More on FAQ #310

  • 1. In the age of digital manipulation and AI-fabricated images, wouldn’t it be simpler for everyone to just not trust any image that looks like a photograph?

    Simpler, yes. Realistic, no.

    It would be unrealistic, for example, to expect large numbers of sane people to not “trust” photographs that they themselves take.

    (They know their photographs are not reality, and they know their photographs are subjective, but they still trust them.)

    But it’s not just their own photographs that most people are unlikely to start mistrusting.

    For example, most people “trust” the resulting images when dozens of news photographers from around the world each take (and publish separately, each in their own part of the world)...

    . . . almost identical (albeit bland) photographs of the same scene, like the obligatory group shot at a summit of world leaders.

  • 2. How the public bestows trust

    The reality is that rather than not trusting any images at all, most members of the public have their own “go-to” sources that they trust for news and images.

    Many people who say that they don’t trust “any” content providers often mean that they don’t fully trust any providers, so by relying on multiple sources for information they’re content with the picture they get of what is going on.

    Those trusted sources can change over time, and TTG is premised on the expectation that how content providers deal with the forthcoming surge in deepfakes and plaifis will be a defining moment for many.

  • 3. Most of the time it’s a sliding scale

    As indicated by the “I-don’t-fully-trust-any-provider” observation in #2 (above), trust often is not a “yes-or-no” type of thing; levels of “trust” are typically on a continuum or spectrum.

    Viewers have different degrees of trust about different photographs.

    Most sane people are always going to trust some photographs, starting with

    > photos that they themselves take

    — and then, decreasing in levels of trust as it winds out from there:

    >> photographs taken in their presence by a friend or family member standing next to them; then

    >>> photographs taken by others, in their presence, of the same scene at the same time; then

    >>>> photographs taken by others of similar scenes at different times,

    and so on.

    Along that spectrum of decreasing trust are “photographs from one’s most-trusted news source” (which usually get the highest level of trust bestowed on photographs that are taken outside of one’s presence by people one doesn’t know)...

    . . . extending all the way down the trust ladder to “laughably implausible photographs posted anonymously on the Internet” (probably the lowest rung in terms of trustworthiness if not amusement).

  • 4. Healthy “skepticism” is understandable and not a problem

    A healthy skepticism about impressive images that look like photographs is completely natural (and in fact TTG exists because of ever-increasing public skepticism about visual images).

    But no society could survive very long if no one trusted any of its most “universal language” any time.