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:sadness:
Isn't it funny how :reddit-logo: allowed garbage like r/jailbait to exist for years until it got negative media coverage, fash breedinggrounds like PCM are left alone, and rampant racism/misogyny/queerphobia is a-ok, but as soon as some obscure shitposting gommulist sub dares question the narrative it gets the boot?
:fedposting:
At this point, this is a daily thing on :reddit-logo: .
The worst shit makes it to the top of the front page, and no one gives a shit.
You try to report it, and what you get back is "lol, this is fine"
Yeah that one fucked me up. That thread is pretty gross.
yea I agree with that one, terrible reasoning on their part
but this still can't be explained: https://archive.ph/QPORs/f1ed054fcba5e6f898d8c174d0aa314d091d05f2.jpg
What isn't explainable? The eye? It looks like he might have a tumor
Edit: oh the neck. Yeah that looks weird, he might have a hunch of some kind on his back and the way he's sitting makes it look strange.
Idk this is the only one that's particularly weird looking, no idea what's going on.
what about the way his neck casts a shadow? That is not how light works.
Unsure, theres at least two light sources though so that can lead to weird shadows sometimes
No, it wouldnt work that way, the lighting would look more fucked up and you’d see other shadows doing something similar.
it couldn't work like that, because the shadow is so crisp and defined.
This means that the lighting source HAS to be right next to him, and shining onto something with a very linear and with a crisp shape, like a kitkat bar. It's not, and no such shape exists here.
I think the algorithm might have generated that shadow from his ear, with simulated top lighting.
Does look unnatural but so is the lighting (see his pupils, two strong lights left and right). I think the weird-looking shadowline comes from his (image left) collar which extends towards the camera and blocks a bit of the left light. The right light meanwhile blows out most of that shadow and only leaves a thin line coming from his neck. Overall makes him look like the hunchback but I think most of that is just optics
I've been looking at this image for way too long now
The right light meanwhile blows out most of that shadow and only leaves a thin line coming from his neck
This can't be true because the skin also has the same light color in the area which is right of the thin shadow and simultaneously behind his neck.
the "right light" (it would be a front light with a slight right orientation) would not wash the shadow out there.
do you have the original source link? I tried scrolling through but didn't catch it.
The BBC sat on this for 5 months to use at an opportune moment. The entire point of this release has been to undermine any positive news about the UN Human Rights Commissioner visiting China.
This has succeeded in doing that. It pushed news about it out of the cycle and it pushed the left into focusing on attacking and debunking these images instead of focusing on how to use the visit for propaganda.
The UK press and the Tories in particular are world experts in this tactic.
Boris just yesterday had the Sue Gray report detailing all the lockdown rulebreaking they did while other people couldn't attend funerals for their loved ones. Should have been a huge thing and could have been milked for weeks. They sat on outflanking labour from the left with the windfall tax and direct payments to disabled + elderly until the day afterwards so they could shove it out of the news cycle with their shocking and rather good response that is more left than Starmer.
This mindset of news cycle manipulation is part of the right wing's tactics in the UK and at the heart of a lot of their strategy. The people at the BBC, who are directly at the table with the same strategists for the government, are absolutely reading from the same playbook.
it pushed the left into focusing on attacking and debunking these images instead of focusing on how to use the visit for propaganda.
Why on earth would US media cover the UN visit to China to begin with?
None of this is getting more coverage than the Depp/Heard trial
It's not just about controlling traditional media but controlling other media, the social element in particular has been completely diverted with this. The BBC has been largely quiet on uighurs for months and months now then drops this on the same day the UNHCR arrives in China for a xinjiang visit. It's not a coincidence, this is how the UK media operates, they sit on stories and time them.
The story itself is literally nothing. It's some 4 year old photos from before the hysteria even brewed in the media. It has little value other than to create a reaction in the left because they're so sketchy, weird and possibly fake.
It has little value other than to create a reaction in the left
I just don't think "the left" is the factor here. In the UK, this is all about their anger over losing Hong Kong years back and very likely losing the Solomon Islands and a host of South Asian and East African territories now. The China Bad narrative is intended to justify military pushback on the retreating colonial frontier.
The China Bad narrative is intended to justify military pushback on the retreating colonial frontier.
I don't think I agree with this. Up until the Brexit half of the UK crowd got hold of the reigns there was actually little interest in being confrontational with China, in fact they promoted ties and investment there and pushed back against US attempts to get the country to ban Huawei. It was only when the UK pegged its future to the relationship it has with the US by splitting from the EU that it became adversarial.
