Some of the perpetrators: "Two former students from the prestigious Seoul National University (SNU)" and "a quiet, introverted student “someone you’d never imagine doing such a thing,”".
"...lot of articles and comments about deepfakes saying, ‘Why is it a serious crime when it’s not even your real body?’”"
This seems like a deep societal issue that cannot be solved through harsh criminal penalties alone.
> ...lot of articles and comments about deepfakes saying, ‘Why is it a serious crime when it’s not even your real body?’
Impersonating someone else is always a serious crime. We call it fraud.
Yeah, there is a reason why South Korea continues to break records for the lowest fertility rate in the world, making even Japan's birth rate issues look small in comparison. Their society appears to be deeply, deeply sick in numerous ways. Not a good place to live, unless your calling is to work all your waking hours to make the rich even richer.
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If you ever think the solution to a problem is to remove agency and freedom from an entire group of people, you have not found a workable solution, you're just trying to push away blame from those who are ultimately responsible.
I sincerely hope your comment is satire or sarcasm. It doesn't land that way, it just reads as misogynistic, uncaring and divorced from the modern world.
The solution for many issues that pose negative effects on society is, indeed, the removal of personal liberties and choice. That's literally what law is.
The struggle between personal agency and duty is a familiar theme in Asian literature, where duty usually wins. When you’re dealing with a literal extinction event what takes priority?
In Western liberal democracies, individual freedom always wins.
Given that the World is currently over-populated by almost every metric imaginable, and we are facing an extinction event as a result, I think you can hold back on your demand that we enslave women for a few thousand more years, yet.
With current birth rates in developed countries, it won't take a few thousand years. Not even close. Nice hyperbole, though.
OK, I'll bite.
How long will it take until humanity is extinct based on the global birth rate of [checks notes] 2.51 children per woman[0]? Please show your working.
When you say "developed countries", I assume you mean the G20 with a birth rate of 1.65 births per woman, but that includes the most populous nations on Earth (China and India).
That means what people are actually talking about is "the birth rate is fine, but it's rich people who will soon be outnumbered". That's not a human extinction event - that's a call to action on equality and inclusion, and to ensure wealth is more evenly distributed.
A lot of people who make these extraordinary claims of extinction risk are themselves very rich (Musk) or people who adulate them (people on Twitter). By insisting birth rate in the G20 is the issue that needs addressing, rather than wealth inequality, they make their motivation pretty plain to see.
But none of this prices in climate change as a risk. Is a human extinction event (or tipping point event) going to happen sooner or later than an extinction event caused by climate change?
As the population decreases and human consumption of resources decreases, will climate change accelerate or decelerate?
Why is birth rate a problem for people of this generation to address urgently, as a higher priority than climate change?
If it is a priority that requires direct intervention, why should that action be - as per the person I was replying to originally - require women to have less choice and autonomy? What method will this take? What other choices are there?
Frankly, I don't know why I'm putting this much effort into arguing with a flawed "philosophy" straight out of the Andrew Tate handbook, that doesn't get backed up by numbers.
If you're scared of poor people having more children, do something about poverty, not telling women they should have a moral obligation to stay at home and bring up your children.
[0] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Fertility_rate/
It is not so hard for me to imagine a world where women have equal freedoms to men and are not actively discouraged from having children. We have structured society in such a way that it is often the more rational financial, logistical, etc choice to be child free.
Do you think we can fix those problems without stripping women of freedoms? I do.
Maybe eventually but I think South Korea is already at or very close to the point of no return from total population collapse. Given that we’ve never seen an example of what you’re referring to we probably won’t get there in time.
https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk?si=DY3pla26JO3nTF1b
This video covers it pretty well
Sure, I mean using force and coercion is one way to obtain what you want!
Not sure that's the society I want my daughters to live in though, maybe there's a way to have both equal rights and promote family values?
Like having access to healthcare, reduce the social stigma of being a parent, ensuring there's support for new families, keeping the cost down... Etc!
Maybe, a lot of Europe has excellent governmental support systems in place and they still have very low birth rates.
