What Danish celebrities like Anders Lund Madsen, Divya Das and others are exposed to on Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, is completely unacceptable, unheard of and unfavourable.
TjekDet and the Danish daily Politiken have together revealed that celebrities’ faces are being ‘deep faked’ (technology that allows you to imitate real people’s voices and faces) and misused in fake adverts, so that some Danes are tricked into false investments.
Media outlets have tried in vain to get a comment from Facebook’s representative, Martin Ruby (1600 Facebook friends), who is a former spin doctor of a Danish minister. But as with all other tech giants, he is completely unavailable when it comes to questions he cannot or will not answer. He’s happy to come when he can meet politicians in panel debates. And when he – as the only representative of a large company – is being appointed by the government to sit on the advisory group to the prestigious Magtudredning (a science project with a mission to create new research-based knowledge about the state of democracy and power relations). Danish companies are only represented via their trade organisations DI and DE – where Meta is also a member.
Media managers Sandy French (1000 Facebook friends) from DR, Ulla Pors (1500 Facebook friends) from TV2 and BT’s editor-in-chief Simon Richard Nielsen (1400 Facebook followers) as well as several politicians have – quite rightly – been outraged by the unacceptable situation. “We need to hit Meta with something hugely negative and critical, because they are doing this completely deliberately; it’s a money-making machine for them,” said Peter Kofod (29,000 Facebook followers), spokesperson for the Danish People’s Party on digitalisation, to Politiken.
It’s true that Meta monetises all content, especially that which generates clicks, likes and shares, and also is the case when it comes to deep fakes. Meta only stops what is clearly illegal, and what they themselves want to stop, such as nipples. Both Facebook and Instagram have long been filled with AI-generated photos, i.e. fake photos, which generate a lot of traffic.
Anders Lund Madsen (11,000 followers on Facebook and 84,000 on Instagram) will now sue Meta, he claims. Divya Das (900 Facebook friends and 11,000 Instagram followers) has reported the giant to the police. I wonder if this will change anything – or if there will be a settlement where Meta pays its way out of it. We actually have good laws in the EU, such as the Digital Service Act, which gives the giants greater responsibility for the content on their platforms. But they are difficult to enforce.
Politiken editor-in-chief Christian Jensen (4,900 Facebook friends) blames politicians for doing nothing. But the fact that politicians are relatively powerless is shown in an interview with Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard (29,000 Facebook followers) in Politiken, where he answered what he will do to get TikTok, Snap and Meta to comply with a new law stating that the age of consent on social media is 15 years. Here, the minister indicates that the government could choose to ban TikTok, but then he emphasises that they can’t do that at national level. The fact that only a dictatorship like China bans selected services is another matter.
Dear celebrities, politicians and media executives. Stop thinking you can democratise Meta. Maybe the EU can regulate parts of Meta in the long run, but it takes years and years, and it will never be the neutral infrastructure you treat it as. There is really only one thing you can do. But it’s effective, because this one thing is the only thing the tech giants listen to:
Get the fuck out of there. Show them the soles of your digital feed. Delete your profiles and your many followers. You are role models and others will follow suit. That’s the only thing that really gets to them.
This column was first printed in Politiken.
Translated by the help of Deepl.com
Illustration: Screen shut from Diva Das’ Facebook account where she warns her followers about the deep fakes