I do agree that it's intended to justify pushback but I just contest the reasoning - it's not about being upset over colonial retreat, it's about the changing ties from EU to US.
The (sincere) Brexit Crowd wants to get back to old school UK imperialism. Nevermind that its impossible, the modern day Tory/Labour iteration of the neocon genuinely thinks they can do a second run at Queen E1 shit. Aligning with the US is part and parcel with that.
it’s not about being upset over colonial retreat, it’s about the changing ties from EU to US.
I can definitely see that. Although it feels more like the changing ties are what shape the media cycle, not the other way around. The media is just reflecting the vibes of leadership. Agitation against China is very similar to what we saw out of Cheney pre-9/11 and what we're seeing out of guys like Tucker Carlson today.
I'm not convinced that any of them give a shit what happens to the UK. I think they're all acting out of their own self-interests and they all saw money to be made in Brexit so they pursued it.
I don't think many of them have any long-term vision. I don't think the current tories (any wing of them) have any real economic ideas, this is reflected in their recent actions of just taking labour policy and going further left than them. They are ideologically rudderless and there is no real group actually attempting to steer the ship known as "the UK" towards greater wealth.
If anything, the money they can all make is in the steady collapse of the UK, which is why they seem to be guiding it in that direction. They all see money to be made out of the fall of the empire. They aren't really trying to avert it, they seem to have accepted it's happening and has been on that trajectory for decades and they're trying to capitalise upon it.
The only truly firm thing I see in the UK is an ideological commitment to fighting against the left and maintaining the status quo of deterioration and the movement towards the end of the UK and empire.
The only truly firm thing I see in the UK is an ideological commitment to fighting against the left and maintaining the status quo of deterioration and the movement towards the end of the UK and empire.
There's definitely a rear-guard action that the entire political establishment performs to keep any kind of Corbynite (or Farage-esque) popular movement from gaining ground. But the deterioration isn't intentional. Its just a consequence of their retreat from the frontier. They're left with less and less of the globe to exploit. That's something they'd happily change if they could.
Who is "they" though? The British born bourgeoisie? They don't seem like any kind of strategic or united group, they bought into Thatcher's individualism so hard that they crippled their own class consciousness and ability to strategise as a united class.
They have no means to exploit anywhere else, no army to do it with anymore, and no ability to justify it to the population without an enormous reaction.
With no material conditions that allow them to seek exploitation elsewhere they are cannibalising the UK, bit by bit. I see no end to this, I see the end of the UK as an inevitability. Historically empires have contracted until they cease to exist and become something new, I do not see the UK as being immune to this pattern. I don't think any of them will set their sights outwards (successfully) until this historic process is completed.
Pretty much yeah. And honestly it doesn't even matter what the truth is or whether these photos are AI generated, nicked from a passport database or actual mugshots taken 5 mins before they were all shot because like 95% of people observing don't have the time or energy to actually go any deeper than 'huh these are photos of people detained by an authoritarian regieme and probably killed.'
Obsessing over whether these photos are AI generated or not is also really playing into the propaganda too. If you're trying to convince someone that these photos are AI generated and that somehow disproves the whole thing you are absolutely gonna come across as a crank.
Honestly I really think that the left should focus far more on the sources etc. I mean it's Zenz. He has said and done enough batshit ridiculous stuff that people should at least doubt him a bit when it's explained.
It doesn't even matter, they're 4 years old, from before the hysteria was created in the media.
Its purpose is entirely to create a reaction because the whole thing is debateably fake, that reaction is strongest in the left. We are literally the target of this.
If you want to get conspiratorial, you hardly have to go to "AI Generated". Its definitely possible, but you need more on the table than "look at these half dozen janky photographs in a pool of two-thousand".
Why can't these just be 2000 pictures of people in a database somewhere that Zenz has declared are detainees?
It's probably just documentation, it's in line with what the party claims to be doing.
If they were doing a bunch of murders secretly it'd make zero sense to be taking pictures of everyone
Countdown to the new batch of photos coming out with "murdered" stamped onto them
If they were doing a bunch of murders secretly it’d make zero sense to be taking pictures of everyone
It makes sense from a bureaucratic perspective. Industrialized genocide isn't a one-man job. You've got supervisors on top of supervisors, all looking over each other's shoulder to make sure their department goals are being met. Photos of individuals being massacred makes sense for a whole host of oversight reasons.
