A fake video showing US President Joe Biden inappropriately touching his adult granddaughter’s chest sparked calls for Meta to change its policy on deepfakes and manipulated content.
The video clip, which is sometimes accompanied by a caption describing Biden as a “pedophile,” started to circulate in May 2023 on Facebook and other social media platforms.
The fake video is a maliciously edited version of actual footage of President Biden voting in the US Midterm elections in October 2022.
Despite being fake, the shocking video was not removed from Facebook as it does not violate Meta’s Manipulated Media policy, Meta’s Oversight Board said in a February 2024 post.
Currently, Meta’s Manipulated Media policy only applies if specific conditions are met.
These conditions include that:
- The content was created through artificial intelligence (AI)
- The content shows people saying things they did not say
“Since the video in this post was not altered using AI and it shows President Biden doing something he did not do (not something he didn’t say), it does not violate the existing policy,” the Oversight Board explained.
Additionally, Meta will not restrict content when its alteration is “obvious” and “therefore unlikely to mislead the ‘average user’ of its authenticity, a key characteristic of manipulated media.”
Several user attempts to report the video failed because it did not meet all the conditions for Meta to remove it as misleading content, the Oversight Board added.
Cheap Fakes are as Harmful as Deepfakes
Meta’s Oversight Board considered the Manipulated Media policy no longer sufficient to fight against misinformation and disinformation effectively.
“The Board finds that Meta’s Manipulated Media policy is […] too narrow, lacking in persuasive justification, incoherent and confusing to users, and fails to clearly specify the harms it is seeking to prevent,” the post reads.
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