Technology

You do have a point about the excesses of police work, but if you want to talk about empathy you should also consider the position of the kid who is harassed and traumatized over something they didn't even have any say over. There is some discussion to be had over what degree of punishment ought to be appropriate, and the need to limit police brutality, well beyond this particular matter.

But as far as demanding that every such work is taken down, and giving vulnerable people the means to demand so without exposing themselves further, it is perfectly reasonable.

Realistically, it’s as likely to happen as prosecution of kids who “get into fights” for assault. Kids tell mean lies about each other but that is not resolved in civil suits over defamation. Even between adults, that’s not the usual thing.

Except that in the case of deepfake porn it's not a matter of fuzzy two-sided conflicts. One side is creating the whole problem, and one side is just the victim of it despite not being involved in any way. That's the whole point of deepfake. The most that lies might play into it is in finding out that the porn is real, and in such case there is even more reason to take it down.

Civil suits under this bill would be mainly targeted against internet services, because they have the money. And it would largely be used over celebrity fakes. That’s the overwhelming part of fakes out there and they have the money to splurge on suing people who can’t pay. It would be wealthy, powerful people using it against horny teens.

Gotta say I have a hard time feeling sorry for the people who can't be satisfied by the frankly immense amount of porn we have and decided that they absolutely must have porn from that one specific person who never consented to it. Maybe they are wealthy and powerful, sure. Does that mean it's a free pass to fabricate deepfake porn with their likenesses? I don't think so. Nobody is owed that. As much as you insist that it will be used by the powerful against the poor masses, it still seems to me that whatever regular dude decides to do it is crossing serious boundaries. This is not brave freedom fighter, it's just an asshole.

I think most likely what will happen is that these internet services will just take those down. As they should.