#they’re shocked at first and asking if it’s a deepfake

[dabisbratz]

does the girlfriend end up leaking the video / photos or what?

cuz imagine walking in the classroom and everyone just staring at u like u crazy

personally i think she would but not on purpose! like she’s definitely a sorority girl or cheerleader so she’s obviously gonna tell her sisters…! and there’s so many ways that could go.. i think if she did leak it on purpose it’d end up on the hub and go SO viral, just full of comments like ‘who is he??? where can i find him???’ until you’re popular around campus for other reasons and your teammates never let you live it down

[gggoldfinch]

what are your thoughts on romulus in general? and specifically on the alien baby

HOHHHHH BOY IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED because i am THE avp universe junkie around these parts and this movie CHANGED ME AS A PERSON!!!!!!!!! i screamed my whole way home from the imax theater. I’ll put my scatterbrained thoughts under the cut so anyone who wants to avoid spoilers can!

First off: it’s immediately top 3 Alien franchise movies for me. Alien, Aliens, Romulus; That’s my new top 3 list. I like the story of Rom more than Aliens but I’m more attached to the characters in Aliens than Rom so in that way they’re kinda tied for my #2 spot.

Honestly I thought it was the best sci-fi and/or horror that’s come out in fucking eons!!! I was thoroughly on edge throughout the runtime and even got genuinely scared a few times. I spent the whole movie with my hand over my mouth in shock, no joke. The suspense KILLED ME!!!!!!!! The build up to each event was just phenomenal and just when you thought it was about to get better for the characters NOPE! I went into it completely blind, no notion of the plot whatsoever, and was SO thoroughly pleased with the outcome.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE SET DESIGN AND PRACTICAL EFFECTS???? Such a breath of fresh air after TOO MANY movies lately have been relying solely on cgi, including the most recent installments in the Alien franchise. It’s so nice to watch a character react to a thing that’s actually physically right next to them. And all the scenes of the space station reminded me of Alien Isolation, which I really enjoyed. It truly brought the game to life and with it that grand, expansive, yet claustrophobically contained sense of dread that comes with being stranded on a Weyland-Yutani space station. It looked SO convincing. And of course I’m just forever in love with the retrofuture 70’s aesthetic of the franchise and am so glad they keep up with it (almost) every time

I was also delighted we got to see the inclusion of an on-world setting. The mining colony scene in the beginning was really what sold me that the movie was about to be fantastic

HR Giger would have been proud of all the gross imagery. Truly. During the wall womb thing scene I leaned over to my best friend and went “that’s a PUSSY bro” because I mean DID YOU SEE IT. Rom really returned to its roots, it reminded me SO MUCH of the original in its overall vibe.

The one single thing I did not like was the zombie ai deepfake of Ian Holm (who has been dead since 2020 if you didn’t know). That was a little uhhhh ummm yikes. Not to mention the cgi on “him” was ROUGH at times. I get the idea of using a time period relevant synthetic (since from what I understand Rom takes place less than a year after the events of Alien, given the whole Nostromo salvage arc) but they could have easily cast someone new as a different model, or even brought in Michael Fassbender as an “older” model. Canonically Lance Henriksen (who would have to be de-aged up the wazoo) being brought in as a Bishop model wouldn’t have made sense (since Bishop’s model was manufactured shortly before Aliens, according to the Xenopedia) but I mean hey. they retcon canon all the time who cares lol. However as a diehard I do get how his model was canonically relevant to the time period and scenario, so I understand the thought process tbqf. The execution was just… questionable.

