#naomiklein — Public Fediverse posts

Seeing is believing? Welcome to the post-truth era disrupting our sense of reality

https://therealists.org/?p=8096

Remember the adage “pics or it didn’t happen?”

In this brave new technological age, the saying feels as dated as a rotary phone or a fax machine – something from the past that did not age well and feels positively antiquated now. Because with AI Image Generator tools like Midjourney, DALL·E and Stable Diffusion – to name a few – it is becoming hard to make a distinction between what is real and what is fabricated or manipulated. It is so easy to produce fake photos of real people and events. Remember the AI generated photo of Pope Francis in the white puffer jacket?

How a Royal scandal put the spotlight on manipulated images

This brand new “problem” came to the forefront again earlier this week when Kensington Palace shared a Mother’s Day family portrait of Catherine, Princess of Wales and her 3 children that was immediately met with a “kill notice” by the world’s leading photo agencies. Why? It was heavily retouched and thus did not meet the agencies’ photo standards.

Hours later an (unprecedented) apology was posted on the official social media accounts of the Prince and Princess of Wales, stating “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C”

It is easy to be sucked into the rabbit hole of the whole saga. To casual observers this may seem like a trivial issue – in a world experiencing devastating conflicts. But details surrounding the story are so odd and unprecedented, that they deserve close attention. They may be a harbinger of a disturbing post-truth era that is already here, fueled by digital tools.

Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic published a brilliant piece titled “Kate Middleton and the End of Shared Reality”.

Warzel wrote:

If you’re looking for an image that perfectly showcases the confusion and chaos of a choose-your-own-reality information dystopia, you probably couldn’t do better than yesterday’s portrait of Catherine, Princess of Wales. In just one day, the photograph has transformed from a hastily released piece of public-relations damage control into something of a Rorschach test—a collision between plausibility and conspiracy.

He continued (emphasis mine):

For years, researchers and journalists have warned that deepfakes and generative-AI tools may destroy any remaining shreds of shared reality. Experts have reasoned that technology might become so good at conjuring synthetic media that it becomes difficult for anyone to believe anything they didn’t witness themselves. The royal-portrait debacle illustrates that this era isn’t forthcoming. We’re living in it.

This post-truth universe doesn’t feel like chaotic science fiction. Instead, it’s mundane: People now feel a pervasive, low-grade disorientation, suspicion, and distrust. And as the royal-photo fiasco shows, the deepfake age doesn’t need to be powered by generative AI—a hasty Photoshop will do.

Formidable tools in our hands, paving the way for the “post-truth” era

Technology has become so advanced that it’s hard to know if what we see is authentic or not.

Ubiquitous high resolution smartphones with readily available photo editing apps like FaceApp and FaceTune have made it incredibly easy for people to create a glamorous, idealized portrait of themselves.

We are now so used to seeing retouched photos of real life friends on social media that the act of modifying pictures has become completely banal.

“What is the big deal about this?” You may wonder. “Nobody is getting hurt.”

Well, I would argue that this “post-truth” era has some troubling consequences – to our sense of reality and our sense of self. And it’s here already.

Stage 1 was becoming accustomed to seeing heavily retouched photos of celebrities and influencers on social media… Hello Kardashians!

A screenshot of a message on X borrowing language from Catherine’s apology – and using a screenshot of a video of Khloe Kardashian shot the same day as she published a highly retouched photo of herself on social media

Stage 2 was noticing real life friends and acquaintances utilizing popular apps to create idealized photos of themselves for social media. Who doesn’t have a friend who looks completely different on Instagram because of FaceTune? Or who uses an avatar created by Lensa AI?

Stage 3 of the transition to the post-truth era is the proliferation of deepfakes featuring notable people: with realistic synthetic media (audio, photos or videos) making them do and say fabricated things. Our sense of reality is being completely upended.

And Stage 4 may be deepfakes/synthetic media featuring regular people like you and me. It will become incredibly easy to create and disseminate them. In a way, Lensa AI already ushered this in for millions of people around the world.