But its a huge leap from mug shots to genocide. It just doesn't matter to people who can sell "Ghost of Chicken Kiev" to a credulous public.
People have supposedly been finding weird stuff in the "leaked documents" as well, like lists of points using arabic numerals 1-8 and then suddenly the next points are starting from seven with chinese numerals, random Japanese characters thrown in here and there
for the record, I think this is bullshit. even if they are real mugshots, there's no reason to believe that the documents claiming people got arrested for years for "reading scripture" are legit. adrian zenz has absolutely no credibility on this or any subject and I don't trust his anonymous source.
but i also don't think any of these debunks hold up either. these are the kinds of things that happen when documents are changed from one format to another, like .doc to .docx, or when they're sent to computers that don't have the right fonts installed, etc. of course it's damning that a supposed china expert can't read Chinese or even open Chinese documents on his computer without fucking the formatting, but we already knew that zenz is a hack so that's not news.
“reading scripture”
That sounds like a machine translation error or something. If you arrested Muslims for reading the Koran you'd have to arrest all of them, but you'd have to fight all of them first.
If it was originally referring to some kind of banned literature or something that would make sense.
This conspiracy brained shit is just pathetic, there's plenty of ways to criticize mainstream takes about Xinjiang without resorting to Alex Jones-level pixel analysing. At best you're bullying people for looking funny, at worst you're discrediting any leftist position on this shit.
People are sometimes handcuffed for mugshots. Possibly the jacket is just placed over him.
laughing my ass off at the idea that this could be a real dude and we're all just roasting the shit out of him online
Some poor fucker on Chinese Hexbear is like "Those asshole western leftists think I'm a deepfake!"
If that guy is really in a detainee camp, he's got enough issues without me shit talking his proportions. Also it kind of looks like their arms are not through the arm holes? unno it's weird but like too weird. Shit's weird.
Those image artifacts are not something an AI would generate in error. Those are standard corruption errors.
ok what about this guys neck
https://archive.ph/QPORs/f1ed054fcba5e6f898d8c174d0aa314d091d05f2.jpg
That's pretty smoking gun there. the shadow is pretty funny too.
yea it's the combination of the shadow and the neck. Even if the shadow were normal, the shape of the neck would look SUPER unnatural. But the shadow randomly decides to disobey the laws of light partway behind his neck, lul
I DONT MISS
When do we start culling adamant deniers for :fedposting: ?
look at the brush strokes on the wall paint. A normal face AI would not generate that the same way every time. either this is unusually sophisticated image manipulation or they are simply photos of actual people
The thought is it's a bunch of pictures with a few people in a few sets of images, then ai gened faces ontop and blending.
Check out https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en, shit is terrifying but shit like the glasses picture, https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180515184435950_653121197306.jpg, pretty damning. Here's an ai generated one, https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/img/avatar-fd971845c28ffb711b2348ccb51d607b.jpg
I'm leaning in a similar way, but it weirdly blends on the left ear no? Unno mate it's weird as fuck, why take intake photos with the same sets of clothing over and over again. Wouldn't it be easier to just have a jumpsuit or something?
Dark outfits too? Wouldn't you generally put prisoners in something high vis?
Yup, it's not too difficult to check how China takes mugshots of prisoners. I don't the process is this casual.
That's not what CIs look like, or at least none of the ones I've ever seen. The microphone + battery part of the CI tends to sit on the ear differently
Usually, but people do get 2 sometimes. There are complex factors involved related to the amount of residual hearing in each ear (getting a CI completely destroys residual hearing in that ear), risk/willingness to undergo additional surgery, and cost, among other things.
Neural networks can easily simulate different vaguely credible looking folds of fabric. It's exactly the kind of pattern they're great at generating. Not saying it's a deepfake but you're raising a very weak point.
