Deepfake Bias --> When Nothing Can Be Trusted, Anything Can Be Believed 🤔🎭

The rise of deepfake technology has introduced a chilling new dimension to our already fragmented information ecosystem. I call this phenomenon “deepfake bias” — the growing tendency to dismiss any news or media that challenges one’s worldview as fake, while uncritically accepting information that aligns with personal beliefs.  Here's how it works: 

📽 The Deepfake Dismissal Reflex --> When faced with news or media that doesn’t align with one's views, people increasingly dismiss it by claiming that “it’s probably a deepfake.” Take the recent example of the alleged martial law declaration in South Korea, where some political leaders initially assumed it was a deepfake despite the video evidence.

💡 Selective Validation --> Conversely, when encountering news they agree with, individuals are more likely to accept it as authentic, even if it’s a deepfake. This creates a cognitive safe space where personal biases are reinforced.

🔗 A Crisis of Fact-Checking --> Even for fact-checkers, how can we ensure that the fact-checking itself isn’t a deepfake? As skepticism deepens, validation power shifts to trusted outlets, influencers, or platforms that already align with one’s worldview (Fox News Media, CNN, BBC News, #Musk’s posts on X, one's favorite influencer). This isn’t just polarization, it’s the curation of entirely separate realities.

🔎 The End of Empiricism --> Advances in augmented reality (AR) will soon make this multimodal. Imagine a world where your version of “truth” is rendered not just in text and video, but also in 3D interactive spaces tailored to your beliefs.  At that point, can we even trust our senses?

🙎 Gut-Driven Decision-Making --> People will rely more on intuition than evidence, creating a culture of hyper-individualized "truths." With no shared baseline for assessing facts, collaboration across divides (political, social, or cultural) becomes nearly impossible. Institutions, governments, and even personal relationships could face an unprecedented credibility crisis.