Content Moderation Case Study: Dealing With 'Cheap Fake' Modified Political Videos (2020)

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Summary: For years now there have been concerns raised about the possibility of deep fake videos impacting an election. Deep fakes are videos that have been digitally altered, often to insert someone's face onto another person's body, to make it appear that they were somewhere they were not or did something they did not. To date, most of the more sophisticated deep fake videos have been mainly for entertainment purposes but there has been a concern that they could lead to faked accusations against politicians or other public figures. However, so far, there has been little evidence of deep fake videos being used in elections. This may be because the technology is not yet good enough or because such videos have been easy to debunk through other evidence.Meanwhile, there has been increasing concern about something slightly different: cheap fake or shallow fake videos, which are just slight modifications and adjustments to real videosless technically sophisticated, but also potentially harder to combat.One of the most high profile examples of this was a series of videos that went viral on social media of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that were modified by slowing down the video to 75% of the original speed. The modified videos were spread with false claims that they showed Pelosi slurring her words, possibly indicating intoxication. Various media organizations fact checked the claims, noting that the videos were altered and therefore presented a very inaccurate picture of Pelosi and her speech patterns.

• Where should companies draw the line between misleading political content and deliberate misinformation?
• Under what conditions would a misleading cheap fake video separately violate other policies, such as harassment?
• What should the standards be for removing political content that could be deemed misleading?
• Does medium matter? Should there be different rules for manipulated videos as compared to other types of content, such as taking statements out of context? 
• Should there be exceptions for parody/satire?
• Are there effective ways for distinguishing videos that are manipulated to mislead vs. those that are manipulated for humor or commentary? 
• Should the company have different standards if the subject of a cheap fake video was not a political or public figure? 
• What are other alternative approaches, beyond blocking, that could be used to address manipulated political videos?

• What are the possible unintended consequences if all manipulated video is deemed a policy violation?
• What, if any, is the value of not removing videos of political or public figures that are clearly misleading? Would there be any unintended consequences of such a policy?
• What are the implications for democracy if manipulated political videos are allowed to remain on a platform, where they may spread virally?
• Are misleading cheap fake videos about politicians considered political speech?
• Who should decide when cheap fake political speech is inaccurate and inappropriateshould it be social media platforms, a general public consensus, or a third body??
• How might cheap fake videos be used for harassment and bullying of non-public figures, and what are the potential implications for real life harm? 
• If the cheap fake video didn't originate from a public source (as in the Pelosi video) but a private video, how could a company determine that those videos were manipulated?   

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Sony Studio Acquisition Of Nixxes May Portend Company Opening Up The PlayStation's Walled Garden To PC Gaming

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Late last year, we discussed Sony's corporate report on where its income sources were detailed out and laid bare the fact that the biggest revenue generator for the company was in gaming. We noted at the time that what made all of this really interesting is that this revenue generation occurred under Sony's famous walled-garden policies, where the company went to great lengths to silo its own games into the PlayStation console while also trying to gobble up exclusives for the PlayStation. Coinciding with all of this, though, were some cracks starting to form in that policy. Sony finally opened up games on the PlayStation to cross-platform online play, allowed the PlayStation Now service to run on PCs, and even moved some of its first-party titles onto other platforms, such as having MLB: The Show appearing on the Xbox for the first time and Horizon: Zero Dawn getting a belated PC release.But those are toe-in-the-water type things. It would be reasonable for anyone to wonder just how committed Sony was going to be in opening up the garden and exploring a wider program of getting first-party games on other platforms. Well, Sony just announced the acquisition of gaming studio Nixxes and it sure looks like it's the answer to those concerns, given what Nixxes does.

If the name Nixxes doesn't ring a bell for most gamers, that's because the studio hasn't developed any original projects in its over-20-year history. Instead, Nixxes has primarily specialized in creating a variety of PC and console ports for games from the likes of Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics (both now Square Enix subsidiaries).That makes Nixxes an especially intriguing acquisition for Sony, which has been slowly dipping an increasing number of toes into the PC gaming space in recent years. After Horizon: Zero Dawn hit the PC last year, Sony said in its annual report that it "will explore expanding our 1st party titles to the PC platform in order to promote further growth in our profitability." Then, in May, Sony listed Uncharted 4 under the "more PC releases planned" section of an investor report, alongside the recent PC port of former PlayStation exclusive Days Gone.

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