This comes up a lot. Because synthesis is so generally feasible plus the existence of very powerful editing tools for things like movies and whatnot, I'm guessing that it will simply become the norm to assume that any image, sound, movie, or whatever may be fake. I expect there won't be a way to verify something was synthesised or "real-synthesized" (since images and videos are ultimately synthesized themselves, just from reality instead of other synthesized content). Even with signing and web of trust we can only verify who is publishing something, but not the method of synthesis.

Trusted entities could vouch for the veracity (or other aspects) of things, especially if they are close to the source.

We already implicitly do this: if a news outlet we trust publishes a photo and does not state that they are unsure of its veracity we assume that it is an authentic photo. Using cryptographic signing that news outlet could explicitly state that they have determined the photo to be real. They could add any type of signed statement to any bit of information, really. Even signing something as being fake could be done, with the resulting signed information being shareable (although one would imagine that any unsigned information would be extremely suspect anyway).

The web of trust approach is to have a distributed system of trust that allows for less institutional parties to be able to earn trust and provide 'trusted' information, but there are also plenty downsides to it. A similar distributed system that determines trustworthiness in a more robust way would be preferable, but I am not aware of one.

It can be verified if resulting video contains signed metadata with all intermediate steps needed to produce the video from original recording (which is digitally signed by camera).

Downside is that large original video assets would need to be published, for such verification to work.

You won't be able, as some average person, to trust that what you gets to Twitter, Instagram, or whatever image and video hosting platform gets popular in the future, is real, but 1) I'm not sure you can today anyway, 2) plenty of people don't consume anything from these platforms and get by fine, and 3) what are you even relying on this information for?

Are you concerned about predicting the direction or "real" state of your national economy? Videos aren't going to give you that. Largely, you can't know. Heavily curated statistical reports compiled and published by national agencies can only give you a clear view in retrospect. Are you concerned that a hurricane might be heading your way and you need to leave? Don't listen to videos on social media. Listen to your local weather authority. Are you concerned about whether X candidate for some national office really said a thing? Why? Are any of these people's characters or policy positions really that unclear that the reality or unreality of two seconds worth of words coming out of their mouths are going to sway your overall opinion one way or another?

Things you should actually care about:

- How are you family and friends doing? Ask them directly. If you can't trust the information you get back, you didn't trust them to begin with.

- How should you live your life? Stick with the classics here, man. Some combination of Aristotle, Ben Graham, and the basic AHA guidelines on diet and exercise will get you 95% of the way there.

- How do you fix or clean or operate some equipment or item X that you own? Get that information from the manufacturer.

Things you shouldn't care about:

- Is the IDF or Hamas committing more atrocities?

- Does Kamala Harris really support sex changes for convicted felons serving prison sentences funded by public money?

- Can Koalas actually surf?

Accept at some point that you can't know everything at all times and that's fine. You can know the things that matter. Get information from sources you actually trust, as in individual people or specific organizations you know and trust, not anonymous creators of text on Reddit. If you happen to be a national strategic decision maker that actually needs to know current world events, you're in luck. You have spy agencies and militaries that fully control the entire chain of custody from data collection to report compilation. If they're using AI to show you lies, you've got bigger problems anyway.

The web of trust doesn't seem to scale! All of the online social platforms trend towards centralization for identify verification.

In my (historically unpopular) opinion we have two optional choices outside of but still allowing for this anonymous free-for-all:

A private company like Facebook uses a privileged system of identification and authentication based on login/password/2FA and relying on state-issued identification verification,

OR, what I feel is better, a public institution that uses a common system based on PKI and state-issued identification, eg, the DMV issuing DoD Common Access Cards.

Trusting districts and nation-states could sign each other's issuing authorities.

The benefits are multifaceted! It helps authenticate the source of deep fakes. It helps fight astroturfing, foreign or otherwise. It helps to remove private companies fueled by advertising revenue from being in a privileged position of identification, etc, etc.

I totally understand any downvotes but I would prefer if you instead engaged me in this conversation if you disagree.

I'd love to have this picked apart instead of just feeling bummed out.