Dumb Lowtax posted:

...But now that she's written it, give it a year's time. Check the public reactions a year from now. The story entering the broader public consciousness for a long time is the more important part, because already:


She absolutely did the safe thing. It's got to be a journalist's worst nightmare to commit to some dumb story's authenticity.... only for James O'Keefe to step out or something and turn them into a laughing stock for the rest of their career.

Meanwhile the readers should be able to separate Ashley's editorialization and opinion from the facts at hand. Besides, adding those things could have even been a calculated click-bait move as the same poster said:


I'll give her article a deeper read in a bit.

But for now I'll point out the main reasons why its conclusions can't be right, no matter the specifics:

1.

Everybody who hangs out in PYF's deepfakes thread knows that deepfakes are not really magic. They can't be an answer to every suspicious video. They often have a certain look, or have factors in common; they're not well suited for all applications. ML people can tell you that at the end of the day, you're only re-stating correlated stuff from existing data. Outputs are limited, especially when it comes to novelty.

You can use deepfakes to fake Trump's voice, or his face, or his clothes, his body, or with the techniques from top research papers, even his poses. But you can not use deepfakes to fake Trump. Deepfakes do not magically understand Trump, and cannot create a situation that is inherently Trump-like. Another poster said: No one can guess Trump's behavior, yet everything he does is retroactively so Trump. Ignoring the hookers, guesturing like a spoiled child, you know those things. You couldn't make this poo poo up. A deepfake certainly couldn't. (Also seems like someone making a fake would have wanted him to at least look interested to make it more damning).

Deepfakes tend to make mistakes that a human would never make -- letting a coat button briefly pop through a chair in front of it, making a person's hair temporarily merge with the wall behind it, or being plain indecisive with small regions of the image (making those characteristic miscolored gross loops you see at https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/) or even indecision about large regions. Some of those mistakes will be localized enough to launder by re-filming through a phone, sure. But it would ultimately seem easier to *not* use deepfakes at all for this, and to use practical effects and good ole photoshop instead. A human touch.

Deepfakes would be terrible at getting a room's dimensions and proportions right, as would have been necessary to match the room in question this well. So someone at least had to rent the real Moscow Presidential Suite. Deepfake techniques usually can't just drop people into new places in videos in a realistic pose, so they also had to hire real girls and a real stand-in and bring them to that suite without the hotel getting suspicious.

Overall, it stands to reason that the entire range of "deepfake techniques" would have been totally redundant to create this, or even a liability. So if Ashey's fixates on them as a magic solution that could create any fake video, then it betrays a gross misunderstanding -- one that led her to consult with the wrong specialists and get their bad takes too. Is a "visual effects artist turned director" supposed to be someone who has their finger on the pulse of the counterfeiting world? What would that guy know about cellphone footage leaks being "exactly the kind of thing you’d do to intentionally obscure detail and sell a fake"? His position lends no credibility to that. I would never presume that my own PhD in Computer Graphics would ever give me the right to supply a newspaper with a definitive yes/no answer about this exact video's authenticity. He's just a bad source.

2.

The idea that this was comissioned is even more implausible than the tape. Think about it: Roger Stone, a guy with the media's full attention and special contacts. Someone who probably could, indeed, commision the most expensive deepfake ever from a state-level actor. Now, would that guy, a man with endless resources, depend on us idiots to get his story out? Hell no. Yet this story would not have gotten out without this thread. This thread itself might have never resumed its interest in reporting the story if I hadn't constantly bugged everyone to and collected info. Now, I know me. I know that I'm not working for anybody. I don't know if you know this, but I know that I'm a goddamn nobody and lazy as gently caress too. We're all lazy as gently caress seeing as how we sat on this for nine months without anyone putting in the sufficient effort to show the world why it's a big deal. Most of all, I know my own unreliability, and I know that Roger Stone's grand plan to shock the world with this thing could not have possibly included relying on my lazy rear end to do anything. From my perspective, that's a no-brainer. As I said, more implausible than the much simpler explanation of "it's real".

What is plausiable, perhaps the only plausible thing, is that this clip was leaked by someone who had no resources.

That matches everything. The total lack of fanfare around it. Not only did they have no media contacts to tip off, not even bots to spread the file and boost it with posts, they didn't even have the confidence to keep doing it themselves and eventually tried to scrape it back off the web into obscurity. Whoever leaked this was just another nobody like us. One who had a clearance and a cell phone and a brief lapse in their survival instincts.

