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Social Media giant, Facebook has recently announced that they started cracking down on ‘fake news’ across their platform. Other than spammy links and click-bait posts that were used to spread untrue information on Facebook, digitally edited images and videos on Instagram, Facebook’s subsidiary, have also been caught up in the crossfire. Owing to their recent spread, and how believable they appear, these digitally altered videos and images are now dubbed “deep fakes.”

To deal with the issue head-on, Instagram went ahead and updated its user policy with a new set of terms and conditions. While most of us hardly read the fine print before using these social media platforms given that they rarely affect our usage and interaction, the new terms of use could affect what you post on Instagram.

Thus, before you post your photoshoot pics or a screenshot of your juicy payouts after playing your favorite Casino Vulkan games on Facebook or Instagram, you better take a closer look at the updated user policy. Here’s a highlight of what the updated terms and conditions of use are all about, in relation to deep fakes.

Getting Ahead of the Age of Misinformation

Since the beginning of the social media age, misinformation or “fake news” as others may call it, has been one of the biggest nuisances that people have had to deal with. Subsequently, Instagram is trying to solve this problem using a new feature that can detect forged or digitally altered pictures. It is a cutting-edge system which should be able to block the said deepfakes from misleading people every time they go viral. Indeed, it is very noble of Instagram for the initiative that they have taken to get ahead of this 21st-century problem.

Collateral Damage for Social Media Artists

The new initiative is, however, affecting the work of tons of artists and photographers active on Instagram and Facebook. Nowadays, people use various software like Adobe Photoshop to fine-tune their images and artworks. Unfortunately, from how the detection system works, a lot of artwork and photography material has been detected as fake and therefore blocked from being viewed. For the moment, however, all the artists’ accounts haven’t been blocked. But, all their digitally altered images still appear to be blocked by the state-of-the-art AI software.

As a result, lots of impressionist artworks have fallen victims of circumstance. Come to think of it, even Picasso, one of the greatest impressionist artists who have ever lived, was not trying to spread false information when he transposed facial features to where they weren’t supposed to be. In short, even though these images may appear altered, it still does not mean that you don’t want to see them in your Instagram feed.

Toby Harriman, a San Francisco based photographer, pointed out the issue after he posted a photo of a man staring at a vibrant colored mountain and got blocked. Although this was a pretty amazing digitally-altered picture, it was flagged as “fake information”, and the warning that showed on the image boldly stated, “The primary claims in this information are factually inaccurate.”

The Detection System is a Combination of AI and User Feedback

On the flip side, according to the social media giant, its alleged fake news detector system claims to use both feedback from the users’ community as well technology to find out which photos should be taken to independent third-party examiners for fact-checking. If the examiners decide that a photo is fake, it will be blurred out behind a warning message before anyone can view it. This blocks the image from being seen without explicit permission from the owner, who in turn has to jump through hurdles of warnings to get to the image.

To make things worse for the users, photos that are deemed to be “fake” are wiped out from the Explore tab. On top of that, if the “fake images” are tied with a specific hashtag, they will not appear on the hashtag search results. Furthermore, posts that recreate the image will also be automatically blocked.

A Work in Progress

If only it worked correctly, without affecting artists or photographers, it would have made Instagram much more efficient at dealing with the spread of misinformation on the internet. But that can only happen if Instagram itself manages to sort the apparent glitches in the system.

After the issue, Toby Harriman posted on Facebook talking about the war on misinformation that Instagram had launched. He stated that Instagram has taken it a little bit too far, adding that he has a profound respect for digital art in as much as he’d want to differentiate real images from fake ones.

This news comes after Instagram also added various video editing tools to its Boomerang app, which, ironically, is designed to make video footages much impressionistic and less lifelike.

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