this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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It would be nice if this extended to all text, images, audio and video on news websites. That's where the real damage is happening.
Actually seems easier (probably not at the state level) to mandate cameras and such digitally sign any media they create. No signature or verification, no trust.
I get what you're going for but this would absolutely wreck privacy. And depending on how those signatures are created, someone could create a virtual camera that would sign images and then we would be back to square one.
I don't have a better idea though.
Privacy concern for sure, but given that you can already tie different photos back to the same phone from lens artifacts, I don't think this is going to make things much worse than they already are.
Anyone who produces cameras can publish a list of valid keys associated with their camera. If you trust the manufacturer, then you also trust their keys. If there's no trusted source for the keys, then you don't trust the signature.
The point is to give photographers a "receipt" for their photos. If you don't want the receipt it would be easy to scrub from photo metadata.
And the people that are going to check for a digital signature in the first place, THEN check that the signature emanates from a trusted key, then, eventually, check who's deciding the list of trusted keys… those people, where are they?
Because the lack of trust, validation, verification, and more generally the lack of any credibility hasn't stopped anything from spreading like a dumpster fire in a field full of dumpsters doused in gasoline. Part of my job is providing digital signature tools and creating "trusted" data (I'm not in sales, obviously), and the main issue is that nobody checks anything, even when faced with liability, even when they actually pay for an off the shelve solution to do so. And I'm talking about people that should care, not even the general public.
There are a lot of steps before "digitally signing everything" even get on people's radar. For now, a green checkmark anywhere is enough to convince anyone, sadly.
An individual wouldn't verify this but enough independent agencies or news orgs would probably care enough to verify a photo. For the vast majority we're already too far gone to properly separate fiction an reality. If we can't get into a courtroom and prove that a picture or video is fact or fiction then we're REALLY fucked.
It could be a feature of web browsers. Images would get some icon indicating the valid signature, just like browsers already show the padlock icon indicating a valid certificate. So everybody would be seeing the verification.
But I don't think it's a good idea, for other reasons.
I think there's enough people who care about this that you can just provide the data and wait for someone to do the rest.
I'd like to think like that too, but it's actually experience with large business users that led me to say otherwise.
The problem is that "AI" doesn't actually exist. For example, Photoshop has features that are called "AI". Should every designer be forced to label their work if they use some "AI" tool.
This is a problem with making violent laws based on meaningless language.
Yes the state should violently enforce its arbitrary laws in every aspect of our lives. \s