Haven't seen them generating readable, coherent print on the clothing though. Not that that's entirely out of the realm of the possible, but ... eh. Could still be a manual composition of course but then why pick the same jacket over and over
I don't really see it either. It would make sense that people being mugshotted were made to wear the same uniform.
even if these are real and not AI generated, how are they evidence of Genocide? These could be taken from the fucking Xinjiang equivalent of a DMV for all we know
I should put a bunch of high school photo up where kid look sad and accuse american genociding peoples
I could release a bunch of mugshots from here in Norway and go "look, this is a genocide!!!",wonder what would happen.
nothing.
amerikkka literally does what it accuses china in xinjiang of doing with their ICE camps. it won't matter. I have an entire (growing) list of people who have died in ICE custody and libs will never care
I'm gonna level with you guys, there's actually, seriously no way to tell if some of these are AI generated or not. Telltale signs are not if people are ugly or not (actually styleGAN mostly generates pretty faces), the stuff it gets wrong is documented stuff like the spaghetti-ish backgrounds, facial accesories, splotchy hair, repeated teeth. I'm not talking about whether it's plausible that Zenz padded the database with a bunch of deepfakes or not, just that for a set of images of faces with uniform backgrounds, no visible facial accessories, hair pulled back, no teeth shown, it's pretty fucking hard to tell if these pictures are real or not. I don't know if it matters because Adrian Zenz's mugshots have little context to them to begin with, but we got here, we finally don't know what's real or not.
For what is worth though some of the pictures do have revealing background details, like a note pasted on the back that shows on some pictures, which a GAN focused solely on faces shouldn't be capable of rendering that tells me some of these pictures are the real deal, but again, for a lot of these,there's no meaningful difference between a real mugshot and a deepfake mugshot. It's a chilling thought.
Yeah, I think people are doing caliper shit partially because they're used to seeing AI stuff from 10 years ago making the rounds on popular media. I'm not saying that some of them can't be real or can't closely approximate the source image of the training data which would have to look something like this, BUT I don't think AI generated people are going to have a big sign on them that says "I'm fake" anymore like they used to.
In the next few years it's going to become increasingly concerning how much the line between real and unreal will blur in cyberspace.
the evidence is wearing dark clothing with several seeming to wear the same jacket... this isn't exactly a smoking gun imo.
some strange procedure to give people dark clothes to constrast with the backround/highlight the face seems more plausible than AI technology getting this good.
some of those redditors are just gawking at these pictures and calling injuries & skin color evidence of AI generation :yikes:
I don't feel confident enough to make any sort of judgment but the weird comments about their physical traits definitely made me uncomfortable.
There are a lot of comments which are just plain bad reasoning (omg they look like video game characters lol), but at the same time:
https://archive.ph/QPORs/f1ed054fcba5e6f898d8c174d0aa314d091d05f2.jpg
look at his neck. I don't think that is how cameras work.
Okay, that last one definitely got me to reconsider. I do event photography and I capture a lot of awkward angles, but I've never seen a neck come out of somebody's chest like that.
Understandable, picking apart AI can often feel like bodyshaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY
AI facial generation is absolutely in the phase of exiting the uncanny valley zone and moving toward convincing realism. Now it's creepy for different reasons.
no, i'm fully aware its good, but the same jacket shit is not a pastejob of faces on the same clothes, the repeat clothing is in a novel position everytime. thats the sorta thing i'd think is more complicated than just having them all random, no?
but this grasping at straws is also completely unnecessary. like whatever if theres real photos of a bunch of uyghurs? does that mean they're actually in a anti-islam gulag and their offenses are what the leakers claim? literally could be the paddywagon pics from urumqui the morning after a holiday :shrug-outta-hecks:
https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/fashion-models
^ 5 second google search found this. I don't see it as grasping at straws. I think it's a chilling warning of strategies that are going to be used against people like us in the future.
this-person-does-not-exist puts out clothing too, im not saying its impossible but that its not good evidence for it being fake. it only makes sense if it were a labor-saving measure but since the repeats aren't in the same position its the same amount of work, as far as i understand
AI technology getting this good.
AI tech is this good. If you had five months you could easily gin up a big batch of faces and remove any that had the Innsmouth Look.
Not in any way saying that's what happened here. I think the idea that they were having everyone put on the same jacket to have their picture taken is more plausible.
But we're basically past the point where you can tell the difference between a real photo of a person and an AI generated photo.
That a valid point but the archive link to the Xinjiang police files site people are largely wearing street clothes that are all somehow either black, gray or blue with occasional more colorful garments underneath - though I won't rule out people's tastes tending towards the modest it's a little bit odd to me.
I don't think these are AI-generated. There's none of the blurred spaghetti artifacts you'd expect from that. The errors that are there look more like what you'd get out of a digital scanner.
I also don't know why somebody would use AI to generate these. If I wanted a bunch of pictures like this, I'd bribe whoever works the camera at the DMV.
Not to disagree with your points, but you can easily get rid of most artifacts by just sifting through images before publishing them.