I’ve seen a lot of people with braindead takes that the references and callbacks to the original movies fell flat or were unnecessary, but I thought they were very well placed and tied the stories together wonderfully. Who could hate a “get away from her you BITCH” line?????? Clearly these people aren’t diehards LOL because everyone in my theater LOVED that

I loved Rain and Andy SO MUCH. They were so sweet, and I love the concept of treating synths like real people/ family members (i’m a sucker and am Blade Runner brainrotted). They were the only characters I really felt anything for, other than Kay as her story progressed. The others felt a little one-dimensional, but admittedly there really wasn’t a lot of opportunity to flesh any of them out that much. I am of course a sucker for sweet synths and Andy’s character reminded me of Bishop in a lot of ways, which I think may have been intentional in some aspects (i.e. his desire to be referred to as an artificial person). I won’t really go into analyzing the characters since I don’t really care enough about them to do so (I was more into this movie for the story, unlike some others in the franchise), but I did enjoy a couple of them so that’s good enough for me.

My best friend asked me whose death was my favorite and honestly it was probably Tyler’s— a truly classic way to go out in an Alien movie (I gasped when the other xenos were revealed during that scene). I also made the point to him that the chestburster that came out of Navarro came out of her upper chest region rather than lower down by the bottom of her ribcage (which is traditionally where they come out of, based off the original writer’s intention for it to represent the pain of a Crohn’s disease flare (which I can attest to)), so I’m hypothesizing that they removed the facehugger before it was finished implanting the embryo and it grew in her esophagus rather than her stomach. Yes? Yes. Brutal!

AND THE OFFSPRING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When I tell you my entire crowded theater bristled and gasped in sheer unadulterated HORROR! I think I was the first one out of 50 people to audibly go “oh god no” then like 15 others followed LMFAO it was a group trauma experience for all of us; my best friend looked like he was going to fucking sob. I was anticipating something with how Kay’s story progressed, but I did not fucking expect THAT. I thought it was gonna be something with her after that shot of the rat mutating, not her baby. My first thought (after recoiling in horror) was how it fucking LOOKED LIKE AN ENGINEER!!!!! Consider: the engineers made humans in their image, therefore logically evolved humans would begin to look like the engineers. Perhaps if the method had been perfected the offspring would have looked more engineer and less… xenomorph-human-engineer-bastard-spawn from the deepest pit of hell. Horrific. I FUCKING LOVED IT AND I WAS LITERALLY PETRIFIED. It was a nice tie in with all the wacky shit we saw in Prom/Cov. I also thought it was somewhat of parallel with Alien Resurrection too, even how the thing looked a little bit.

All in all, I personally would give it a 5/5 stars. I’m going to see it again sometime this week. I fucking LOVE this franchise.

[wyntertimes-blog]

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* Getting loose with Ivanka and Jay Kay

* The secret portrait of Karren Brady

* PLUS: Cock rings on the 6 O'Clock News

>> Strange times <<The poll winners' party

It probably won't surprise you to learn that champagne corks were popping at 10pm prompt at the Baby Shard on Thursday night, as the Times and the Sun celebrated the projected result of the exit poll.

It's also unlikely to surprise you to learn that Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, Les Hinton and all the usual News UK suspects were there too, getting their fourth and fifth trolleys of booze brought in to the office by the time Blyth Valley announced.

The one thing that might surprise you though is that in among the revellers was... Cate Blanchett.This year's series of Love Island has taken three of the top ten spots in Ofcom's list of most complained-about shows of 2019.

>> Straight shooter <<Randy Andy makes 'em standy

It's been a bruising few weeks for Prince Andrew since his cataclysmic interview with Emily Maitlis – but he's probably brimming over with remorse and humility now, right?

Erm.

Earlier this month, Handsy Andy went on another of his (straightforward) shooting weekends. At breakfast one morning, everyone else in the party was sat quietly reading the papers when Andy came into the room.

As no-one stood up for him when he entered, he bellowed "OH HO HO! LET'S TRY THAT AGAIN, SHALL WE?" Then walked out of the room and re-entered, so that everyone could oblige him.There's a This Morning team WhatsApp group entitled "We Hate Phillip".

>> Big Questions <<Who's asking what this week?

