Interview: Preventing Pornographic Deepfakes
In the spring, I interviewed Sophie Maddocks, a researcher, teacher, digital civil rights advocate, and PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Maddocks’ youth-centered research and community engagement focuses on cyber civil rights and image-based abuse. To learn more about Ms. Maddocks and her work, please visit her website.
Ms. Maddocks’ perspective on how human behavior manifests in the digital realm, particularly for digital natives, offers important insights for stakeholders evaluating and considering policy solutions for non-consensual pornography (NCP) and other types of disinformation.
Here are 4 key takeaways from our conversation:
1. Technology exacerbates classroom misconduct.
Adolescents’ widespread access to unregulated apps amplifies and publicizes dynamics that were once contained to in-person school settings (such as school dances or passing notes in class). Constant access to these tools of power and control can set them up to be exposed or shamed online.
2. Similar protective factors that reduce non-digital harm are likely to reduce digital harm.
These include educating parents and teaching consent, respect, and healthy relationships in schools. It also involves creating safe spaces for young people to discuss desire and intimacy.
3. Raising awareness of digital abuse will likely reduce its scale.
Many people don’t consider NCP—deepfake or otherwise—as abuse. Addressing this misconception reduces stigma and the attitude that sharing intimate pictures is the “price to entry” for being online. Most importantly, it helps victims to receive the support they need from family, friends, mental health professionals, and legal experts.
4. It’s possible to design policies that mitigate digital abuse without sacrificing free speech.
For centuries, societies have recognized abusive behaviors and speech offline; harassment, hate speech, and obscenity all have consequences in the US and beyond. As Ms. Maddocks explained, “we’ve recognized crimes and identified them throughout history... abusive behavior can be identified and dealt with in online spaces without turning into a totalitarian censorship.”
How Ms. Maddocks has influenced our thinking
It’s clear that online harassment lacks the direct consequences and sufficient reputational and other real world risks necessary to deter it. According to Ms. Maddocks, this lack of consequences puts children, as well as adults, at risk.
With this in mind, DeepTrust Alliance advocates for policy solutions that regulate behavior rather than technology, whenever possible. This way, we can remove the incentives underlying NCP and penalize the enablers of this harmful content without restricting innovation and freedom of speech.
To read more about what such policies could look like, stay tuned for our upcoming blog with law professor Rebecca Delfino.