They are higher than South Korea. One big factor remains which are very high property prices and rents. People have a choice and want their kids to have space. If they cannot afford it then often they choose not to have kids (or have 1 less).
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> However women would have to give up a lot of their hard won rights.
That's nonsense. Across the developed world, economic pressure on young people is reducing the options available to them. Many more couples would have more children if the economic barriers were removed, including the impact on career and cost of childcare.
Of course, developed nations will (hopefully) never return to the 5+ children per woman which sustained and grew the world population for millennia.
The truth is birth rates are down almost everywhere, not only across rich countries.
Economic issues? Loneliness? People spend time in TikTok instead of dating?
Modern high standards of living makes it hard to rise children. That's why rich people usually have many. Average Joe can not afford 3 kids.
"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."
Instead of fixing our societal problems - all of which have to do with the distribution of resources, healthcare, etc - you're actually advocating for enslaving (sorry, "disempowering") women?
Surely we can think of a better solution than that. We've been to space, created dams that slow the rate the Earth spins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Terrestrial_i...), but we just can't do better than... that?
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4. We simply let things run their course and consider the current situation a new type of filter event, where those unable to deal with the new high-dopamine environment are unable to procreate. Some people will make it, society will change and a new kind of people will emerge. The black plague reduced the population by up to 90% and the current population collapse will not be half as bad.
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I would wish commenters would abstain for personal attacks and stick to reasoning and arguments.
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Would you care to elaborate how?
Logic doesn't care about your feelings or mine on the topic; it simply is.
This is deeply dismissive. A better response would have been to provide a fourth option with what you think is a potential viable option.
I can come up with one for you something along the lines of the government, providing sizable upfront pavements or stipends to families that have kids so having kids is an immediate financial gain. I don’t think most economies can sustain that though.
This is not just dismissive - it is profoundly so, and for good reason. The author deserves to be dismissed, having constructed a false trichotomy in which every option is merely a thinly veiled excuse for their sexist and misogynistic worldview.
They have not reached their position through reason, so reason cannot be used to dislodge them from it. Entertaining their chauvinism as if it merits rational debate only legitimises their position by pretending it is worthy of serious consideration. It is not. It should be called what it is: shameful.
Frankly, I am shocked that someone would publish such views under their real name. It suggests they may not fully grasp the gravity of what they have said. Are they aware that such comments render them unemployable in much of the developed world? That they risk being rightly shunned by the vast majority of people?
Thank you for politely explaining what I am too filled with incoherent rage to do myself.
The sexism of HN is astounding sometimes, here we have men politely debating whether women deserve rights. Everytime women are brought up on HN I am only disappointed further.
If GP had said that men deserved to be enslaved no one would think this was something deserving of a thought-out rebuttal, they would be told to leave. But it's fine when women are in the firing line!
Genuinely despicable.
You’re barking up the wrong tree. If South Korea doesn’t turn things around, it’s logical that they get reabsorbed back into North Korea and then women have to deal with that. Choosing to ignore that reality isn’t going to make it go away.
So your solution - apparently the only one you can imagine - is to remove bodily autonomy from women. That’s not logic. That’s authoritarianism, selectively applied to justify your own biases.
As a thought experiment: If the economic and social burdens are what are preventing South Korean women from choosing to have children, why don’t we instead remove autonomy from men? We could provide women with universal, generous incomes, give them priority over men in all areas of life, and place them in charge of all family and household decisions. Men could be assigned the responsibility for all undesirable work, both inside and outside the home, to maximise women’s freedom and security when choosing whether to have children.
If that course of action seems absurd to you - but Nathan’s proposal to strip women of their rights seems “logical” - then your concern isn’t really about saving South Korea, or humanity, or civilisation. It’s just sexism and misogyny, pretending to be pragmatism.
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There is no logic in Nathan’s argument - only a facade of logic designed to justify his misogyny. He constructs a false trichotomy where every “choice” serves only to strip women of their rights or autonomy. That’s not reason - that’s prejudice dressed up in pseudo-rational language.