The “Infocalypse” is already here

Synthetic media is here to stay and trends have been accelerating at a breakneck speed over the past 3 months. You don’t believe me? Here are some news stories that made headline news since January:

January 15 – Mashable: “Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez deepfakes used in Le Creuset giveaway scam“

January 29 – AP News: “X pauses some Taylor Swift searches as deepfake explicit images spread”

February 15 – The Guardian: “OpenAI launches tool that instantly creates video from text“

February 22 – Washington Post: “Bobbi Althoff deepfake spotlights X’s role as a top source of AI porn“

February 24 – BBC: “Piers Morgan and Oprah Winfrey ‘deepfaked’ for US influencer’s ads“

March 1 – Washington Post: “Tech writer Kara Swisher has a new book. Enter the AI-generated scams”

March 4 – BBC: “Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images”

March 5 – 404 Media: “Inside the World of TikTok Spammers and the AI Tools That Enable Them“

March 8 – The Verge: “Florida teens arrested for creating ‘deepfake’ AI nude images of classmates“

March 9 – Engadget: “AI Marilyn Monroe adds to the list of dead celebrities digitally resurrected without consent“

March 12 – Forbes: “AI Nudes Of Celebs Like Margot Robbie And Selena Gomez Are For Sale On eBay“

March 12 – Forbes: “Deepfaked Celebrities Hawked A Massive Trump Scam On Facebook And YouTube“

March 12 – Wired: “Your Kid May Already Be Watching AI-Generated Videos on YouTube“

March 15 – 404 Media: “Horrific AI-Generated Breastfeeding Images Bypass Facebook’s Moderation“

Let’s go back to the headline from March 8 – about the students creating pornographic deepfakes of their classmates. The details are absolutely disturbing:

Two Florida middle schoolers were arrested in December and charged with third-degree felonies for allegedly creating deepfake nudes of their classmates. A report by Wired cites police reports saying two boys, aged 13 and 14, are accused of using an unnamed “artificial intelligence application” to generate the explicit images of other students “between the ages of 12 and 13.” The incident may be the first US instance of criminal charges related to AI-generated nude images.

Two middle schoolers aged 13 and 14.

If they could do that, now in early 2024, imagine what will happen when these technologies become more accessible… and more sophisticated.

A New Grim Reaper Meme?

There is a famous meme that shows the grim reaper knocking on doors. If we were to apply this to Big Tech, I would propose that door 1 is “privacy”, door 2 is “perception of reality” and we have yet to see what door 3 could be. But these massive changes have a profound effects on our lives.

My attempt at a grim reaper meme – showing what Big Tech has killed for us all: first privacy, then a sense of reality and who knows what will be next

“Psychosis” and “The Shock Doctrine”

The definition of “psychosis” – a serious mental health disorder – is this:

“Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real.”

I’m reminded of the powerful book The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. In it, she argues that when people are distracted, feeling fragile, or gripped by crises, it is far easier to manipulate them: “in moments of crisis, people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure.”

Not being able to make a distinction between what is real and what is fake is deeply disorienting. Are these new technological tools ushering in the “post-truth” era making us more gullible and easier to manipulate? I’d venture to say yes.

A Silver Lining?

All this sounds very grim. But there is another side – a potential silver lining.

What is something you cannot fake or artificially alter with technology? A real life meeting. Any event happening away from screens.

I wonder if the onslaught of fake synthetic media will have a backlash, turning people off from online worlds and making them more prone to spend time in “the real world” away from devices.

Could this be the “cure” for excessive hours spent in front of screens? Making us appreciate the real, offline world more, where digital illusions can’t intrude?

Maybe. At least, this is where I would immediately seek refuge.

Elena

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#AI #DallE #LensaAI #Midjourney #NaomiKlein #OpenAI #perceptionOfReality #postTruth #reality #Sora #StableDiffusion #syntheticMedia #TheShockDoctrine

Doppelganger
A Trip Into the Mirror World

"What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?"

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#NaomiKlein
#NaomiWolf

“When Naomi Klein Realized People Regularly Confused Her With Naomi Wolf, She Went Down A Rabbit Hole”, Naomi Klein, Vanity Fair (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-book).