What could have caused the Mail to pull a recent exclusive of theirs about a French masseuse meeting with Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace back in 2000? The story made the paper's front page at the end of November but, save for a report of the Mail's report in the New York Post, there's no trace of it online now.If you subscribe to Popbitch, chances are your internet search history is something you'd rather was kept private. Protect yourself online (plus bypass digital censorship) by using a VPN. CyberGhost is currently offering Popbitch readers a 79% discount on its 18 month plan, which protects up to seven devices, for just £2.15 a month.

[Find out more here]

>> Westwood ho <<Getting loose with Ivanka

Before she became the accomplished businesswoman and occasional threat to global security that she is today, Ivanka Trump had teenage ambitions of becoming a fashion model.

Thanks to her family connections, she was seen for a number of jobs in the late 90s and became a bit of a favourite of Vivienne Westwood. Westwood's team used to make a point of letting the models pick the music they put on in the studio as a way of helping them to relax and feel comfortable on a shoot.

Ivanka's choice of music, every single time? Jamiroquai. Which she would then sing along to.

Peanut from the Kaiser Chiefs is preparing to run his 100th park run over the Christmas holidays.

>> Bah humbug <<More drama at the BBC

The BBC is going heavy on trailing their version of A Christmas Carol this year, making a big song and dance out of the fact it stars Guy Pearce, is written by Peaky Blinders' Steven Knight and has been exec produced by Tom Hardy. One person who's been a little left out in the cold though is director Nick Murphy.

Poor Nick was so miffed that the BBC didn't invite him to take part in a special Q&A event about the show that he ended up turning up anyway to rage at the head of BBC Drama there. His ire hasn't just been reserved for TV execs either as he's started taking pot shots at Tom Hardy on Twitter too, claiming that the catering department was more involved in production than Hardy.

There may be some lingering resentment there, as Hardy was set to star in A Christmas Carol (as well as produce) until he suddenly decided to bail out. But if you ask us, Nick, you had a lucky escape.

On set at Hardy and Knight's previous BBC1 collab, Taboo, crew members reported that Hardy wasn't shy about staying in character, stark-bollock naked, for much of the time. And we can only imagine what it would have been like trying to direct with the Ghost of Christmas Past's dick and balls wafting all around.

Nick Cave Watch: Everyone's favourite goth dad was spotted at an Elton John concert in Melbourne this week.

>> Picture this <<More corporate creepiness

One of Jeffrey Epstein's former employees claims that Epstein kept a 6ft portrait of his mysterious 'fixer' Ghislaine Maxwell above the pool in his sprawling New Mexico mansion. Not just any old portrait though. One of her naked and "posing provocatively".

He wouldn't be the first icky businessman to have had a life-size nudey portrait of a close associate on their wall though. West Ham's porn-purveying chairman, David Sullivan, was once well known in the football world for having a huge painting hung in his basement office.

Of his now Vice-Chairman at West Ham FC, Dame Karren Brady.Andy Coulson has been advised by friends that having his own name in his new PR firm (Coulson Partners) is enough to stop most major organisations from hiring them. So far it's advice that he (and his ego) seem unwilling to take.

>> Shaky casting <<Merry Christmas everyone!

This year's bleak seasonal murder drama, Responsible Child (based on the real life story of a 14 year-old killer who was tried as an adult and jailed) has been getting rave reviews.

Whether it was the shocking nature of the story, or the impressive performance of the child actor who inhabited the role, we couldn't tell you, but for some reason most of the reviews have failed to mention the most important thing about the production.

The kid who plays the murderer is the grandson of Shakin' Stevens.

This week's Media Masters podcast is a chat with historian and broadcaster David Starkey. His outspoken, unforgiving style and trenchant opinions have earned him a reputation as being "the rudest man in Britain". In this in-depth interview he explains the impact it's had over his career.