You cannot reason someone out of a position they didn’t arrive at through reason. Nathan’s view is not a logical conclusion - it’s a pre-existing bias looking for any excuse to present itself as inevitable.
And if you genuinely don’t see the problem with that - if you believe that calling out misogyny is somehow “emotional manipulation” - then you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. Because whether you realise it or not, you are aligning yourself with a worldview that is profoundly dangerous to women.
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I don’t argue about whether women’s human rights are negotiable. They are not. They are sacrosanct. I don’t debate bigots. I shame them.
> “We are in an unpleasant situation. It’s probably going to require an unpleasant solution.”
Well, as you’ve decided that basic human rights are now “optional,” let me propose a solution:
Since misogynists like you and Nathan are clearly a threat to women’s safety and comfort — and since women’s safety is essential for building the kind of secure, family-oriented society you claim to care about — why don’t we abolish your right to life instead? Start a misogynist elimination programme.
It would immediately reduce the threats women face, which are far more immediate and real than the hypothetical societal collapse you keep waving around.
Or does the idea of sacrificing your own rights to “fix” society not sit as comfortably with you as sacrificing those of women?
Hey I commented on a different reply of yours before realising you're the only commenter pushing back on this rubbish, so I just want to say that I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Leaving ideas like this unchallenged just legitimises it.
> We are in an unpleasant situation. It's probably going to require an unpleasant solution. You seem to be in denial of this reality.
It is an incredible coincidence that every time I hear this, the unpleasant situation happens to be fixable by just tearing away a few more individual rights, which will surely be back once the unpleasant situation is gone and not replaced by five more unpleasant situations
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Thought experiment - what if it was someone making a really convincing painting of the same thing?
These are of course real issues, which is why this is going to be an increasingly large problem. The easiest way to ‘deal’ with them is to double down on them - aka [https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3jfqo9/til_t...] - but not very many people have the, uh, testicular fortitude to be able to do that.
Especially women.
Neo-Victorian’ism anyone?
People used to use photo-editing software to do the same thing 20 years ago. A significant change in the prevalence of something (due to making it easier in this case: painting->photoshop->AI tools), can make a qualitative difference in the harm.
A really dedicated person might crank out a painting or two per week, and a minuscule fraction of the population has the skills to do so at all. Around the turn of the millennium, a much larger (but still small) fraction of the population had access and skills to use digital photo editing tools, and it still took quite some time if you wanted to make something convincing.
I am fairly confident that if one were to spend an hour or two researching how, a significant fraction of the population could generate dozens of images in a single evening.
1) Sukarno had less to worry about than a schoolteacher (like in the article), perhaps. Teachers can get fired for even a hint of scandal. 2) Victorian men loved porn, prostitution, etc. The "prudishness" of the Victorian era was enforced on women. Deepfakes are just part of the same long tradition of women being deprived of sexual agency and autonomy.
Sukarno only had less to worry about because he had ensured he has less to worry about.
Dictators have been murdered over nothing, let alone scandals - but he was strong enough at the time that yes, it would have just propped up his image.
Teachers rarely have that degree of control of their environment.
SK (like most Asian societies) also has a huge ‘crabs in a bucket’ problem, also known as ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’.
The Victorian era saw most women (statistically) in unstable relationships, and a great many using prostitution to support themselves. Which also gave them a lot of individual freedom.
It was also a time of incredible social mobility, and also fraud.
The ‘prudishness’ was as much society trying to use shaming and in group/out group dynamics to maintain control and some degree of integrity to limit the damage from the widespread disruption of the social fabric.
It also was applied against men, but men are able to leave easier/escape, as they don’t have the biological issue of being pregnant/young kids in tow to slow them down.
Which is also why so many of the middle class had to do things like rent tableware (or even food), etc. to appear ‘upper class’ to avoid being kicked out of whatever support circle they needed, and keep some semblance of propriety.
It was an extremely unstable time for everyone, precisely because so many were ‘free’.
Society is, and always will be, a giant ouroboros/wheel of control, influence, fighting for independence, etc.
