Don’t Believe What You See? You’re Not Alone
By Rachel Chalsma
If you’ve ever wondered whether the content you’re viewing online is authentic, you’re not alone. As of December 2020 Adobe found that a majority of those they surveyed felt the same way. Twelve-hundred American consumers (viewers of content) and creative professionals (creators of content) were surveyed about three topics:
- How they decide what they trust online
- How they distinguish between good (acceptable or approved) altered content and bad (unauthorized or otherwise unacceptable) altered content
- The kinds of tools and solutions that might enable them to better determine the authenticity and trustworthiness of digital content
On the whole their answers to the questions posed were disheartening. It’s clear we have a problem, and just about everyone recognizes it.
Using the tools of companies such as Adobe, it gets easier to create or modify digital content just about every day. But it isn’t just “good” actors who use these tools. Some use them to create or alter content in order to spread disinformation, steal identities, or damage reputations. According to Adobe’s survey somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of respondents believe manipulated content is pervasive online, and that they lack the ability to tell what’s authentic from what’s been manipulated, causing them to distrust everything they read, see and hear.
While it’s healthy to be skeptical that not everything one reads, sees and hears is true, it’s not healthy to be cynical about all information and content; to believe that all of it is untrue or inauthentic.
One of the most alarming stats from Adobe’s survey shows that 75 percent of creative professionals say they have had their work stolen, plagiarized, or not properly credited online, with 34 percent saying they have experienced this “many times.” Some recent studies have put the number of images that are stolen each day at more than 2.5 billion.
As staggering as that number is, it only includes the commercial abuse of images. It doesn’t include the countless personal images that are taken each day from social media accounts and elsewhere online for nefarious purposes, including identity theft, revenge porn, and the like. That number might be even larger, and no one is actually tabulating it.
Who should be responsible for ensuring that the online content is authentic and safe? Adobe’s survey respondents don’t offer a consensus suggestion. The media, software developers, creators, and the public themselves all earn a share of responsibility.
Worthy efforts such as the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative will eventually begin to tie the provenance of content to the content itself, helping consumers to understand where the content they’re consuming comes from and how and by whom it may have been altered. But that won’t prevent bad actors from manipulating content if they’re committed to doing that, and it won’t stop people from being disinformed or abused by that altered content.
We’re working on a service called ImageShield that we’ll offer later this year that will enable people to protect their online photographs from being stolen or manipulated, using the best available technology, and to monitor where their images are being used across the entire online world. ImageShield will be free, because we believe that being able to protect one’s images from unauthorized use or abuse is a basic online right. Learn more about what we’re developing at ImageShield.net.
