The differences are not subtle
From Wiktionary, "The observation that the longer it takes the media to identify a mass shooter in the United States, the less likely it is to be a white male."
The WH using social media (X, Pravda Social) for official communication is highly deliberate - they get to declare post-hoc what is actually real communication and what is “just memes”. Of course it won’t make any difference to people amplifying the content. If the WH had to stick to traditional outlets for news they wouldn’t have this fig leaf to hide behind.
But that's going to cost money to make and market all these new cameras and I just don't know how we incentivize or pay for this, so we're left unable to trust any images and video in the near future. I can only think of technical solutions and not the social changes that need to happen before the tech is wanted and adopted.
https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/index.html
https://www.sony.eu/presscentre/sony-launches-camera-verify-...
Ideally it'd become an open standard supported by all manufacturers. Which is what they're trying to do:
Ideally we would have a similar attestation from most people's cameras (on their smartphones) but that's a much harder problem to also support with 3p camera apps.
You will need camera DRM with a hardware security module down all the way to the image sensor, where the hardware is in the hands of the attacker. Even when that chain is unbroken, you'll need to detect all kinds of tricks where the incoming photons themselves are altered. In the simplest case: a photo of a photo.
If HDCP has taught anything, it's that vendors of consumer products cannot implement such a secure chain at all, with ridiculous security vulnerabilities for years. HDCP has been given up and has become mostly irrelevant, perhaps except for the criminal liability it places on 'breaking' it. Vendors are also pushed to rely on security by obscurity, which will make such vulnerabilities harder to find for researchers than for attackers.
If you have half of such a 'signed photos' system in place, it will become easier to dismiss photos of actual events on the basis that they're unsigned. If a camera model or security chip shared by many models turns out to be broken, or a new photo-of-a-photo trick becomes known, a huge amount of photos produced before that, become immediately suspect. If you gatekeep (the proper implementations of) these features only to professional or expensive models, citizen journalism will be disincentivized.
But even more importantly: if you choose to rely on technical measures that are poorly understood by the general public (and that are likely to blow up in your face), you erode a social system of trust that already is in place, which is journalism. Although the rise of social media, illiteracy and fascism tends to suggest otherwise, journalistic chain of custody of photographic records mainly works fine. But only if we keep maintaining and teaching that system.
First do a left-right on the link that Aurornis posted [1]. Notice the extra fat in the chin, the elongated ear, the enlarged mouth and nose, the frizzlier hair, the lower shirt cut.
You hate it. You think, intellectually, that this shouldn't work and surely no one would have the gall to so brazenly do this without the fear of being caught and shamed. And then you think, well once the truth is revealed that there will be some introspection and self-reflection on being tricked, and that maybe being tricked here means being tricked elsewhere.
Well someone, in an emotionless room, min-maxed the outcomes and computed that the expected value from such an action was positive.
And here we are.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-levy-armstrong-crying-...
Or they do hear about it, maybe a few days or a week later, but they dismiss it because its old news at the point and not worth thinking about to them.
Truth is, most people are never really thinking most of the time. They're reacting in the moment and maybe forming a rationale for their action after the fact.
In case some readers haven't seen it, the altered image (crying & wailing, instead of calm & resolute) was posted by the official white house account with the following overlay text:
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ARRESTED FAR-LEFT AGITATOR NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG FOR ORCHESTRATING CHURCH RIOTS IN MINNESOTA
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The post is a reply to one made by the same account half an hour earlier, with the following text:
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MINNESOLA ARRESTS Attorney General Pamela Bondi @AGPamBondi
Minutes ago at my direction, @HSI_HQ and @FBI agents executed an arrest in Minnesota.
So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
We will share more updates as they become available.
Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.
UPDATE: A second arrest has been made at my direction. Chauntyll Louisa Allen has been taken into custody. More to come.
WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP
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Obviously a joke, and we're stupid for not seeing it as one, eh?
