Rant: My cousin called my deepfake detection project "just playing with toys" and now I rethink everything I share online

She saw me running some models to check if a viral video was real and said it wasn't serious work. I mean, idk, maybe she's right that I focus too much on small clips nobody cares about. But it made me stop posting my findings publicly and start double-checking sources way more. Has anyone else had family or friends talk down your hobby like it's not real tech work?

3 comments

3 Comments

annajenkins1mo ago

Have you tried showing them the actual impact of your work? For me, when my brother said my hardware tinkering was "just playing with parts," I started sharing specific examples. I found a deepfake of a local politician and showed how my scripts caught it before it spread. That changed his mind a bit. Maybe send your cousin a link to a case where your detection actually stopped false info from going viral. People often don't get the value until they see real results.

pat_stone1mo ago

Oh man, you're totally right but dang, it requires me to actually be organized and remember to document stuff. Half the time I catch something and I'm just like "well that's done" and move on, never saving the proof. Last month I busted a whole ring of bots spreading fake news about local elections and my cousin was like "so what do you actually do all day?" I had nothing to show him because I didn't screenshot anything. I'm basically the world's worst PR person for my own work. Maybe I should start a folder called "look what I did, dummy" or something, that might help.

charles6401mo ago

People usually don't get it til they've seen it, same with everything these days.