White House Posts Digitally Altered Image of Woman Arrested After ICE Protest | Hacker News Reader

White House Posts Digitally Altered Image of Woman Arrested After ICE Protest

theguardian.com

what is going on in america? it’s starting to look like a social experiment

You know exactly what is going on here. Don't let it happen where you are. Stay safe

My best interpretation is that the apparent craziness of everything we're seeing reflects the level of how much the social order has really broken down.

We saw similar (albeit somehow tamer by contrast) things in South Africa during the excesses of the State Capture [0] years - people (mostly those complicit in trashing the country) started to do and say bonkers things. Jacob Zuma (like Trump) also acted as a lightning rod for these types of crazy characters. Genuinely sensible members of the public started to fabricate or grasp at wild explanations for what was going on. It took a major toll.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zondo_Commission

Good analogy. Trevor Noah once joked that Trump would make a great African dictator and it looks like that's now turning to reality. Listen properly!

> Trevor Noah once joked that Trump would make a great African dictator and it looks like that's now turning to reality

I find people are much less dismissive of this comparison now compared to his 1st term.

> Listen properly!

For those who don't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqNa6992ih4. Always fun to have a reason to give it another watch :)

Folks want to provoke a civil war because they know they can't deliver what they promised in the 2024 election.

I call it 'Trashism'

Trashism, that's a great term. I've been at a loss for words to describe the baffling mixture of brute fascism and juvenile idiocracy as the defining political culture of early 21st century U.S.

Yes, it's just a portmanteau of 'Trump' and 'Fascism'. I don't feel comfortable just referring to it as 'Fascism' since their shared attributes are all a little different.

Techno fascism. What is old is new again.

WW3 is asymmetric and crazy/dumb Christian Taliban people are helping Putin.

> > what is going on in america? it’s starting to look like a social experiment

When there is too much abundance the only thrill left is dunking on people remotely from the safety of your own house and engaging in sociopathic behavior and getting away with it.

> Asked whether the image had been digitally altered, the White House responded by sending a post on X from Kaelan Dorr, the deputy communications director.

> “YET AGAIN to the people who feel the need to reflexively defend perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country I share with you this message: Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he said.

Of note:

- government fabricating (with "AI", read: generative image model) contemporaneous image of arrestee

- when questioned about fabrication, official response refers to deputy communications director's Twitter post

- said tweet ridicules defense of alleged perpetrator — that is, defending criminal defendant, and/or not merely presuming guilt of arrestee

- said tweet indicates that government's memes regarding accuseds (that is, people who have not been tried and convicted by a jury of their peers) will continue

- said tweet parrots Trump's own tweet style

---

Watch this post get flagged and buried despite (1) being about tech (use of generative models in daily life, and by government no less); (2) being news; and (3) being evidence of government's disregard for truth, judicial determination of facts, and constitutional rights.

Also, note the blurring of the separation of church and state: arrest occurred at demonstration against ICE acting field director who also happens to be a church pastor.

Bonkers.

Also "heinous crime", really? Were any children raped? Were any folks strangled in their cells?

Words have no meaning anymore. It’s really frustrating. Words used to mean things and you mostly only used them when they applied.

I don't quite get your point about the blurring of church and state. What a government employee does with his own time can hardly be considered an act of the government.

Having said that, I otherwise agree with you, though I don't know about the flagging.

> - said tweet parrots Trump's own tweet style

Haven't you noticed that grownups in the presence of a baby will speak baby talk?

> What a government employee does with his own time can hardly be considered an act of the government.

Correct and agreed. I can see how my phrasing made it seem like I was saying that the government and/or federal-agent-cum-cleric were doing something impermissible. My point is that, at the very least, it's an odd combo and it raised an eyebrow.

A very frustrating part is how much bad faith the admin is engaging in. We see a question asked in good faith and an answer that completely ignores the question at hand and instead against a strawman. This is also the regular MO of Vance and Miller, etc. It's obvious these folks never grew out of their trolling people on message boards phase.

Between the use of AI to generate videos and photos and the way the administration refuses to engage the media or their constituents in good faith, it just shows that they are trying to create their a reality that simply doesn't exist. "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command..."

I just thought of a crazy analogy. I was on the internet in the mid 90's, using gopher and usenet, etc. It was great then because only the smart people knew how to get on. Then in the mid 00's it all went to sht.

Now we come to graphic design. It used to be only smart people knew how to use photoshop to manipulate images, but now we have given any idiot the power to manipulate images with AI and this is where we are.

I think you're missing the actual problem. It's not great that idiots now have the power to photoshop images, the real problem is that those idiots who would do that have been given the power to run the country.

I am quite aware of the problem. Idiots have always run the country.

Not like this. Not so bald-faced, never so unabashed.

I'll go continue reading neuromancer and blade runner, it's always good to imprint one selves to what's to come. I'm not talking about the robot and cybernetics part, but the modern feudal system.

Who ultimately created this image? The Guardian or the White House? :)

Which AI provider was used?

It's almost certainly Palantir. That's what appears to be the "AI" provider for government and big enterprises.

Palantir has an image generation model? It seems to me that Grok is the most likely as its already on the network where the image was posted and is known to be used for this sort of thing. Gemini has no problem creating the image from the source either.

In no way am I defending Palantir, but literally any random official or intern could've created this with any random AI generation model. It's not like the government is requiring people use any kind of ACLs or officially approved software to do stuff anymore.

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