Facebook has decided to clamp down on what it describes as media that's been manipulated in order to mislead. In particular, deepfakes are coming under the spotlight and are now much more likely to be removed from the social network.
In a blog post, Monika Bickert, vice president of Global Policy Management at Facebook, explains how most media manipulation is carried out for benign reasons such as making audio clearer on a video. However, deepfakes are a different matter and can be created in order to mislead.
Facebook is going to take down such content, but only under certain circumstances. If media has been "edited or synthesized – beyond adjustments for clarity or quality," but in a way that isn't apparent to the average person it will get flagged. That's not enough on its own, though. The media also needs to have been created with the help of AI or machine learning that "merges, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic."
Content that is parody, satire, or manipulated "solely to omit or change the order of words" is exempt and will not be taken down. Facebook will also continue to enforce its Community Standards and use a network of independent third-party fact checkers to review content.
If the criteria for removing misleading media seems quite restrictive, that's because Facebook has made it purposefully so. The company's argument being, "If we simply removed all manipulated videos flagged by fact-checkers as false, the videos would still be available elsewhere on the internet or social media ecosystem. By leaving them up and labelling them as false, we're providing people with important information and context."
As Reuters reports, Facebook's clamp down on manipulated media comes ahead of the US Elections next year. We're sure to see many deepfakes appear attempting to mislead voters in the run-up to November, which hopefully won't now appear and get shared on Facebook. However, as an example of how restricted Facebook's rules are, the edited video of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi depicting her as incoherently slurring her speech remains available on the social network.
Facebook explains why in a statement, saying "The doctored video of Speaker Pelosi does not meet the standards of this policy and would not be removed. Only videos generated by artificial intelligence to depict people saying fictional things will be taken down ... Once the video of Speaker Pelosi was rated by a third-party fact-checker we reduced its distribution, and critically, people who saw it, tried to share it or already had received warnings that it was false."