#NaomiKlein #NaomiWolf #IdentityCrisis #Doppelgänger #Identity

Wenn jemand, der bisher irgendwie links bzw. liberal gebrandet war, ins rechte #Querdenker Paralleluniversum abdriftet, macht mein Hirn automatisch so eine Art Schnell-Check für Indizien im bisherigen Werk, manches springt einen dann förmlich an. So etwas ähnliches, nur sehr viel ausführlicher, hat #NaomiKlein mit der völlig Off-the-Rocker gegangenen #NaomiWolf gemacht, mit der sie sehr oft verwechselt wird. @jbirken hat eine super #Rezension dazu geschrieben:
https://54books.de/wege-des-nichtsehens-naomi-klein-schreibt-in-doppelgaenger-ueber-politische-verwechslungen/

"Klein looks at how '#FarRight movements feign solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, and new-age wellness entrepreneurs turned #antivaxxers further scramble our familiar political alliances.' #Doppelganger explores 'what it feels like to watch one’s identity slip away in the digital ether, an experience many more of us will have in the age of AI.' "

https://www.wgbh.org/forum-network/lectures/doppelganger-with-naomi-klein

#NaomiKlein #books #NaomiWolf #conspiracism #diagonalism

"In her new book #Doppelganger Klein uses the fact that she is commonly confused online for a very different writer, #NaomiWolf, who has called #Covid19 vaccine programmes ‘mass murder’, as a device to explore modern themes including online identity, #ConspiracyTheories and the 21st Century supremacy of the ‘personal brand.' "

#NaomiKlein on conspiracies, climate and the 'personal brand'

https://pod.link/794389685/episode/a51008ce1615bc9d814ad06033b5a1f9

#conspiracism #antiscience #disinformation #antivaxxers #diagonalism #books

"It’s a huge mistake, Klein thinks, to see Wolf in recent years as having ‘lost it’. The New York Times no longer calls her, so she took her followers with her ‘over the edge’, where she found the new and even bigger audience of #VirusDenialists and #AntiVaxxers, wellness gurus and religious fundamentalists.."

Jenny Turner reviews #NaomiKlein's "#Doppelganger"

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n19/jenny-turner/short-cuts

#NaomiWolf #conspiracism #diagonalism #disinformation #Antivaxx #Covid19 #CovidDisinfo #AntiScience #books

Pluralistic: Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger" (05 September 2023)
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/

This article by @pluralistic is a compelling review of Naomi Klein's new book, and shares some hard truths about leftists, liberals, progressives, and conservatives.

#NaomiKlein #NaomiWolf #Doppelganger

Ay yi yi. I had heard about this Naomi Klein work, but this excerpt is fascinating. I had to put it down and come back to it because it was so much. What a weird and clever strategy it feels that looking at Naomi Wolf to assess the state of...[gestures vaguely] things....

But I don't know how to shake them out of it. Might have to see if the book tells us.

#ConspiracyTheorist #NaomiWolf #antivaxxers #SteveBannon #NaomiKlein #Doppelganger

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

"If there is one message I should have taken from the destabilising appearance of my doppelganger, this is it:

Once and for all, stop eavesdropping on strangers talking about you in this crowded and filthy global #toilet known as #SocialMedia."

— Naomi Klein

#NaomiKlein and her anti-truth doppelganger #NaomiWolf

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

#NaomiKlein tells about her doppelganger, #NaomiWolf:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

' When she was casting nearly every public health measure marshalled to control the Covid pandemic as a covert plan by the Chinese Communist party, the World Economic Forum and Anthony Fauci to usher in a sinister new world order, I began to feel as if I was reading a parody of The Shock Doctrine, one with all facts and evidence carefully removed, and coming to cartoonishly broad conclusions I would never support. '

The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 2

Second In A Series
Activists Afoot!

As I suggested in my first post in this series on MCRC v. EPA, the complaint filed by the Marquette County Road Commission would have us believe that “anti-mining” forces worked secretly with and even infiltrated the EPA, and the agency’s objections to CR 595 followed a “predetermined plan.” The EPA, it claims, had decided to oppose the haul road even before the MCRC application was reviewed.

This sounds like legitimate cause for concern: permit applications should be reviewed on their merits, not pre-judged and not according to some other anti- or pro- agenda. We certainly wouldn’t want someone in the Environmental Protection Agency to be “pro-mining”; there are enough well-paid mining lobbyists already haunting the hallways in Lansing and Washington, DC. But in this case, the anti-mining label is being used as a term of opprobrium, and to distort and deliberately misrepresent what the Environmental Protection Agency is chartered and required by law to do: in short, to enforce the Clean Water Act and protect the environment.

