Facebook refuses to delete a deepfake video of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Here's what Facebook plans to do instead

Of late, deepfake videos on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are on the rise and in what could be a surprising turn of events, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the latest victim of the technique. Here's what happened: Earlier this week, a deepfake video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was uploaded on Instagram, a Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform. In the video, Facebook CEO was portrayed as saying things that rather disparage Facebook and Zuckerberg himself. The video also led to widespread speculation as to how Facebook would counter serious defamation against Zuckerberg.

However, Facebook's emerging policy on deepfake videos seems to be even more surprising as the social media giant has now refused to delete the video in question. As MIT points out, apparently, Facebook's policy on deepfake videos is to leave them up but at the same time, flag that they are fake. In the video, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg talks about being “one man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures.” However, the video was created using a two-year-old clip of Mark Zuckerberg addressing Russian interference in the 2016 US election. 

Here's the video:

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Mark Zuckerberg's deepfake video was created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe. The video in question was created in partnership with Canny, a UK-based advertising company. Mark Zuckerberg's video is one of the several videos made by the group as part of an exhibition 'Spectre' which took place at the Sheffield Documentary Festival this week. However, Facebook's decision to leave deepfake videos on the platform is not new. Last month, Facebook also refused to delete a deepfake video of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. However, Facebook is willing to make it clear that those videos are not real.

Facebook is outsourcing its fact-checking system. Facebook said that if third-party fact-checkers found the video to be fake, the company would add a few disclaimers informing users as such. Facebook also promises to rank such videos further down on the news feeds.