Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Appear to Have Very Different Views About Deep Fakes

Meta appears to have suspended a parody account that was attempting to post a fake story about Facebook's CEO, just weeks after he talked about how important it was to make that type of content available on his platforms. On the same day that Congress killed tech-focused antitrust reform by not including the measures in a more than 4,000 page omnibus bill, the deep fake was suspended, showing a digitally altered Facebook CEO rejoicing.

The video was uploaded by Demand Progress Action, the advocacy group behind the fake Zuck deepfake, and was supposed to be uploaded to the social media platform on November 29th. There was no clear explanation for the suspension of the account. There is a video at the organization's account.

Andrew Ross Sorkin asked about the account during the New York Times DealBook summit after reporting on it. During the exchange, it appears that he said Meta kept the video before he argued against it.

It was obvious that it was a lie. It was kind of a joke. It's important that people are allowed to do humor and show technology. If Meta was really trying to trick people, its policies would kick in.

Gizmodo spoke with the account holder who said the account was suspended with no explanation or email other than an alert saying it or its content did not follow Meta's community guidelines. A new account called "deepfakezuck" was used to try to re-upload the video. It was the same account that was suspended a day later. The account creator said that they re- uploaded the video on December 19 because they wanted to draw attention to the inability of Congress to pass antitrust reforms.

At the same time their operatives in Congress killed strong antitrust reforms, Meta went back on its word that it wouldn't remove what is clearly parody (and therefore within the bounds of its manipulated media policy).

Meta says it will remove media if it has been synthesised, in ways that aren't apparent to an average person, and would likely deceive someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say. Meta says it will remove content if it is a product of artificial intelligence that combines, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be real.

Meta did not comment on why the accounts were taken down.

The video and the fake accounts are hosted on other platforms. While much of the attention over inconsistently applied content policies on the internet in recent weeks has been focused on the evolving hellscape that is Twitter, Langholz said the confusion points to a bigger problem.

Langholz thinks that Musk isn't the only thin skinned social media CEO.