The reason why women get stomped on to try to deprive them of sexual agency and autonomy, is precisely because they have so much power with sexual agency.
Most women, if unrestricted, can get most men to do almost anything they want using sex.
Most men, if unrestricted, can then leave to go do something else, leaving the woman ‘holding the bag’ when she is pregnant.
Birth control has unhinged the equation quite a lot, and free flow of information is doing so even more.
That scares all the rest of the women, and many of the men, which is why we have what we have. The more freedom is actually present, the more unhinged the attacks eventually become. Because the goal is control, even if it is pathological control.
Interesting times, eh?
"Most women, if unrestricted, can get most men to do almost anything they want using sex."
You have a deeply negative view of my sex. Do you seriously believe that all men are robots who loose all agency when they're horny? If so, why isn't all the world run by women?
As a parent I worry about this technology being used on children. While one way of preventing this from happening is to limit photos of children on social media it's extremely difficult to maintain this once they hit high school/secondary school. That approach also doesn't stop someone taking source photos or video using their phone.
One of the most popular models on civit.ai today (huggingface for diffusion models but defacto basically a porn site) is the “age slider”.
It’s 10000% mostly used for creating this kind of horrifying content.
I see sites like 4chan sharing deepfakes of their acquaintances daily and they don't seem to gain media reaction like this. I wonder the severity they feel is different in SK?
A lot of these SK stories keep reading like a cultural/techno dystopia, which makes me wonder if people there want change to occur.
SK has been ‘crazy’ this way for many decades. It’s also why it is so obsessed with plastic surgery.
Japan has been going in a similar direction, but has some notable differences (tentacle porn really is a thing, as is chibi).
Everyone is just becoming more aware of it, which hey - at least it isn’t just all about the USA anymore!
Japan isn’t actually going in that direction… as far as I can tell, there’s just a ton of “Japan is so weird” articles that get shared in the west. Like, articles about vending machines that sell used panties to perverts, or men who get married to anime characters. You could just as easily write these articles about the US or any country in Europe, it’s just a bit of old-fashioned orientalism going around that we happen to write these articles about Japan. I assume SK is mostly boring and has boring problems like the rest of us, like rampant alcoholism and poor work culture. Likewise, the social problems with Japan are boring ones like (again) work culture, being punished for standing out, or having to navigate bureaucracy.
I don’t even know why chibi would be on your list since it’s just a style of drawing cartoons with big heads.
You should see the "America is so weird" articles that get shared in the west about 13 year old girls being married off to adult men. Chilling stuff.
They’re ‘boring’ because we’re used to them, not because other cultures wouldn’t look on in horror.
Every culture has their variant of this.
For example, Indians would never tolerate the level of alcohol consumption that is essentially mandatory to hold office jobs in SK and Japan.
And SK and Japan wouldn’t (to my knowledge) tolerate the level of societal control over marriages/sex/personal identity that Indian culture considers normal. And definitely wouldn’t tolerate the lack of civic sense.
Chibi was an indirect reference to what western cultures refer to as CSAM (in not-as-uncommon-as-outsiders assume cases). Too subtle eh?
Do you want me to get more specific? It’s not like Akiba and several other nearby distracts are actually about just maid cafes (actual-what-they-purport-to-be ones anyway) and cheap electronics, eh?
Every culture has things like this, yes. And the bizarre (to the reader) and outrageous (to the reader) articles get clicks.
I understand the laws against distribution, but can anyone explain why creating/possessing deep-faked porn for private use is so morally reprehensible or even criminal?
I can't identify a victim in this scenario. Whose business is it? I genuinely couldn't care less if someone did this "to" me, but then I recognise that as a middle aged dude that's not ever happening so I may have a blind spot here. How would I even know unless, ironically, the investigation and prosecution publicised the fact that it exists?
Similar reason with drugs. Use is not generally illegal, possession is. Possession is very easy to prove. Thus criminalization makes sense. Same goes for this type of material. If it stays private no one has idea and it won't be a problem. If it goes public, well now you have conclusive proof.