When it comes to proving the insinuations it makes, the MCRC complaint offers slim evidence.

For example, the complaint makes a big fuss over a November 28, 2012 letter from Laura Farwell, who lives in the Marquette area and is described here as “a prominent environmental activist.”  The letter is addressed to Lynn Abramson, then a Senior Legislative Assistant for Senator Barbara Boxer, and Thomas Fox, Senior Counsel of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking them to “weigh-in” with the EPA on CR 595. (Exhibit 1).

EPA must determine whether to uphold its original objections to proposed County Road 595 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), pursuant to its supervisory authority over Michigan’s delegated wetlands permitting program. Tom may remember that during the August 30, 2011 meeting at EPA Denise Keehner of EPA’s office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds definitively reiterated EPA’s position and stated that the haul road would not happen.
Thus, this letter is to request, respectfully, that you weigh-in as soon as possible with the EPA on its decision.

The MCRC complains about Farwell’s use of the word “definitively” here and casts the 2011 meeting in a sinister light:

on August 30, 2011, a very different type of meeting regarding CR 595 took place at USEPA Headquarters in Washington, DC. MCRC was neither invited to nor informed of the meeting. In attendance (as far as is known at the present time) were top USEPA officials, Congressional staff, KBIC representatives, and a prominent environmental activist opposed to the construction of CR 595. It further appears that USEPA made no formal record of the meeting.

Without a formal record, it’s impossible to know what transpired at this meeting, and if the complaint is going to rely on Farwell’s memory of the conversation, then it should also take into account her intentions in paraphrasing and recounting it, one year after it took place. The language here — “a very different type of meeting,” “neither invited nor informed,” “as far as is known at the present time,” “no formal record” — doesn’t help in that regard, and it’s meant to suggest that conjurations were already afoot.

It’s clear the MCRC was not included in some discussions at EPA. There’s nothing extraordinary or illicit about that. All concerned parties had been meeting with and petitioning the EPA for several years at this point. The complaint is still a long way from proving that the EPA “surreptitiously met with a number of environmental activists vocally opposed to the road,” and an even longer way from proving that there was anything like an anti-mining coalition assembled in secret at the offices of the EPA.

In an ironic twist, these allegations of secrecy and whispering behind closed doors may come back to haunt the MCRC: at a Marquette County Board of Commissioners meeting this month, the Marquette County Road Commission itself faced accusations that it had violated the Open Meetings Act in planning to bring its suit against the EPA. Public officials who intentionally violate that act are ordinarily fined and incur other liabilities; in this case, there would be some eating of words as well.

By November 28, 2012, the EPA had, in fact, “decided against the proposed haul road,” as Farwell puts it in the email she sent along with the letter to Abramson and Fox. The EPA had entered objections to the Woodland Road Application (in March, 2010) and announced their objections to CR 595 (in March, 2012).  Even so, a Fall 2012 public meeting held by the EPA “in Marquette…for more input” had Farwell worried. She was not at all confident the EPA would uphold its original objections to the haul road.  The matter was still far from being “definitively” settled.

Whatever reassurances Farwell was given at that 2011 meeting — or thought she had been given, or recalled having been given, one year later — were clearly at risk of getting lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. The purpose of her letter is to prevent that.

There is nothing surprising in all this. Those watching new mining developments in the Upper Peninsula are constantly having to chase after the EPA and demand that the regulator step in and do its job.

Jeffery Loman, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and a former federal regulator, has repeatedly put the EPA on notice and complained of the agency’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act.

In May of this year, the grassroots environmental group Save the Wild UP filed a petition with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, arguing that Eagle Mine was issued the wrong regulatory permit. The appeal requested that the EPA require Eagle Mine to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in order to protect the Salmon Trout River and other surface waters from the discharge of mining effluent. The Appeals Board did not contest the facts put forward in the petition, but dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. They hardly proved themselves to be staunch allies.

