* Text: You have little (definitive) clue who wrote what. You essentially have to ask the (apparent) writer.
* Photo: You used to have high confidence that a picture shows who appears to be shown. Not 100%, sure, but it's high.
* Video & Audio: You used to have very high confidence that the video including its audio are genuine. It was very difficult to replace video and/or audio.
Nowadays, none is trustworthy by default anymore. You can say: Well, just trust the company or Reuters.
Sure, but I don't think anyone cares about this case. It's not controversial. But how will they be able to verify controversial sources?
If they get sent a video claiming to be about Ukrainins killing civilians, and outfits & speech matching that, how can Reuters be sure about anything now?
Trust can't be given to the source, nor to the video, nor to the audio, nor to the metadata.
> Photo: You used to have high confidence that a picture shows who appears to be shown. Not 100%, sure, but it's high.
I don’t agree. Many important photos don’t show what we think they do.
The Soviet flag on The Reichstag. When it was taken and what it showed are different to the impression you get looking at the photo. It was taken after the event and the signs of looting were removed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_a_Flag_over_the_Reic...
There are bound to be loads more, and the faking goes way back. The US Civil War has examples where bodies were dragged around and made more dramatic. Added cannon balls in Crimean War photos etc.
This has long been a solved problem out in the real world.
Think back to the Nixon watergate scandal. When the reporters were going to press about that, they made damn sure it was 100% real first. By interviewing varying sources, human trust, etc.
All that really changes is they can't take video and audio evidence as fact anymore. So they have to, in essence, audit the video/audio trail, so they will want to talk to the person that filmed it, make sure the story holds up, etc.
Some technology changes can help with authenticity here, but it's not really a technical problem, it's a human trust problem.
There will be learning curves and maybe one or two of the currently well known and trusted news sources totally burn their brand because they didn't do their homework. Nothing really new though.
But that is out of scope of what you are replying to.
If a CFO makes a statement and that is on the company's website we can have reasonable confidence that the CFO made that statement and we can act on it.
Reporting on a video of unknown (possibly unknowable) provenance is a different kettle of fish.
> You used to have very high confidence that the video including its audio are genuine.
The physical artifacts yes, but not the narrative they were portraying. The “news” media has been spinning fictional narratives with physically authentic video and audio for a long time.
>>>> Nowadays, none is trustworthy by default anymore.
Perhaps that is a good thing. Maybe this is a good excuse to stop and consider multiple news outlets, even if it conflicts with our own opinions, for our news sources.
* Text: You have little (definitive) clue who wrote what. You essentially have to ask the (apparent) writer.
* Photo: You used to have high confidence that a picture shows who appears to be shown. Not 100%, sure, but it's high.
* Video & Audio: You used to have very high confidence that the video including its audio are genuine. It was very difficult to replace video and/or audio.
Nowadays, none is trustworthy by default anymore. You can say: Well, just trust the company or Reuters. Sure, but I don't think anyone cares about this case. It's not controversial. But how will they be able to verify controversial sources?
If they get sent a video claiming to be about Ukrainins killing civilians, and outfits & speech matching that, how can Reuters be sure about anything now? Trust can't be given to the source, nor to the video, nor to the audio, nor to the metadata.