1.
The Technology of
Fake News: between
a new Front and a
new Frontier
Nitzan-Or Kedrai | Yedioth Ahronoth Group
nitzan@ynet.co.il

2.
Let’s talk about
Fake News

3.
What is Post Truth and Fake News?
Fake news is one of the manifestations of post truth, and is
basically lies disguised as facts in the context of news articles.
Post truth is the zeitgeist we’re living in

4.
2. Social Media
Two reasons for Fake
News attacks:
1. Finance motivated attack-
The economic structure of social networks
makes it easy
1. Ideological attack -
in order to sprads hate in our communities:
“us” “them”

5.
Why is it so
IMPORTANT?

6.
In our talk today
1. The Technology behind Fake News
● Images
● Video
● Text
2. How Social Media is Trying to Fight Back
● Facebook
● Youtube
● Twitter
3. ethical discussion and possible solutions

7.
Bots and Deep Fake and fake articles
AI
Machine Learning
NLP
Natural language
processing
1. Technologies

8.
Manufacturing Fake…
1. Technologies
Text
ImageSound
video
• News Articles
• Social Media posts
• Petitions
• Photo manipulation
• Face/body implantation
• New personas/figures
• Voice
replacement
• Voice imitation

9.
Everything we know about
reality is about to change
https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
1. Technologies

10.
GAN - how does it work?
Generator & Discriminator- two models of neuronal networks
1. Technologies

11.
1. Technologies

12.
MLL open source
1. Technologies

13.
Fake entities will be used in various
fields
Fake
People/Entities
Popular
Culture
Marketing
CrimeJournalism
Politics
Reliable
institutions

14.
1. Technologies

15.
Lil Miquela
A “fake model” created by a startup named Brud
1. Technologies

16.
The new telemarketing
frauds
1. Technologies

17.
1. Technologies

18.
2016 elections bots
1. 470K retweet Trump
2. 50K retweeted Clinton
3. 48%-73% from Wikileaks sheres
4. 2.12M automated tweets related to russian bots
5. 455M comments
1. Technologies

19.
Image reverse search
Couldn’t cope with other
contextual topics on
conversations
styleGAN
Machine Learning/
NLP
2016 VS. 2020
1. Technologies

20.
Video -
DeepFake
1. Technologies

21.
1. Technologies
1. Face Swapping

22.
1. Technologies

23.
1. Technologies
2. Deepfake

24.
1. Technologies
2. Deepfake

25.
1. Technologies

26.
1. Technologies
conceptual art

27.
1. Technologies

28.
Open AI- GPT2
1. Technologies
.

29.
A-ha+ GPT2 Take on me
1. Technologies
We're talking away
I don't know what
I'm to say I'll say it anyway
Today's another day to find you
Shying away
I'll be coming for your love, okay?
Today's another day to meet you
Shirley may be the only thing you've got
But she's the only thing I care about
Shirley may be the only thing you have
Oh, look, what have I done
Shirley may be the only thing I've got
Shirley may be the only thing you love
Shirley may be the only thing you ever feel
Shirley may be the only thing you ever feel
Shirley may be the only thing that you feel
Shirley may be the only thing that you'll ever feel
Oh, look, what have I done
Shirley may be the only thing you have
She's not just someone who looks good
It's not just someone who looks nice
If I had a choice I'd still give you up
Just for Shirley I'm going over to this party
Shirley may be the only thing you
https://talktotransformer.com/

30.
How Tech Giants are trying
to deal with Fake News
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
Google
2. Social Media

31.
2. Social Media
Facebook
World map of social networks

32.
2. Social Media
Facebook

33.
2. Social Media
Facebook
#MeToo

34.
2. Social Media
Facebook

35.
2. Social Media
Facebook

36.
2. Social Media
Facebook

37.
2. Social Media
Facebook

38.
2. Social Media
Facebook
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
safe harbor
Fake account- no
Fake content- yes

39.
2. Social Media
YouTube
{
'status': 0,
'response': '<HttpError 404 when requesting
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?onBehalfOfContentOwner=AhVDiyW3
TtQVXYQScDLGfg&id=5n5WOUi3TO0 returned "The video that you are trying to
delete cannot be found. Check the value of the requests <code>id</code> parameter
to ensure that it is correct.">'
}

40.
2. Social Media
Hash= ?
YouTube

41.
2. Social Media

42.
2. Social Media
YouTube

43.
2. Social Media
Twitter

44.
2. Social Media
Twitter
"Posts from the IRA-controlled Twitter account
@TEN_GOP were cited or retweeted by multiple Trump
Campaign officials and surrogates, including Donald J.
Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad
Parscale, and Michael T. Flynn,"

45.
2. Social Media
Twitter

46.
2. Social Media

47.
2. Social Media

48.
2. Startups

49.
2. Publishers
One source of troth

50.
Automated
Jurnalisme
Based on AI
3. Ethical discussion & solutions

51.
Transfer
Learning
Use relevant and updated data!
3. Publishers Challenges3. Ethical discussion & solutions

52.
3. Publishers Challenges3. Publishers Challenges3. Ethical discussion & solutions

53.
3. Ethical discussion & solutions
•To what degree can we trust the user? (in an age of post truth)
•Does he have proper digital literacy?
•Can it be taught theses days?
•Lack of literacy = lack of agency?
•Are ordinary users complicit?
•To what standard do we need to hold the corporations accountable?
•Legally
•Technologically
•Are they a Publisher?
Existing corporate solutions

54.
3. Ethical discussion & solutions
•Open Source?
•Accidental fake news by publishers: fake/unreliable inputs/sources, trolling, faulty conclusions.
•No transparency: 1) of developers 2) of algorithms => lack of public criticism
•The value of authenticity?
•Evaluation of real people with real flaws and of human judgment.
•Biases: reflecting human wrongdoings or correcting them?
”Morally neutral” content
generation via AI/ML

55.
3. Ethical discussion & solutions

56.
Image
recognition
3. Ethical discussion & solutions

57.
MIT Technology review cover from 2013
1.The post true world is dangerously expanding due
to 1)advancement in tech 2) growing accessibility to
programmable bots 3) easier to spread
2020 Elections will be worse than 2016 when it’s
come to Fake News
Technology alone cannot solve the mess it created
itself
Spreading fake news is a war on our consciousness
The least we can do, is ensure that the ethical
discourse over ML and fake news doesn’t stay behind
the closed doors of corporations and governments.
This is what we talked about

58.
If you tolerate this
then your children
Will be next

59.
Are you ready for the challenge?
Let’s talk!
nitzan@ynet.co.il