Mark Zuckerberg 'Spectre' data sharing deepfake

Occurred: June 2019

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A deepfake video of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talking about how he holds control over billions of people and his allegiance to 'Spectre' went viral, partly as Facebook was seen to remove something taking a pop at it's perceived hypocrisy, partly as it confused some people into thinking the fake video was real.

Made by UK-based artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe, the deepfake was originally intended to highlight Facebook's use of behavioural psychology to persuade people to share intimate details of their lives so that they could be targeted with advertising. 

But Facebook's failure to remove a clearly faked video of US Senate speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently slurring her words persuaded the two to change course and lampoon Zuckerberg.

The deepfake was initially removed by Instagram content moderators on the basis that it violated its disinformation policy, but was restored when its satirical nature became evident and the potential impact of its removal became clearer.

According to Vice News, the original video of Zuckerberg is from a September 2017 address he had given about Russian election interference on Facebook.  

Operator: Bill Posters; Daniel Howe; Meta/Instagram
Developer: Bill Posters; Daniel Howe

Country: UK; USA

Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts; Politics

Purpose: Expose hypocrisy

Technology: Deepfake - video; Generative adversarial network (GAN); Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Hypocrisy; Mis/disinformation

Transparency: