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Deepfake of Washington County, Oregon, Candidate Goes Viral Nationwide

23 points by aliasxneo 2 hours ago | 30 comments

rideontime 25 minutes ago

OJP has published a retraction. https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/editors-note-october...

Sabinus 13 minutes ago

>A Fai campaign supporter then provided a different video of the event to OJP that showed the flag right side up.

It would be interesting to know where the "corrected" deepfake originated.

gruez 14 minutes ago

In that case, lmao at all the people who were downvoted to grey (or rather, the people who downvoted them into grey), despite being in the right.

screenshot for posterity: https://i.postimg.cc/vTCTyYZ1/Screenshot.png

rideontime 10 minutes ago

It's not unreasonable to expect End Wokeness to be spreading more lies about Somalian immigrants, given his track record. But the truth here was obvious to anybody willing to simply look at the evidence.

rideontime 43 minutes ago

As much as I hate to have to defend Jack Posobiec (aka EndWokeness), saving the "real" screenshot from this article and uploading it to OpenAI's verification tool[0] indicates that it, in fact, was AI-generated. I welcome any correction on this.

[0] https://openai.com/research/verify/

e: Okay, now I feel stupid for even bothering to do that. Look below her name and you'll see the leftovers of the old flag.

edit 2: Retracted. https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/editors-note-october...

gruez 33 minutes ago

Even more damning seems to be the video of the event and cached images from google, which does not have an openai watermark (yes, verified myself).

https://x.com/kgallella/status/2112332869461045733

https://x.com/Honest_Bender/status/2112301833708519659

Of course it doesn't conclusively prove that the flag was definitely right side up, but you'd really have to bend over backwards to explain why Oregon Journalism Project's "debunking" is watermarked but the counter-debunkings aren't.

peder 28 minutes ago

lol I didn't see that at all, wow they soooo poorly photoshopped this and then had their all friends in the media like Axios push their lies

ofjcihen 40 minutes ago

Unless I’m missing something all of the pictures in the article and on X that it links to return as being AI generated?

rideontime 37 minutes ago

There's only two images in the article, the "real" (fake) image (which appears twice), and the screenshot of the tweet; the latter returns "No OpenAI signals detected" for me, unlike the other.

ofjcihen 34 minutes ago

I’m including all of the images linked in both.

And now that you’ve said that I’ve retried the same image 5 times and gotten AI 3 times and Not AI twice.

Something tells me that tools is about as reliable as Pangram.

rideontime 30 minutes ago

Then just try looking in the bottom left corner of the "real" image to see the leftovers of the upside-down flag. The SynthID watermark isn't even necessary here to spot the obviousness of the fake.

aaron695 24 minutes ago

[dead]

DFHippie 48 minutes ago

I don't understand why the people manipulated with lies aren't offended at the liars. They are primed to believe the lies, but aren't they mad that someone sought to manipulate them?

This keeps happening because it works. But why does it work? Why isn't there blowback?

rideontime 12 minutes ago

Now that the story has been retracted, and the "real" image proven to be an obvious fake, are you mad that someone sought to manipulate you?

happytoexplain 32 minutes ago

It's embarrassing. Instead, they tell themselves, "well, it could have just as easily been real."

This has always been the case.

However, the more interesting thing going on is that we have never had to reckon with this problem anywhere near as much as we do now, since the barrier to creating fakes has been reduced from "skilled software user" to "all five billion humans who can write".

peder 21 minutes ago

Are you going to update your comment now that a retraction was issued? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50173029

gruez 30 minutes ago

The ironic part is that the veracity of the debunking is being questioned, so depending on how this turns out, this could either be referring to "haha dumb right wingers falling for AI generated meme" or "haha dumb left wingers falling for AI generated debunking". Truly a rorschach test of a comment.

edit: the story was retracted so the "people manipulated with lies" are the people who believed oregon journalism project?

dabinat 38 minutes ago

Because they want it to be true.

jplusequalt 39 minutes ago

Truth isn't important anymore.

UltraSane 20 minutes ago

I feel the same way. Anyone who lies to you is fundamentally insulting you.

georgemcbay 10 minutes ago

Candidate shouldn't have lied here (which seems likely based on the available evidence) and should have just owned it. Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do in 2026, IMO, speaking as a white male, many-generational American. America is very much in distress.

But it is also ridiculous that the people predisposed to the other side (and who only made a big deal out of the original clip in the first place because they are racist misogynists) will hold up this relatively insignificant lie as some sort of an outrage while pulling the lever for the likes of Trump who lies as easily as he breathes.

peder 56 minutes ago

This story is fake; the flag was in fact upside down: https://x.com/alx/status/2112383598934573506

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://lookaside.fbsbx...

cortesoft 50 minutes ago

And you trust this source because?

peder 43 minutes ago

It's from their own Facebook page, it's the Google Image Search results from their own page.

ofjcihen 42 minutes ago

“Before they deleted them” aka no way to check if this is BS.

peder 39 minutes ago

Nonsense, the google image search result clearly still has the linkage established. There's nothing fake about it.

peder 38 minutes ago

And why wouldn't you question why they deleted the original lol

ofjcihen 36 minutes ago

That’s not the question. The question is “were they even there” before the “screenshot”.

As an example, I can screenshot your comment and have AI edit it to have you say “I really enjoy misleading people on the internet for money”, post it, and then say “I took this screenshot before they deleted it.”

rideontime 35 minutes ago

Please just look at the bottom left corner of the "real" image.

peder 25 minutes ago

You don't understand: https://x.com/alx/status/2112585386929397799

But also just look at the bottom-left of the image as is mentioned elsewhere in this comment thread: they didn't even bother to photoshop the entire image in their "debunk".

gruez 48 minutes ago

As opposed to trusting "Oregon Journalism Project"?