“96% of deepfake videos online are pornographic.

…We found that over 90% of deepfake videos on YouTube featured Western subjects. However, non-Western subjects featured in almost a third of videos on deepfake pornography websites, with South Korean K-pop singers making up a quarter of the subjects targeted. This indicates that deepfake pornography is an increasingly global phenomenon.”

 

-Report 2019: The State of Deepfakes by Deeptracelabs

 

“How many times do you have to report the Nth room in order to have it deleted?”

A new video from .face, a Youtube channel that helped me out a lot in my last week’s assignment. This time they are interviewing the group RESET, which made the petition on the National Assembly website(which reached 100,000 signatures and holds the same effectiveness as a law made by a congressman) and is responsible for reporting the Nth room in Telegram.

Clicking the video, I remember following RESET’s account on twitter. I remember the threads of accounts RESET asked their followers to report with them. I remember grimacing as I cover up the screen with my palm, trying to click “report” while looking less at the screen as I can. Sometimes the accounts were already disabled because others reported them as well. Some accounts gleefully announced that they got their account back and asked for recommendations on who to photoshop.

I try to forget about these accounts after I press report. Now I remember them, and the countless people who pressed report with me. I think of the furious fingers pressing report because they know no other way of reacting to this that would somehow make the tiniest change.

But does this somehow make the tiniest change?

-Were the chatrooms disabled when the RESET members reported them?

“The chatrooms, they do get disabled, they do… but it is unclear at what point, after what critical point they become disabled…. The most stifling thing about this is the platform of Telegram itself.”

-Is there any feedback from Telegram after reporting?

“No, there isn’t”

 

The RESET member politely yet firmly placed emphasis on the NO.

 

-Any feedback, such as getting a message back from Telegram about the reported chatroom?

“None, none at all.”

 

The interviewer’s narration grimly tells us that despite RESET reporting thousands of illegal content, they did not get a single feedback from Telegram. She tells us that users are unable to know how the report is disposed, or whether they are disposed at all.

 

So how many clicks does it take?

How many clicks on the report button does it take to remove deepfakes of women making faces that they never made?

How many taps on the keyboard does it take to replace the autocomplete that aligns a female celebrity with her body parts?

How many emails from RESET would it take for Telegram to take action?

How many clicks, how many emails, how many upset voices would startle the digital platforms into at least not facilitating sexual exploitation?

 

Click, click, click, click. Without even having a promised answer, me, she, or they click on.

The clicks accumulate into an ear-blasting racket

that is hushed by the single word,

profit.

 

Process notes: I initially wanted to write about my trip to the gynecologist since it was the weirdest hospital visit I ever had in my life (summary: my blood test revealed that I had the hormone levels of a menopausal woman, which freaked out my mom who accompanied me just in case, and when I told the gynecologist that I am going to the U.S. as an exchange student, she held my hand and warned me against unplanned pregnancy) but as it had little to do with my topic, I decided to write about the platform in which digital sexual assault is carried out. Although collective action does play a large role in making change, I wanted to focus on the responsibility of the platform. The platform, whether it is a website dedicated to deepfake pornography, websites with search engines that autocomplete words, or a messenger app that is used to distribute videos of sexual violence, often overlooks acts of sexual exploitation because it leads to profit. The conversations between .face and RESET were translated from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xxLLrxpuJg