'Good luck Facebook, you will need it and that is the truth'

Facebook has banned ‘Deepfakes’, an odd term surely. It seems they won’t allow completely false, altered political videos although their management of news is not so specific. There seems to be a need to clarify the issue.

Basically, there should be no fake material on Facebook although even they recognise that would be impossible to really do that given the number of posts and the need to check their accuracy. As the US election, probably re-election of President Trump, gets closer the amount of political ads will increase. There are few that would doubt that many of the political promises are probably an exaggeration, almost a bribe and certainly not considered 100% reliable. Even the simple things, like the flat earthers and the moon landing deniers are hard to stop much less the more dangerous ones such as the anti-vaccination groups or the climate change deniers so what hope is there for actual truth.

There is the phrase, ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ and if we even consider family Facebook pages of ‘Brilliant’ children, ‘wonderful’ pets or even ‘fantastic’ sporting achievements we can see that it will never be possible.

Good luck Facebook, you will need it and that is the truth.

Dennis Fitzgerald — Melbourne, Australia