This manipulative crap may have worked when you were in high school, but any adult with a "sense of humour and critical thinking skill" (as you put it in your other comment), would see through the ruse.
It's funny, because this exact way of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. Obviously he was joking when he said he would do all those terrible things!
... Do you understand what mockery is?
The "joke" is distorting her image. The reality is that she was arrested.
The story is trying to present things as if distorting her image is somehow misrepresenting what happened.
But she was in fact arrested, and nobody disputes that.
The sense of humour and critical thinking skill is what allows one to recognize the alteration of the footage. Paying attention to the surrounding context makes it clear that the footage is altered from a real event, and not made up entirely.
I don't need to see the post to understand these things. (And neither does anything you posted disagree with my analysis.)
I am not being disingenuous. I accepted that the footage is altered. Because it doesn't matter.
> Obviously he was joking when he said he would do all those terrible things!
What "terrible things" are you referring to?
As the press release explains, there was a coordinated disruption of the church service, they said they would arrest her for it, and they did.
And as the video makes clear, the disruption was a violation of the church attendees' rights. The church is private property and the protesters were trespassing. They did not leave when asked. They harassed innocent people for no clear reason.
It is in fact perfectly reasonable for the administration to be saying things like
> WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.
because they shouldn't.
Imagine if it had been a mosque instead of a church; if it had been Tucker Carlson instead of Don Lemon; if it had been about some political cause you disagree with instead of one you agree with. Would you be reacting the same way? I don't think you would.
Trump is also a citizen.
> it was clearly just propaganda to make the opposition look weak
And?
It comes across that you're upset that something you find in poor taste happened to target someone you agree with.
> If it was a "meme" they should've said so in the post before being called out.
Why would they say something that's obvious to people with common sense?
This is exactly who we are now. We are all complicit. Anger is a valid response.
Tens of thousands of people are protesting and some getting arrested, anyone with a voice is doing what they can to sway public opinion.
Our higher courts are compromised (and feckless at times even when used correctly), and the police help ICE. And a large number of Americans do, in fact, want this. Others don’t care until it hits them personally.
So what specifically are people to do, like myself, who live in an unaffected area and who’s politicians are in fact speaking out against this?
Vote better for a start. The amount of support this administration has is still way too high considering everything they've done and are doing. It's shaken my faith in humanity a bit to see how many of the people around me don't seem to actually value humanity.
https://thefederalnewswire.com/stories/673148305-fbi-announc...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/us/fbi-agent-ice-shooting...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's surely reasonable to assume they meant something that is factually accurate. Using "the police" to refer to law enforcement in general is common; additionally, the alleged crimes are in the purview of the FBI. There is ample context to interpret their words more strongly.
Anyway, to be clear, it legitimately didn't occur to me that by "the police" the other poster could possibly mean the FBI; therefore it wasn't within the world of "plausible interpretations" I could consider for that comment.
With all the deepest respect toward the US citizens I know, have talked to, and those that don't support the current administration ...
Theres's now _zero_ respect for the US.
Yours sincerely, long time five eyes allies.
They eventually (more or less) gave up, finding all their efforts at comfortable explanations unsupportable. Nope, it’s just luck, momentum, and the difficult of intentionally directing large chaotic systems keeping things tolerably sane. It’s, in fact, very scary and it’s astounding it works at all.
It no longer does. Social media was the tipping point.
Religion wasn't enough to break democracy, newspapers weren't enough, radio wasn't enough, TV was almost enough... but now, with social media as the proverbial last straw, the bug is fully exploited, completely unfixable, and likely fatal.
The medium is the message, and I think the “message” of the global Web + social media + (now) generative AI may not include liberal democracy.
In fairness, many people have been working hard for decades to turn as many people into illiterate dumb fucks as possible. We didn't get here accidentally.
Sackable offence in many countries.
Principally those countries with a regard for law, order, fairness, transparency, justice, etc.
The question really is, why would this be acceptable in the USofA by any administration.