I'll tell ya what, people: getting drunk and naked in Russia is a damn good way to spend a few days. No red-blooded American can hold this against Sanders.

Sadly, this will only work more to the favor of Machiavellian dirty tricksters and trolls who want to manipulate the public, and there's virtually nothing that can be done to counteract it. Even if there's technology out there to analyze videos that are created from this (and assuming it magically works on all the copycat software), the fact-checking will come far too late, after it's already gone viral. It will be the equivalent of a newspaper printing a retraction days later on the third page; no one will see it.

The world grows more amazing and beautiful and terrifying and awful every day.

tom006: How about Sanders standing on the stage with the murderous Sandinistas, grinning and clapping as they called for the destruction of the US, calling their bread lines a good thing, saying that shutting down the free press is sometimes necessary, and then vowing to turn Burlington Vermont into a similar communist paradise and set an example for the country and world? Can we hold that against this vainglorious, do-nothing old gasbag?

Disconcerting to be sure.

But Michael Brooks does a better Obama.

this also will be a crutch for cognitive dissonance just like the specter of russian bots and trolls has been for your typical partisans. Something you find disagreeable, why even bother to understand the argument, just call it fake and stay in your ideological safe space.

Good thing they proved crop circles are real before all this digital fakery showed up.

3: 🙄

I can't wait for the Putin/Trumpfy shirtless-on-horseback video to re-emerge. It's a Classic (and directly inspired 'Brokeback Mountain').

This is true, but what's worse is fancy deepfakes aren't even needed. Plain old dumbfakes, where you slap a lying caption on top of unrelated shocking archival footage, are quicker and easier.

Can even be more dangerous, because conducive to live optimization against your target psychology by experimenting with the caption.

Until people get smart enough to stop and think "but do I know the people kicking puppies are actually Stranger commenters just because the caption said" we're not going to see a lot of deepfakes needed.