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There is no ambiguity as to what happened during President Joe Biden’s attendance at the G7 summit in Italy. We know with certainty, for example, that the incumbent Democrat congratulated a skydiving paratrooper who had just landed nearby during a gathering of international leaders.
We also know that a deliberately misleading video from the event quickly made the rounds: Because the skydiver was not in frame, a deceptive clip gave the impression that a befuddled Biden wandered off for no reason, confused and addled, despite the context that proved otherwise.
It was ugly, but it wasn’t unusual. The right creates low-cost “cheapfakes“ like these all the time. Indeed, within days of the deceitful video out of Italy, a similar video made the rounds among conservatives showing Biden purportedly freezing onstage at a fundraiser. In the full context, it was clear the president simply paused to take in some applause. In another recent instance, a similarly deceptive clip circulated that seemed to show the president reaching for a non-existent chair, though in reality, there was a chair.
Of course, as these clips go viral, many of the people who watch them have no idea that they’ve been deceived. Indeed, that’s the point of the effort. NBC News reported this morning on the misleading G7 video:
Google recommended false versions of the story as “top stories” and the deceptive videos continued to accumulate millions of views on X. Copies of the videos were replayed on TikTok and YouTube with little context and zero indication that they were part of a concerted disinformation campaign. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, applied fact-checking labels to some posts but not to all.
There’s no great mystery as to the larger dynamic. Many of Biden’s critics want to focus on his age, so they disseminate cheapfakes in the hopes of fooling people. Thanks to the way online platforms often work, the scam is effective and has the intended effect. Fact-checkers try to keep up, but it’s a losing battle — in part because the avalanche of misleading videos is so intense, and in part because far more people will see the deceptive videos than the accurate reports that set the record straight.
But there’s a dimension to this that deserves special attention.
A separate NBC News report this week highlighted the fact that the Republican National Committee and major conservative media outlets have played a key role in blasting out the deceptive videos. Fox News personalities and the New York Post, not surprisingly, are among the most notable offenders. Donald Trump, of course, has engaged in the same tactics.
And that’s the part of this that stands out for me. Those who’ve spent time online in recent years have come to recognize the benefit of being a cautious news consumer: Images are routinely photoshopped. AI is increasingly used to create deceptive content. Video clips are often taken out of context.
It’s wrong and offensive, but there are plenty of activists who want to mislead the public, and there are too many undiscerning end-users who fall for the scam, fueling the cycle and creating the demand for more.
But while we’ve come to expect such tactics from random right-wing activists, operating on the fringes, the Republican Party is one of the nation’s two major parties. Donald Trump might soon be the leader of the free world. Outlets like Fox News and the New York Post might have dreadful reputations, but they ostensibly present themselves to the public as legitimate, independent news organizations.
When they embrace these tactics, they make the larger problem vastly worse.
I’m mindful of the fact that the right will respond that the left has its share of perpetrators, too. It’s a fair point. In fact, MSNBC published a great report yesterday from Hany Farid, a professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, who noted that deceptive images, purportedly showing Trump asleep during his recent criminal trial, were also recently circulated online.
But therein lies the point: Biden didn’t help promote or disseminate those misleading pictures. Neither did the Democratic National Committee or news outlets popular with Democratic voters. The tactics might be bipartisan, but there’s a qualitative difference between how the parties are approaching and dealing with cheapfakes.
The line between the GOP, its media allies, and the right-wing fringe continues to blur to the point of non-existence.