And the harm comes from sharing this material. So stopping people from possessing it as with lot of other material is not worse way to stop spread. Defence of I did not create it is not usable anymore.
While thinking can't (and must not) be criminalized, materializing a fantasies even in "nonharmful" way can damage people a lot – these materials can be found for example.
It’s indeed thought police. But i suppose there’s a huge difference when the material is used for blackmail… and there’s also a risk it may be stolen and then shared publicly in which case it can be devastating for the victim. But if you keep the material well hidden it’s similar to if it was just in your imagination and hopefully that’s not illegal yet.
That's exactly my point though. It is. From the article:
>in September, legislators passed an amendment that made possessing and viewing deepfake porn punishable by up to three years in prison.
This is insane.
You’re getting downvoted because it triggers some really deep ick feelings. Ick feelings that as a middle aged dude you’ve likely never had (or will likely have), so can’t appreciate. If you’ve had a crazy stalker (truly crazy), you’d probably think differently.
For instance, that Star Trek episode where Barclay was simulating the crew and having ‘relationships’ with them on the holodeck - in ‘real life’ the crew would have ostracized him, at the minimum.
In ‘real real life’, he might have just gotten murdered, ahem, ‘had a transporter accident’.
It’s similar. Yeah, logically ‘no one was getting hurt’, but people aren’t logical that way. For a reason, frankly.
And if you think of it as a prelude to something much more disturbing and direct happening (which it well might), then it makes sense to have the ‘disproportionate’/illogical reaction. Those emotions are warning people of an imminent threat, and they’d be fools to ignore them, regardless of what anyone says.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to be grossed out by someone generating porn of other people without consent for their own personal consumption. But when it comes to legislation, surely that should be driven by harm assessment? Distribution of such images is clearly harmful and should be illegal, but I find it hard to come up with any reasonable arguments for criminalizing mere possession.
It’s just an expansion of the same rules as CSAM (which typically - but sometimes not for a short period of time in some locales - includes generated content).
I imagine it won’t be long before this is used to try to ban porn entirely, since ‘there is no way to be sure’. And then crack down on chat groups, social media, etc. since that is where any of the legit problematic content is going to be distributed most of the time eh?
I think if anything will stop free computing, it'll be AI, specifically for this reason. Too easy to abused, and too many (especially women) being harmed.
What would that look like? It's hard to imagine putting the genie back in the bottle with any technology, let alone the personal computer which has been in circulation for decades.
>What would that look like?
Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
Humans have a long history of leading very real and literal crusades based on morals.
It’s not that far-fetched to think that could happen again one day - perhaps over AI and computers, perhaps over something else. All you need to do is convince enough people with weapons that you’re the moral compass of the time.
Basically only approved,locked down devices provided by Microsoft and Apple.
Maybe outlaw any app not on an app store.
Just some (dystopic) ideas.
Really? Hoe many people do you know who use big neural networks, how many of them run it on their own hardware?
For image generation, the bar is much lower than for text. E.g. FLUX.1-dev is 12B parameters. Running those on local hardware is extremely common and very easy, especially with apps like Draw Things (the latter can even run on iPhones and iPads!).
Doesn't SK have the lowest birth rate in the world?
yes, and misogyny and south korean women's collective reaction to it is definitely one root cause. not the only, but due to garbage like this article, women there do not especially care for the men.
Women don’t care for the men because of articles like this? I would suggest that the widespread misogyny would more likely be the cause.
I feel like declining birthrates and misogyny unfortunately easily go hand in hand, causing a downward spiral. The rarer kids are, the more they tend to get spoiled and the more likely they are to act entitled towards others.
The rarer kids are, the more people don’t have kids, don’t know anything about kids, don’t care any kids, and treat them like a nuisance. Both privately and publicly.
Don't developed countries tend to have low birthrates and high status of women? Are you saying that low birth rates cause misogynistic behaviour of kids?
I read it as "garbage like [described] in this article", not an attack on the article itself.
Misandry is rampant too, which is a big part of why men are checking out or even developing resentment towards women.