[Listen/Download on Media Masters]

>> One love <<The race for Xmas No.1

Now that The X Factor is an utterly spent force, and December streaming is dominated by seasonal classics, the annual race for Christmas No.1 has become a much more unpredictable beast.

Re-releases are subjected to permanent ACR restrictions ('Accelerated Chart Ratio') with streaming, which basically means that old, established classics have to generate twice the number of streams as new tracks in order to compete. (Without this, three of the top four last Friday would have been Mariah Carey, Wham! and The Pogues.)

So who's in the running this year? There's another tedious song about sausage rolls from Ladbaby (hideous; but for a good cause). There's the inevitable Ed Sheeran (this year on Stormzy's record). And of course, there's the now traditional Facebook campaign choice.

Facebook campaigns are a bit of a lost cause but it has to be said: of all the songs that the British public could have picked to champion this year, Jarvis Cocker's "(Cunts Are Still) Running The World", is a pretty good one.

[Join the campaign]

REO Speedwagon's original of Can't Fight This Feeling has been streamed more than Bastille's John Lewis ad cover since its release in mid-November.

>> Electile dysfunction <<Another cock up on the Beeb

On election day, there are very strict rules in the UK which forbid news organisations from discussing politics until polling is closed. Which means that news teams have to ignore the biggest story of the day and compile their news bulletins from whatever innocuous filler they can drum up instead.

As part of their non-political Six O'Clock News broadcast last Thursday, BBC1 chose to air an item about the postal service and people sending tiny items in oversized parcels. Alas, it seems there was a very good reason that the Six O'Clock News hadn't touched that story previously.

One of the parcels that was prominently displayed as part of the pre-watershed segment clearly showed a cock ring.Nominative Determinism of the Week: The Senior doorkeeper of the House of Commons... Phil Howse!

>> 2019: The Annual <<A last little gift from us

That's almost it for another year. We've got a couple of special issues to send out between now and 2020, so we'll be back in your inboxes before the New Year. But if you want to sink your teeth into some more Popbitch material over the Christmas holidays, then download our 2019 annual.

It's totally free, and features some of our favourite stories of the year. Print it off at work! Use it as last-minute wrapping paper! Give a copy to your most corruptible niece or nephew!

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>> Hmmms <<Cats, dogs, Muppets

Rowan Atkinson deepfaked Dior advert

[Ready to lose your libido?]

The reviews of Cats are restoring our faith and trust in journalism

[Read on Prospect]

Picture of dogs in mid-air, catching frisbees

[Cute: what more do you want?]

Need to stock up on wine before the holidays kick off? Naked Wines is offering Popbitch readers the chance to get a case of six sumptuous bottles, plus free delivery, for just £19.99.

[Get your orders in soon!]

What do you get for the man who has everything?

[Try an annual Wank-Pass]

40 years since the Muppets/John Denver Christmas special

[Watch on YouTube]

A crash course in the 100 most memorable memes of the decade

[Read on BuzzFeed]

The real life, bricks-and-mortar Popbitch Popquiz will return in January. Don't let dry January stop you having any fun. Join us at Smiths of Smithfield for another seven rounds of trivia, music and smut with our host, Tom Webb!

[Tuesday 14th January]

[Tuesday 28th January]

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[gyrlversion]

Heres What Its Like To See Yourself In A Deepfake Porn Video

On a busy workday in March, 28-year-old Kate felt an urgent tap on her shoulder. Her colleague wanted to show her a video, so she glanced at his computer and was shocked to see her own face staring back, wincing and moaning. She appeared on-screen to be lying naked on a couch with her legs in the air while a man repeatedly penetrated her.

Kate felt sick. Her co-workers, who’d gathered around to see what was going on, instantly fell silent when they saw the video. It looked real and even identified Kate by name, but she knew it couldn’t be. Beyond the obvious — she’d never done porn — she could tell it wasn’t her body; only the face was hers. It had to be some kind of hoax… but would other people believe it?