Dumb Lowtax posted:

What would that guy know about cellphone footage leaks being "exactly the kind of thing you’d do to intentionally obscure detail and sell a fake"? His position lends no credibility to that. I would never presume that my own PhD in Computer Graphics would ever give me the right to supply a newspaper with a definitive yes/no answer about this exact video's authenticity. He's just a bad source.

Feinberg posted:

There’s no sound and no indication of what (or who) else might be in the room with the screen you’re seeing secondhand.

Eat This Glob posted:

lol i went on a news hunt from the slate story and saw one from a couple years ago saying someone tried to trademark "the piss tape is real" so kudos there

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16020666/us-trademark-law-disparaging-the-piss-tape-is-real

papersack posted:

Alright folks, hats are sold out. I'll get them out over the next two or three days.

papersack posted:

A goon here did this.

Max Walrus posted:

https://twitter.com/bri_provenzano/status/1177057472462381058

Dumb Lowtax posted:

lmao @ this prediction coming true in every way

Dumb Lowtax posted:

The idea that this was comissioned is even more implausible than the tape. Think about it: Roger Stone, a guy with the media's full attention and special contacts. Someone who probably could, indeed, commision the most expensive deepfake ever from a state-level actor. Now, would that guy, a man with endless resources, depend on us idiots to get his story out? Hell no. Yet this story would not have gotten out without this thread. This thread itself might have never resumed its interest in reporting the story if I hadn't constantly bugged everyone to and collected info. Now, I know me. I know that I'm not working for anybody. I don't know if you know this, but I know that I'm a goddamn nobody and lazy as gently caress too. We're all lazy as gently caress seeing as how we sat on this for nine months without anyone putting in the sufficient effort to show the world why it's a big deal. Most of all, I know my own unreliability, and I know that Roger Stone's grand plan to shock the world with this thing could not have possibly included relying on my lazy rear end to do anything. From my perspective, that's a no-brainer. As I said, more implausible than the much simpler explanation of "it's real".

What is plausiable, perhaps the only plausible thing, is that this clip was leaked by someone who had no resources.

That matches everything. The total lack of fanfare around it. Not only did they have no media contacts to tip off, not even bots to spread the file and boost it with posts, they didn't even have the confidence to keep doing it themselves and eventually tried to scrape it back off the web into obscurity. Whoever leaked this was just another nobody like us. One who had a clearance and a cell phone and a brief lapse in their survival instincts.

an actual dog posted:

Someone who wanted to leak something and not get caught, and wasn't technically savvy, would absolutely record off of a screen and upload it to 4 chan

Xaris posted:

as far as we know, it was only uploaded to liveleak and some 4channer was just watching poo poo on the public index and posted that they found it. i dont think the leaker directly posted it on 4chan, but could have done and pretended they found it

that said idk how "secure" liveleak is or if they just forward everything to the fbi, but it would seem to be an obvious place to share it for someone not super savvy

maybe that chronology is off now that I think about it bc apparently there’s some versions without the ll stamp and cropping diff n poo poo, so maybe it was posted somewhere else first

quote:

While it may still have been posted earlier, the first 4chan appearance I could find happened that day at noon, when a user posted a screenshot and a link to a since-deleted LiveLeak page. A half-hour later, at 12:33 p.m., another user uploaded a 25-second version of the video (LiveLeak watermark included) under the file name TP.webm. The responses to the second post were fairly evenly split on the video’s veracity, but both instances did seem to be the first time anyone there had seen it.

One minute before the video’s 4chan debut, though, a Twitter user with the handle @4tuneAn0n and the display name Sue D Nim (very clever) posted a nonwatermarked version of the video, @-ing Trump in the process.

This is the earliest upload I’ve been able to find. In nine months, this particular unwatermarked version has been viewed a total of 15 times.

FabioClone posted:

This whole thing is insanely funny and quintessentially trump.

Pooky posted:

I hope this changes the common lexicon to "piss tape." I can't stand the alternatives.

fabergay egg posted:

all these heretics calling it the "p e e" tape are causing me no end of distress, but at least the truth is beginning to leak onto the public consciousness

Pooky posted:

https://www.rivistastudio.com/golden-shower-trump-video/

Piss Tape Italiano!

Inspector Hound posted:

"Pee pee tape" is my least favorite, I can accept "pee tape" from prudes and broadcasters

Dumb Lowtax posted:

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

What's Ashley's username?

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

What's Ashley's username?

Lastgirl posted:

goddamn thats a lot of d&d posting just to say that the piss tape is real

Dumb Lowtax posted:

gently caress you

RandomPauI posted:

rejoice in her

Burn Zone posted:

according to feinberg, the first place it showed up was a twitter post



https://twitter.com/4tuneAn0n/status/1085219821472661507