If this was true, why haven’t we seen it with manipulated pictures?
Maybe I’m not well informed but there seem to be no example for the issues you describe with photos.
I believe it’s actually worse than you think. People believe in narratives, in stories, in ideas. These spread.
It has been like this forever. Text, pictures, videos are merely ways to proliferate narratives. We dismiss even clear evidence if it doesn’t fit our beliefs and we actively look for proof for what we think is the truth.
If you want to "fight" back you need to start on the narrative level, not on the artifact level.
Hell - look of the fate of the rest of the world online. They’re basically thrown to the fucking wolves.
Minorities are lynched around the world after viral forwards. Autocrats are stronger than ever and authoritarian regimes have flourished like never before.
Trust and safety tools are vastly stronger for English than any other language. See the language resource gap (lost in translation, Nicholas and Bhatia)
In America, the political divide has reached levels unimaginable. People live in entirely different realities.
Images from democrats sides are dismissed as faked and lies take so long to discredit that the issue has passed on, tiring fact checkers and the public.
The original fake news problem of Romanian advert farms focused entirely on conservative citizens.
Maybe I’m not well informed but there seem to be no example for the issues you describe with photos.
I believe it’s actually worse than you think. People believe in narratives, in stories, in ideas. These spread.
It has been like this forever. Text, pictures, videos are merely ways to proliferate narratives. We dismiss even clear evidence if it doesn’t fit our beliefs and we actively look for proof for what we think is the truth.
If you want to "fight" back you need to start on the narrative level, not on the artifact level.