“It was horrifying,” Kate, who lives in Texas, told HuffPost. “I’d never seen anything like it.”

The video, which is still online and has tens of thousands of views, is a deepfake — a doctored video created with artificial-intelligence software that can make someone appear to do or say anything. Deepfake algorithms use a dataset of videos and images of an individual to create a virtual model of their face that can be superimposed and manipulated. In Kate’s case, her face was swapped onto a porn actress’ head.

“When it’s Photoshop, it’s a static picture and can be very obvious that it’s not real,” said Kate, who’s been the target of previous misogynistic attacks. “But when it’s your own face reacting and moving, there’s this panic that you have no control over how people use your image.”

At first, deepfake porn almost exclusively featured female celebrities; their television and movie appearances gave video creators plenty of material to work with. But now, as the technology has advanced and become more broadly accessible, ordinary women with even a small selection of public photos or videos of themselves are being targeted too.

HuffPost spoke to six women who have been digitally inserted into porn without their consent. Those quoted here are identified by pseudonyms to protect their privacy, and are speaking out to call attention to an issue that’s been left to fester in the shadows.

Most public discussion on deepfakes thus far has centered on the potential political problems they could cause in the future, even though they already pose a real threat to women. Lawmakers have fretted about how the videos could hypothetically make a presidential candidate appear to say something defamatory on the eve of next year’s election. Satirical deepfakes of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have recently dominated headlines as warnings of what’s to come.

Meanwhile, as deepfake porn continues to upend women’s lives, there’s been little media coverage, and there still exists no criminal recourse for victims.

“The harm done to women when it comes to this kind of sexual objectification is happening now,” said Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. “It’s almost like people have forgotten that this is what this technology really started out as, and the conversation around women has fallen away.”

Deepfakes Are Rooted In Misogyny

Deepfakes have been weaponized against women for as long as they’ve existed. The term “deepfake” was coined in 2017 by an anonymous Reddit user who shared doctored porn videos like the one above, which portrays “Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot. Today, major porn websites are filled with deepfakes, despite promises to ban them. (MindGeek, which owns Pornhub and other erotic video sites, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the no-deepfakes policy it announced more than a year ago.)

Other tech platforms have wavered in their approach to deepfakes hosted on their sites, torn between calls to stamp out disinformation and to protect free expression. Inside the federal government, legislators have started to sound the alarm about the videos, and a few have introduced bills to regulate them, such as the DEEPFAKES Accountability Act from Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.). But so far, none have resulted in action.

Once something is uploaded it can never really get deleted. It will just be reposted forever. Tina, a victim of nonconsensual deepfake porn

Without any such intervention or effective policies in place, deepfake porn has carved out a comfortable space online — and it’s thriving. In addition to free, easy-to-use deepfake generator apps, there are now photo search engines (which HuffPost won’t name) that allow people to upload pictures of individuals to find porn actresses with similar features for optimal face-swapping results. There are even deepfake porn forums where men make paid requests for professional-looking videos of specific women, and share links to the women’s social media profiles for source imagery. HuffPost has observed requesters seeking porn with female Twitch, YouTube and Instagram influencers, as well as the requesters’ own co-workers, friends and exes.

On one such forum in March, someone asked for a sex video of Tina, a 24-year-old Canadian woman, and dropped a link to her YouTube channel. Four days later, a deepfake popped up that appeared to show her bent over naked on a bed with one man thrusting behind her and another stroking his penis near her head. The video, which is virtually seamless, is still up with thousands of views.

“I was definitely shocked and disturbed,” Tina, who learned of the video when an acquaintance sent her a link, told HuffPost. “It felt really weird and gross to see my face where it shouldn’t be.”

The video poster and claimed creator is a middle-aged man, according to his profile. Tina has no idea who he is. She thought about trying to get the video taken down, but didn’t see a point once she realized it had already been shared to other websites.

“You know how the internet is — once something is uploaded it can never really get deleted,” she said. “It will just be reposted forever.”

