Aug 3, 2020

Farid Questions Why Facebook Doesn’t Remove Altered Pelosi Video

From The Washington Post

Another fake video of Pelosi goes viral on Facebook

The social media giant attached a ‘partly false’ label to a clip manipulated to make the House speaker look drunk

By Hannah Denham

A manipulated and widely shared video that depicts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slurring her speech and appearing intoxicated was labeled “partly false” by Facebook over the weekend, renewing scrutiny on social media and its role in reining in misinformation.

TikTok, Twitter and YouTube all removed the footage from their platforms after CNN inquired about it Sunday, but it remains on Facebook. The news outlet says the video has been viewed more than 2 million times...

Hany Farid, a visual forensic expert and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the original video appears to have been slowed down by about 75 percent, which is why Pelosi’s speech sounds slurred, as well as spliced in a few places...

Farid said, he doesn’t understand why Facebook hasn’t removed the video.

“I find it bizarre, however, that Facebook would have a policy against manipulated media, against misleading content, but then very narrowly defines the means by which a video should have been created before rising to the level of having it removed,” he said in an email. “This video of Speaker Pelosi is clearly manipulated, it clearly is not satire or parody, and it is clearly designed to impugn her.”

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Hany Farid is a Professor in the School of Information and the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley.

Last updated:

August 5, 2020