I saw a deepfake of my local mayor giving a speech about a new park, and I believed it for three days.

It happened at the diner near the truck stop in Terre Haute. I was having coffee and the guy next to me, another driver named Ray, showed me a video on his phone. It looked exactly like Mayor Jenkins announcing they were canceling the new playground project to fund road repairs. Ray said he got it from a neighborhood Facebook group. I was annoyed about the park and even mentioned it to my neighbor. Then, on Thursday, I saw the real mayor on the local news, talking about the playground opening next month. The video Ray had was a fake, and it was made really well. It made me realize I'll never just trust a video clip again, especially from some random link. How do you guys check if something's real online now?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_tessa2d ago

Yeah, that's a scary feeling.

gray_morgan2d ago

How do I check? Honestly, I'm still figuring it out. I got fooled by a fake video of a weatherman predicting a snowstorm in July. I actually went out and bought rock salt. My own kids laughed at me. Now I just don't click videos from people I don't know. I try to find the same story on a real news site, but even that feels shaky sometimes. It's a mess.

susan_adams2d ago

It's getting so hard to tell. I read an article about reverse image search, where you can take a screenshot and upload it to see where else it's been online. That can help spot old pictures being used for fake news. Checking the website's "about" page is another basic step, but you're right, even trusted sources make mistakes now. The whole system feels broken, and it's exhausting to fact-check every single thing you see.