So watchdogs and environmental groups, too, have reason to gripe about the EPA and often feel powerless in the face of bureaucratic inertia and ineptitude. Laura Farwell herself seems to have felt that way, and that’s why we find her asking Abramson and Fox for help. The MCRC complaint exaggerates her influence at the EPA when it describes her as “a prominent environmental activist.” The epithet is used here to create the misleading impression that within the offices of EPA Region 5 and the confines of Marquette County there are political opponents with resources to match the power of multi-billion dollar, multinational mining companies.

Laura Farwell and her husband Frank moved to the area in 2006 from Madison, Wisconsin. They are members of the St. Paul Episcopal Church and participate, along with their son Cody, in the church’s Earth Day tree plantings. The couple donated some money to the UP Land Conservancy. Farwell has also organized events for the Cedar Tree Institute, which works to bridge “faith communities and environmental groups.” (She is described on the Institute’s site  as “a concerned mother and local citizen.”) She is thanked for “working quietly behind the scenes” in a 2011 Earth Keeper TV video on the environmental risks posed by the Eagle Mine; and she’s copied along with many other local citizens in a Google Group post dated April 9, 2012, urging people to comment on CR 595 before the public comment period is closed.

Farwell’s commitments to land conservation are pretty clear, and while the complaint asks us to recoil in horror at the phrase “prominent environmental activist,” cooler heads are just as likely to be impressed by Farwell’s dedication to the people around her and the place where she lives. Maybe that dedication is all it takes to be a prominent environmental activist in the view of the Marquette County Road Commission.

Some locals, on the other hand, are legitimately concerned that nationally and internationally prominent environmentalists — like Bill McKibben, George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and their ilk — ignore the current situation around Lake Superior, or fail to give it the serious attention it deserves. National media have barely taken notice. Farwell herself admits that to the great and powerful in Washington DC “the proposed haul road may seem like some little back trail in the middle of nowhere,” but she urges that it will cut through “critical wetlands resources” and “enable the industrializing of this rural Great Lakes watershed by international mining interests.”

Farwell’s letter tries to create some urgency around the CR 595 issue by putting the road in context and specifying whose interests would be served by the industrializing of the region. A serious assessment of CR 595 would significantly widen the lens, taking into account the cumulative effects of all the new mining activities around Lake Superior: all leasing, exploration, development and active mining throughout northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario. Otherwise, we miss the big picture, and without that perspective, it’s just too easy to parcel out the land, the water, and the future of the region to the highest bidders.

The MCRC complaint, too, places CR 595 in the context of “mining and economic development in the Great Lakes region” in a few places, but only to make the specious argument that those who oppose or question the road are opposed to mining and therefore opposed to the region’s prosperity. These are the ideological leaps the complaint makes. Those who don’t make these leaps are called activists or anti-mining obstructionists. That is a political, not a legal argument.

It’s never too late to have a serious discussion of what sustainable economic development and true prosperity for the Great Lakes region might look like. How might we best organize our lives together in this place? is a fundamental political question. But at this juncture, it appears, the MCRC can’t afford to let that conversation happen. This lawsuit is an attempt to shut it down and stifle dissent. Where business leads, society must obediently follow. To question this order of things, as Laura Farwell seems to have repeatedly done, quietly, behind the scenes, is to commit some kind of nefarious act.

This is where the attitude on display in this complaint gets worrisome. With this lawsuit, the MCRC pretends to have the political authority to direct economic development in the region (not just to build and repair roads). But that is only pretense, and things in Marquette County are not as they appear. The public still does not know who is funding the Road Commission lawsuit, what they stand for and what they expect in return for their support. The real powers lurk behind the scenes.

#501c4 #antiMining #BillMcKibben #CedarTreeInstitute #CleanWaterAct #corporatePoliticalActivity #corruption #CountyRoad595 #CR595 #EagleMine #EarthDay #environmentalEthics #environmentalPolitics #environmentalism #EPA #GeorgeMonbiot #JefferyLoman #LauraFarwell #LundinMining #LynnAbramson #MarquetteCounty #MarquetteCountyRoadCommission #MarquetteCountyRoadCommissionVEPA #MCRCVEPA #mining #NaomiKlein #OpenMeetingsAct #politicalAuthority #politics #power #SaveTheWildUP #secrecy #StandUP_ #ThomasFox #TomCasperson #Water