Facebook's problems moderating deepfakes will only get worse in 2020

Last summer, a video of Mark Zuckerberg circulated on Instagram in which the Facebook CEO appeared to claim he had "total control of billions of people's stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures." It turned out to be an art project rather than a deliberate attempt at misinformation, but Facebook allowed it to stay on the platform. According to the company, it didn't violate any of its policies. For some, this showed how big tech companies aren't prepared to deal with the onslaught of AI-generated fake media known as deepfakes. Deepfakes are incredibly hard to moderate, not because they're difficult to spot (though they can be), but because the category is so broad that any attempt to "clamp down" on AI-edited photos and videos would end up affecting a whole swath of harmless content. Banning deepfakes altogether would mean removing popular jokes like gender-swapped Snapchat selfies and artificially aged faces.