Attempts at a Technological Solution to Disinformation Will Do More Harm Than Good | ACLU

There are a variety of interesting techniques for detecting altered images, including frames from videos, such as statistical analyses of discontinuities in the brightness, tone, and other elements of pixels.

Any tool that can identify features of a video that are characteristic of fakes can probably also be used to erase those features and make a better fake.

The ACLU has doubts about whether these techniques will be effective and serious concerns about potential harmful effects.

Julian Zelizer : Locking down hardware and software chains may help authenticate some media, but would not be good for freedom.

He says it would pose severe threats to who gets to easily share their stories and lived experiences.

Zelizer says it's not certain that these schemes would work to prevent an untrustworthy piece of media from being marked as “trusted”.

Many people are bad at making such judgments is not a problem that technology can solve, says Julian Zelizer .

Zelizer: No technological scheme will fix the age-old problem of some people falling for propaganda and disinformation.

He says public education and media literacy are the real cure to the problem.