Deepfake porn is ruining women’s lives. Now the law may finally ban it

Chicago thinks Zocdoc can help solve its vaccine chaos

Sponsored by Darktrace The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology The real deepfake problem 02.12.21 Good morning! Today: inside a push for new laws to protect women from nonconsensual deepfake porn, and how Chicago hopes to solve its vaccine chaos. I hope you have a great weekend. I'm taking a day off so there won't be a newsletter on Monday but I'll be back in action on Tuesday. See you then! And don't forget to get friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Deepfake porn is ruining women’s lives. Now the law may finally ban it  Speaking out: Helen Mort, a poet and broadcaster in Sheffield, UK, was the victim of a fake pornography campaign. What shocked her most was that the images were based on photos that had been taken from her private social media accounts, including a Facebook profile she’d deleted. The perpetrator had uploaded these non-intimate images—holiday and pregnancy photos and even pictures of her as a teenager—and encouraged other users to edit her face into violent pornographic photos. The revelations would lead her on a frustrating quest for recourse. She called the police, but the officer said there was nothing they could do. The real problem: The vast majority of deepfakes are used to target women. Over 90% of them are nonconsensual porn. And the problem is growing in the pandemic, as existing abusive relationships have worsened, and digital abuse has seen an uptick. Time for change: Fortunately, parallel movements in the US and UK are gaining momentum to ban nonconsensual deepfake porn. The attention could also help ban other forms of image-based sexual violence, which have previously been neglected. After years of activists’ efforts to alert lawmakers to these egregious legal gaps, deepfakes are finally forcing them to pay attention. Read the full story. —Karen Hao Chicago thinks Zocdoc can help solve its vaccine chaos What’s happening: Chicago, like many parts of the US, has found the distribution of covid-19 vaccines slower than anyone hoped. Just 6% of the city’s 2.7 million residents have been vaccinated so far, and people have said the process is “like the Hunger Games,” requiring them to stay up late to refresh multiple websites in the hope that an open slot will pop up. Making things worse, official sign-up websites are clunky and hard to navigate.  A potential solution? In early February, the Department of Public Health announced a plan to help ease some of those technical problems: a partnership with Zocdoc, an online healthcare scheduling company. Zocdoc is acting as a unified portal for multiple providers, so that people can sign up with a single, more user-friendly tool rather than wrestle with several different systems at once. A catch: Zocdoc addresses only one of the issues with the rollout. After all, it’s still a version of the same first-come, first-served approach, which means it’s not solving the most critical problem: vaccines aren’t reaching the people who need them most. Local and federal officials are gradually realizing that making vaccines truly accessible will require targeted outreach—much of it offline. Read the full story. —Mia Sato We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + The sound of a murmuration.    + This painter adds Star Wars scenes to thrift store paintings.   + Dying to go back to gigs… but this documentary will have to do for now.    + More snow art!   + Check out this amazing Abu Dhabi-based artist.   + Got a white cat? You need to do this.    + A performance by the frozen clothes band.    + To quote my Dad, there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing… so learn how to dress for the cold. Sponsor Message Cyber Security is Now a Machine Fight AI is being used to create increasingly customized, targeted, and hard-to-detect cyber-attacks at scale.  Autonomous Cyber AI learns ‘normal’ for your organization and stops advanced threats in their tracks.  Learn more > The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The White House has bought a further 200 million vaccine doses Biden says the US will have enough to inoculate 300 million Americans by the end of July (Axios)   + Inadequate healthcare has killed more Americans than covid-19. (Quartz)   + How to double mask. (Wired $)    + Watch out for vaccine scams. (Recode)   + The US government is investigating a huge counterfeit N95 mask con. (AP)   + Trump was sicker with covid-19 than was admitted at the time. (NYT $)   + Instagram banned Robert F Kennedy Jr for spreading vaccine misinformation. (NPR)  2 Inside Facebook's creation of its supreme court ⚖️ It's about to tackle the unenviable task of deciding whether to make the Trump ban permanent. (New Yorker $)   + Facebook says other companies could join if its oversight board succeeds. (TechCrunch)   + Facebook moderators say the company is trying to stop them from speaking about their working conditions. (The Guardian)  3 Here’s Biden’s plan to reboot climate innovation A new working group has been formed with the mission of accelerating progress in tough technical areas. (TR)   + Shell says it has passed "peak oil." (NYT $)  4 Facial recognition didn't catch a single imposter at US airports last year Not a great return on investment. (OneZero $)   5 Twitter is exploring letting users receive money from their followers 💰 I'd actually pay some people not to tweet, but that's another story. (Reuters)   + Social media influencers can now join one of the US's biggest unions. (Vice)   + Social networks are getting chatty. (WSJ $)   + The US WeChat ban is being paused. (WP $)  6 The GameStop shares surge is under official investigation Good luck disentangling that mess. (CNET)   + A Wall Street fund is looking to hire Redditors. (Gizmodo)   + Why couldn't GameStop cash in on it? (Ars Technica)  7 Russian TikTok is getting political  How long until it's blocked by the Kremlin? (TechCrunch)   8 An amateur group is shaking up the world of earthquake predictions With machine learning. (Wired UK)   9 Is meatless beef ever going to go mainstream? It's one thing to make a decent burger. A good steak is a whole lot harder to reproduce. (NEO.LIFE)   + The race to make a lab-grown steak. (TR)   10 A congressman joined a meeting on Zoom upside down 🙃 Come on. He knew. (The Verge) AI implementation is hard. Be one of the few who get it right. Join us at EmTech Digital, our annual event entirely focused on artificial intelligence, to learn how to make AI work for your business. Quote of the day “If we don’t get moving, they are going to eat our lunch." —President Biden tells senators that China is speeding ahead of the US when it comes to investing in infrastructure, the BBC reports. Top image credit: UAE SPACE AGENCY Please send Parisian baguettes to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free The age of implementation Join us virtually | March 23–25, 2021   Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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