Someone makes an anonymous, paid request for deepfake porn of their crush.

It Could Happen To Anyone

Until recently, convincing, deepfake-style video manipulation could only be done by highly skilled editors. Hollywood filmmakers have digitally inserted actors into movies posthumously, for example, which required a considerable amount of footage of the actors’ faces to work with. Now, rapidly advancing technology has democratized this kind of deceptive video-editing practice at women’s expense. We’ve reached a point where even amateurs with relatively few pictures of their target’s face can create deepfake porn on their own.

One self-proclaimed video creator, who describes himself online as a 25-year-old Greek man and “one of the first guys” to make deepfake porn, solicits donations and paid requests on multiple forums. People have watched his videos more than 300,000 times.

Deepfakes are “no different from a photoshop manipulation or artist drawing/rendering,” the man, who did not reveal his name, told HuffPost. Asked if anyone ever requests that he remove the sex videos he uploads, he replied: “There are no takedowns.”

Despite his disregard for women’s privacy, he seems rather concerned with protecting his own: “I’m accepting payments in bitcoin and other crypto currencies (no paypal/credit card due to privacy reasons),” he wrote in one post. In another, he listed his price range as around $15 to $40 per video.

“Women can tell men, ‘I don’t want to date you, I don’t want to know you, I don’t want to take my clothes off for you,’ but now men can say, ‘Oh yeah? I’m going to force you to, and if I can’t do it physically, I will do it virtually,’” said Franks. “There’s nothing you can really do to protect yourself except not exist online.”

She’s hopeful that as people become increasingly aware of deepfakes and deepfake porn in particular, they’ll become more skeptical of what they see online.

“The only silver lining, if you can even call it that,” she said, “is that the more people know about this, the more they’ll start to question if [revenge porn videos] are real.”

But deepfakes have also broadened the threat of revenge porn, or nonconsensual porn. A vindictive creep no longer needs nudes or sex tapes of a woman who’s spurned him to leak online. He just needs her Facebook or Instagram photos to deepfake into existing porn. And as these videos get easier to make, they’re also getting harder to recognize.

There’s nothing you can really do to protect yourself except not exist online. Mary Anne Franks, president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative

Like so many women, Amy, a mother and business owner who’s based in Los Angeles, has been harassed in the past with crudely altered images that were disturbing but clearly fake. She’d never heard of deepfakes until she was featured in one that portrays her having sex, and labels her a “slut.” In the comments section, people have commended the anonymous creator for the video’s believability.

“It didn’t get really concerning until the technology and skill level of those putting it together got better — to the point where people might actually believe that was me,” Amy told HuffPost. “If we see a video of something, we take it as fact.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, has been working in recent years to develop machine-learning algorithms that can detect manipulated videos, including deepfakes. Much of the challenge lies in keeping pace with deepfake software as it continues to evolve.

“As the people making these videos get more and more sophisticated with their tools, we’re going to have to get more and more sophisticated with ours,” Edward Delp, a media forensics expert at Purdue University who’s conducting research for DARPA, said in a recent interview with HuffPost. “It’s going to be an arms race.”

Nicolas Ortega

Malicious deepfakes are usually posted anonymously and designed to go viral.

No Real Options For Victims

Maya, a 29-year-old woman who also lives in Los Angeles, wasn’t aware that she’s featured in deepfake porn until HuffPost contacted her last week. She was aghast to learn of the video, which identifies her by name and appears to show her masturbating. But she wasn’t entirely surprised: She’s been receiving a lot of messages lately from strangers requesting sex.

“Being violated in such an intimate way is really a weird feeling,” Maya told HuffPost. “The idea of people sexualizing me makes me feel like I’m being fetishized, receiving unwanted attention, losing respect as a person and no longer safe.”

