Yet another Hacker News

Deepfake of Washington County, Oregon, Candidate Goes Viral Nationwide

24 points aliasxneo 1 hour ago 37 comments

peder 1 hour ago | parent

This story is fake; the flag was in fact upside down: https://x.com/alx/status/2112383598934573506

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://lookaside.fbsbx...

cortesoft 1 hour ago | parent

And you trust this source because?

gruez 1 hour ago | parent

As opposed to trusting "Oregon Journalism Project"?

peder 1 hour ago | parent

It's from their own Facebook page, it's the Google Image Search results from their own page.

ofjcihen 1 hour ago | parent

“Before they deleted them” aka no way to check if this is BS.

peder 1 hour ago | parent

Nonsense, the google image search result clearly still has the linkage established. There's nothing fake about it.

peder 1 hour ago | parent

And why wouldn't you question why they deleted the original lol

ofjcihen 1 hour ago | parent

That’s not the question. The question is “were they even there” before the “screenshot”.

As an example, I can screenshot your comment and have AI edit it to have you say “I really enjoy misleading people on the internet for money”, post it, and then say “I took this screenshot before they deleted it.”

rideontime 1 hour ago | parent

Please just look at the bottom left corner of the "real" image.

peder 1 hour ago | parent

You don't understand: https://x.com/alx/status/2112585386929397799

But also just look at the bottom-left of the image as is mentioned elsewhere in this comment thread: they didn't even bother to photoshop the entire image in their "debunk".

DFHippie 1 hour ago | parent

I don't understand why the people manipulated with lies aren't offended at the liars. They are primed to believe the lies, but aren't they mad that someone sought to manipulate them?

This keeps happening because it works. But why does it work? Why isn't there blowback?

jplusequalt 1 hour ago | parent

Truth isn't important anymore.

dabinat 1 hour ago | parent

Because they want it to be true.

happytoexplain 1 hour ago | parent

It's embarrassing. Instead, they tell themselves, "well, it could have just as easily been real."

This has always been the case.

However, the more interesting thing going on is that we have never had to reckon with this problem anywhere near as much as we do now, since the barrier to creating fakes has been reduced from "skilled, motivated software user" to "all five billion humans who can write".

Edit: I think this comment is neutral enough to stand even under the new information that this might have been a cries-wolf situation, but I am acknowledging the fact.

gruez 1 hour ago | parent

The ironic part is that the veracity of the debunking is being questioned, so depending on how this turns out, this could either be referring to "haha dumb right wingers falling for AI generated meme" or "haha dumb left wingers falling for AI generated debunking". Truly a rorschach test of a comment.

edit: the story was retracted so the "people manipulated with lies" are the people who believed oregon journalism project?

peder 1 hour ago | parent

Are you going to update your comment now that a retraction was issued? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50173029

happytoexplain 2 minutes ago | parent

Do not address people in this way. You are contributing to the exact problem we're talking about (how easily it is for information to turn out to be wrong).

UltraSane 1 hour ago | parent

I feel the same way. Anyone who lies to you is fundamentally insulting you.

rideontime 52 minutes ago | parent

Now that the story has been retracted, and the "real" image proven to be an obvious fake, are you mad that someone sought to manipulate you?

rideontime 1 hour ago | parent

As much as I hate to have to defend Jack Posobiec (aka EndWokeness), saving the "real" screenshot from this article and uploading it to OpenAI's verification tool[0] indicates that it, in fact, was AI-generated. I welcome any correction on this.

[0] https://openai.com/research/verify/

e: Okay, now I feel stupid for even bothering to do that. Look below her name and you'll see the leftovers of the old flag.

edit 2: Retracted. https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/editors-note-october...

ofjcihen 1 hour ago | parent

Unless I’m missing something all of the pictures in the article and on X that it links to return as being AI generated?

rideontime 1 hour ago | parent

There's only two images in the article, the "real" (fake) image (which appears twice), and the screenshot of the tweet; the latter returns "No OpenAI signals detected" for me, unlike the other.

ofjcihen 1 hour ago | parent

I’m including all of the images linked in both.

