The altered video uses footage from an appearance by Harris and President Joe Biden following Friday’s historic prisoner swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others. The video is obviously manipulated and easily debunked by viewing the unaltered footage (you can watch that here at about the 1:30 mark), which shows Harris speaking smoothly, without repeating the same words and phrases as portrayed in the doctored video.

The video, whose origin is unclear, was posted by Trump himself on Truth Social on Saturday, accompanied by a rant in which he calls Harris “DUMB!” and “extremely Low IQ.” The video was soon re-shared on X by an account that posts content verbatim from Trump’s feed on Truth Social. That account on X has more than 800,000 followers, and, as of late Sunday, the post containing the Harris deepfake had drawn more than 620,000 views.

The video appears to be in violation of X’s terms of service, which prohibit the sharing of “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.” (It also appears to violate Truth Social’s terms of service, which requires that posts “are not false, inaccurate, or misleading”—a tall order, perhaps, given that platform’s owner.)

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Other forms of disinformation targeting Harris, including racist and misogynistic content, have proliferated across social media. But the reach personally enjoyed by Musk and Trump through the platforms they own is bigger than that of most.

As Harris has been steadily gaining on Trump in recent polls, the spread of deepfakes targeting her on X seems no coincidence alongside Musk’s evolving views about Trump. He once declared the ex-president too old to hold office again. Now Trump has Musk’s “full endorsement.”

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  • tardigrada@beehaw.orgOP
    0·
    3 months ago

    Elon Musk and other tech executives are funding a social media ad blitz to support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump

    If a voter in Michigan performs a search on Google, a somewhat shocking ad might pop up.

    The ad shows a young man lying in bed late at night when someone else texts him, “Hey you need to vote,” and then sends the man a video of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The man can hear the gunshots and people screaming in the background.

    As Trump is rushed off stage with blood pouring down his face, the man watching the video types in response, “This is out of control. How do I start?”

    The ad then displays a website for a group called America PAC.

    The website says it will help the viewer register to vote. But once a user clicks “Register to Vote,” the experience he or she will have can be very different, depending on where they live.

    If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they’ll be prompted to enter their email addresses and ZIP code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign-up section.

    But for users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

    Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

    If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a “thank you” page.

    So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

    […]