What Danish celebrities such as Anders Lund Madsen and Divya Das have been exposed on the meta platforms Facebook and Instagram is completely unacceptable, unprecedented and objectionable.
TjekDet and Danish daily Politiken jointly report that celebrities' faces have been “deepfaked” (a technology that can imitate real people's voices and faces) and used in fake advertising, leading to some Danes being fooled. It was revealed that he had been made a fake investment.
Media outlets tried in vain to get comment from Facebook representative Martin Ruby (who has 1,600 Facebook friends), a former spin doctor for a Danish minister. But like other tech giants, when it comes to questions he can't or doesn't want to answer, he has no answers at all. He is happy to meet politicians on panels. And as the sole representative of big business, he was appointed to the government as a member of the advisory group of the prestigious Magtu Drenning, a scientific project with the mission of producing new research-based knowledge about the state of democracy and power. (when appointed from, relationship). Danish companies are only represented through the trade organizations DI and DE, of which Meta is also a member.
DR Media Manager Sandy French (1000 Facebook friends), TV2's Ulla Polsu (1500 Facebook friends), BT Editor-in-Chief Simon Richard Nielsen (1400 Facebook followers) ), and several politicians are understandably furious about the bill. Unacceptable situation. “You need to be very negative and critical of the meta because they are doing this completely intentionally. It's a money-making machine for them.” The Danish People's Party's spokesperson on digitalization, Peter Koford (29,000 followers on Facebook), told Politiken:
It’s true that Meta monetizes all content, especially content that generates clicks, likes, and shares, and the same is true when it comes to deepfakes. Meth only stops things that are obviously illegal, things that they want to stop, like nipples. Both Facebook and Instagram have long been filled with AI-generated, or fake, photos, generating massive amounts of traffic.
Anders Lund Madsen, who has 11,000 followers on Facebook and 84,000 followers on Instagram, will now sue Mehta, he claims. Divya Das, who has 900 Facebook friends and 11,000 Instagram followers, reported the giant to the police. Will this change anything, or will Meta pay the money and settle the case? In fact, the EU has good legislation, such as the Digital Services Act, which gives big companies more responsibility for the content on their platforms. But they are difficult to enforce.
Politiken editor-in-chief Christian Jensen (4,900 Facebook friends) accuses politicians of doing nothing. But the fact that politicians are relatively powerless was illustrated in an interview with Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard (29,000 Facebook followers) on Politiken, in which he said that next to TikTok, Snap and Meta. answered what they would do to ensure compliance with new laws such as The age of consent on social media is 15 years old. Here, the minister has suggested that the government could choose to ban TikTok, but stressed that this cannot be done at a national level. The fact that only authoritarian countries like China ban certain services is another matter.
Dear celebrities, politicians, and media executives. Stop thinking you can democratize the meta. Perhaps the EU will be able to regulate parts of meth in the long run, but that will take years and it will never be able to treat meth as a neutral infrastructure. There's really only one thing you can do. But this is effective. Because this is the one thing the tech giants will listen to.
Get out of there. Show me the bottom of your digital feed. Delete your profile and many followers. You are a role model and others will follow suit. That's the only thing that really gets to them.
This column first appeared in Politiken.
Translated with help from Deepl.com
Image: Diva Das' Facebook account is closed as it warns followers about deepfakes.