This article even touches on it, for example, in that just possessing deep-faked porn is punishable by up to 3 years imprisonment. There are many men who will literally never experience a woman's touch, are shunned, isolated, ridiculed, shamed, and even hated by society. They are not bad people, their only crime is not being attractive. Who are they hurting if they get their rocks off privately fantasising about a woman with the help of AI and image editors? It's downright cruel.
Normal porn is freely available! You don't have to make deepfake porn of your classmate!
How is that "misandry"? Do you think only men are lonely and deprived of sex? Do you think only men fantasize about people they're attracted to? How did men survive so many years without synthetic porn of the woman at the office? Producing deepfakes, even for personal use, is irresponsible. Men can use their imaginations.
How is it not misandry? A law targeting men to deny them even the illusion of love and happiness, punishable by years in prison. A peaceful, albeit distasteful, fleeting solution to their complete rejection by society. I don't see why it's anyone's business, least of all the law. It's cruel. It's spiteful.
How is the law targeting men? As far as I know, it's just as illegal for women to create and possess deepfake porn.
And, again: you do not need deepfake porn to have love and happiness, even an illusion of it. I personally think better of men than to think that a fake nudie pic of the neighbor's wife would be the keystone of their mental wellbeing. If anything is misandry, it's thinking of men as a bunch of sex-crazed gremlins.
What gives you the right to claim that or police that, though?
May I decree that women do not need social media to have love or happiness so it's ok to ban it, under threat of imprisonment if they access it?
Is anything arbitrarily open to prohibition if it doesn't meet your extraordinarily high bar of being the "keystone of mental wellbeing"?
What sick joy do you derive from depriving peaceful lonely desperate men this one small outlet? It's misandry.
All porn disgusts me and yet your cruelty and total lack of empathy is so repugnant that, unbelievably, I'm here batting for coomers. Bravo.
While Men certainly can be (and likely will be) a major driver, don’t underestimate the willingness of women to target other women using the same tactics and techniques if they think they can get away with it.
Men may kill you, but women will make you wish you were dead.
Man comments like this make me a lot more fearful of random men than random women. I've seen so many more vile comments touted by men (I choose to believe the majority of them are bots!) than I've ever seen made by women on regular sites. I don't understand how people become this way.
In this scenario, random women aren’t typically the threat - it’s the women closest to you.
The reason it becomes like this is due to a fight for control, often a pathological one.
Men will make terrible comments and poison the well to try to drive women (and other men) to them for ‘safety’, as a show of force. No one wants to be on the losing/weak side. And by painting all men as scary, they undermine their competition, and by being blatantly the scariest without consequence they show they are the strongest. See what is happening in US politics. Being visibly scary is a form of marketing/recruitment.
Women will make terrible comments and poison the well to stop men (and other women) from leaving because the outside world is too scary, or the alternatives are too scary. No one wants to leave ‘safety’ to get eaten by a monster. And better the devil you know, than the one you don’t eh? Women will often be covertly scary, because their goal is usually retention, not recruitment.
You’re watching the war of control unfold.
Because it is. There is no point trying to solve, or getting depressed about it. Just walk away.
South Korea still has male only slavery in army.
There are facebook groups where female share revenge porn, "are we dating the same guy" or "does this look infected?".
I've never been to South Korea but I'd be really surprised if that has much to do with it. The entire Western world has had massively declining birth rates while simultaneously becoming less misogynistic. If anything there's a negative correlation. In more equitable societies women don't want to just be mothers, and society changes so that it is now difficult for them.
For example it's very difficult to live off a single income now so women can't be stay-at-home mothers, and childcare is extremely expensive in most countries.
South Korea's birth rate is extremely low even by rich Western world standards. Attitudes towards women are one root cause, materialistic culture another, but their horrible working life is probably even more significant factor. It's hard to have a family when you're busy wage slaving all your waking hours for Samsung or whatever megacorporation, just to afford a place to live.
All porn destroys lives! Deeply faked or not.
That's a bold claim.
Fuck cnn and their pay to read articles
Reader View button in Firefox works.
Why?