And now that you’ve said that I’ve retried the same image 5 times and gotten AI 3 times and Not AI twice.

Something tells me that tools is about as reliable as Pangram.

rideontime 1 hour ago | parent

Then just try looking in the bottom left corner of the "real" image to see the leftovers of the upside-down flag. The SynthID watermark isn't even necessary here to spot the obviousness of the fake.

gruez 1 hour ago | parent

Even more damning seems to be the video of the event and cached images from google, which does not have an openai watermark (yes, verified myself).

https://x.com/kgallella/status/2112332869461045733

https://x.com/Honest_Bender/status/2112301833708519659

Of course it doesn't conclusively prove that the flag was definitely right side up, but you'd really have to bend over backwards to explain why Oregon Journalism Project's "debunking" is watermarked but the counter-debunkings aren't.

peder 1 hour ago | parent

lol I didn't see that at all, wow they soooo poorly photoshopped this and then had their all friends in the media like Axios push their lies

rideontime 1 hour ago | parent

OJP has published a retraction. https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/editors-note-october...

gruez 55 minutes ago | parent

In that case, lmao at all the people who were downvoted to grey (or rather, the people who downvoted them into grey), despite being in the right.

screenshot for posterity: https://i.postimg.cc/vTCTyYZ1/Screenshot.png

rideontime 51 minutes ago | parent

It's not unreasonable to expect End Wokeness to be spreading more lies about Somalian immigrants, given his track record. But the truth here was obvious to anybody willing to simply look at the evidence.

aliasxneo 8 minutes ago | parent

It's comical because I posted this knowing that the publisher was blatantly lying. You could literally look at the image they posted for 5 seconds and spot what was wrong with it. I just wanted to see how many other people would notice. It's interesting the retraction come shortly after I posted it, though.

Also worth noting at the time of this comment the lovely fact-checking website Axios is also still blatantly lying. Absolutely crazy this is all getting swept under the rug.

Sabinus 53 minutes ago | parent

>A Fai campaign supporter then provided a different video of the event to OJP that showed the flag right side up.

It would be interesting to know where the "corrected" deepfake originated.

gruez 34 minutes ago | parent

That also contradicts the original article, which claims the right side up photo was "Provided by Nafisa Fai".

CGMthrowaway 37 minutes ago | parent

I'm confused. So was the flag really upsidedown or rightside up?

gruez 37 minutes ago | parent

upside down. The retracted article was "debunking" the upside down picture, claiming it was fake.

https://archive.is/kRbug

CGMthrowaway 34 minutes ago | parent

So the debunkers using AI to make the upsidedown flag look like it was rightside up, were the actual deepfakers?

georgemcbay 51 minutes ago | parent

Candidate shouldn't have lied here (which seems likely based on the available evidence) and should have just owned it. Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do in 2026, IMO, speaking as a white male, many-generational American. America is very much in distress.

But it is also ridiculous that the people predisposed to the other side (and who only made a big deal out of the original clip in the first place because they are racist misogynists) will hold up this relatively insignificant lie as some sort of an outrage while pulling the lever for the likes of Trump who lies as easily as he breathes.

ButlerianJihad 38 minutes ago | parent

> Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do

It is a really dumb virtue-signaling protest thing. In fact, it has nothing to do with the actual "distress signal" that it is meant to be.

> America is very much in distress

But you don't invert the flag when your nation is in distress. You invert the flag when your vessel is in distress. Inverted flag is a 9-1-1 call to all who can see it. It indicates immediate and extreme danger to life, limb, or property.

Furthermore, it is not up to us dumb citizens to determine when our entire nation is in distress. Honestly, our nation is bigger than you or me, and she can fend for herself on her own merits, without us telling her how she should feel. If "all America is in distress" then who will come and save her, huh? We are sovereign and that means we take care of our own messes, and solve our own problems!

Let's leave the inverted flag for its true meaning, which is individual or vessel-wide distress. Anything else is just posturing and performative slacktivism.