The unfortunate reality for Maya and other women in her situation is that there’s not much they can do now that the videos are out there. Lawsuits can be extremely expensive, and in order to sue for harassment, impersonation, defamation or even misappropriation of image — which typically only applies for celebrities — you need to know who you’re suing. Like many victims of nonconsensual deepfake porn, Maya has no clue who created or posted the video of her.

And because online intermediaries, including social media giants and deepfake forums, are shielded from liability for third-party content thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, suing the sites that host the video would be pointless too. Platforms can’t get in legal trouble for the things their users post, and aren’t required to remove them. As a result, trying to get abusive content taken offline is often futile.

“As disappointing and sobering as it is, there aren’t a lot of options for victims,” said Carrie Goldberg, an attorney specializing in sexual privacy. Deepfake websites exist “to monetize people’s humiliation,” she added. “It points to the infirmity that Section 230 has caused when there are websites that are so arrogant about their immunity from liability.”

Since malicious deepfakes are usually posted anonymously and designed to go viral, victims’ advocates such as Danielle Citron are urging lawmakers to develop a policy that’s focused not only on punishing the producers, but also the distributors. She and Franks are working together to draft a federal criminal law that would hold platforms accountable for wittingly amplifying hoax videos and enabling them to be spread around.

“If [there are] impersonations or manipulations that do not reflect what we’ve done or said, platforms should — once they figure it out — take it down,” Citron, who’s a law professor at the University of Maryland, said this month at the first congressional hearing on deepfakes. At this stage, she noted, there’s no way to filter the videos from being posted, so platforms should be required to remove them as soon as they’re flagged.

Free speech proponents worry that unless it’s done very carefully, forcing websites to restrict certain content could lead to broader repercussions for online expression.

But as Franks argued, unbridled deepfake porn is already doing just that.

“There’s a massive chilling effect that deepfake pornography has on women’s speech,” she said, “because the way to make yourself safer is to censor yourself.”

Pornhub

Pornhub is still riddled with deepfakes, despite promising to ban them more than a year ago.

Women Are Being Silenced

Investigative journalist Rana Ayyub has experienced firsthand the silencing effect Franks described. Last spring, she was the victim of a targeted disinformation campaign in India that was intended to intimidate and humiliate her.

The abuse began the day after she publicly condemned a political party’s shameful response to the rape of a young girl. Suddenly, screenshots showing a series of defamatory tweets falsely appearing to be from Ayyub began circulating online. She then realized a deepfake porn video featuring her face was spreading across social media like wildfire, alongside her name and phone number. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and Ayyub started getting calls and messages asking for sex.

“It was devastating,” she told HuffPost UK. “The entire country was watching a porn video that claimed to be me, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything.”

Even now that the video has been debunked as fake, Ayyub will never be able to fully move on. She can’t undo the damage to her reputation, and she’s afraid of drawing more attention to herself on social media.

“I used to be very opinionated; now I’m much more cautious about what I post online. I’ve self-censored quite a bit out of necessity,” she said. “I’m constantly thinking, ‘What if someone does something to me again?’”

Kate, the woman from Texas whose co-worker found deepfake porn of her, has struggled to move forward too. When she contacted her lawyer, he explained that the case would be incredibly difficult to fight because she didn’t know who was behind the video.

With no viable legal options on the table, Kate reluctantly turned to the deepfake forum where the video was posted and asked for it to be removed. The site owner told her she wasn’t the only woman on the page, then stopped replying, Kate said. She felt hopeless.

“It’s grotesque to know that it lives out there and there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “These things are so horribly believable, and you desperately want to say, ‘That’s not me!’ But that would just bring more attention to it.”

Like Ayyub, Kate has also started to limit what she shares online for fear that her content could be distorted and used against her without consequence yet again.

“Pornographic deepfakes and revenge porn and all that kind of stuff are only going to make women want to say less,” she said. “As these videos get more prolific and realistic, is this something we’re just going to be expected to accept as the cost of being online?”

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