But if they did that then all the corruption artifacts wouldn't be there
yeah exactly. Unless the people that released these are doing some 4d chess silliness. Or to confuse you and mask other irregularities.
i dont think these are ai generated.
i see shared clothing being used. that would make sense if this is about facial recognition training, to ensure the rest of the image is generally consistent.
the different photo glitches could be a mix of things. damaged camera sensor. if the mugshots are inputs to train some model they might be processed in various ways during input, this could produce artefacts or errors. data corruption.
the caliper-brained takes about appearances are awful
HAHAHA this would be funny if these were not used for such a sinister purpose.. Here is a lady who the algorithm decided needs glasses but changed its mind half way leaving them covering only her ears:
https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180515184435950_653121197306.jpg
And don't get me started on this fellow here with his 100% official human approved police mugshot:
https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180206140801456_653121199204.jpg
if the mugshots are inputs to train some model they might be process in various ways first, this could produce artefacts or errors
True, but why would they release the photo data AFTER it'd been edited for all that stuff? It doesn't make much sense.
I found another one which is VERY SUS: https://archive.ph/QPORs/f1ed054fcba5e6f898d8c174d0aa314d091d05f2.jpg
Look at his neck.
I don't think 1 is even a hearing aid, you should be able to see something going into her actual ear.
But yea thanks, that 3rd one I didn't see mentioned in the reddit thread, and easily the sussest one of the bunch. I'm just not missing
Wtf, necks do not look like that, the muscles aren't even connected to anything like a middleschooler drawing. The shadow isn't even consistent, there are highlights on his trapezius.
I don't know, maybe that guy just has had a bad injury on his neck and spine issues? Like, not everyone is perfect, and he's also leaning to one side. Some people just have unusual indents in their bodies.
No dude, I don't care how injured he is, he can't make shadows magically cut off behind his neck.
People have tendons that run straight down their necks. If he has a bit of a hunch back, and that tendon is tight, I think that this could actually happen.
Think cardassian necks. People have a tendon kind of similar to that, which could cause something close to this.
I don't disagree this looks unusual, but I think it would be weird that 1 photo out if 5000 was ai generated, whereas this guy might actually just have a tight tendon and strange musculature on his neck.
I'm not convinced.
https://i.imgur.com/3lQaF98.png
I don’t disagree this looks unusual, but I think it would be weird that 1 photo out if 5000 was ai generated
the point is that most of them are ai generated, and this one is the only one which shows irrefutable evidence of that
Welp, I am fearful, obfuscated, and doubtful. I have no idea what's going on, but the worst allegation I've heard against China is that they're doing "Counter Terrorism" by locking up people they think are extremists. And... America just drops hellfire missiles on people or black-bags and tortures them.
So.
Not... really... giving me much to root for on either team hear. Like, so what if China is locking up random people? America would just kill them. And then kill their families with a double tap. And America's prison conditions are so bad that European countries won't extradite criminals to some states because the normal function of US prisons constitutes torture.
Fucking wild time to be alive. "This Person Does Not Exist" freaks me right the fuck out.
A project of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
So I find it so intriguing how some people are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, you know what is more likely:
A) AI generated photos based on proven existing technology.
B) An organization known to lie in order to support their fascist anti-communist ideology is actualy telling the truth and these photos are from the real genocide™.
I don't know guys personally I think the photos are real and maybe the 6230387th time the Victims of Communism foundation is actually telling the truth...
Leftists stop taking shit thrown at you by your enemies at face value challenge(impossible).
no ones saying Zenz isn't lying lmao the images being real or faked is immaterial to the question of if people are in gulags or being genocided
People who are known to lie to achieve their methods are not suddenly going to start using real evidence. If they had real evidence at any point in the past they wouldn't be known liars.
its not evidence. government photos like that are in every country. we have every reason to doubt the context these people realeased the photos with, but that doesn't mean we're all convinced (or need to be) the photos are fake.
Until someone proves a plausible explanation how these could have originated from the Chinese source this is just taking it at face value.
The authenticity of the photo is directly linked to whether or not you believe they came from a reliable source. There is no third party validation here, you either believe the source or you don't.
The idea that the Zens could ever get anything real enough to pose as evidence directly contradicts the history so far. Sure the pictures could be real. But then imo it is almost impossible for Zens to ever acquire shit like this to use. Nobody involved in this is competent enough to begin with.
Most of the stuff Zenz posts are public documents anyway. I dont really see why a series of images of Uighurs can't be real, just not anything to do with genocide.
