The עולם השקר

Berochim Haboim. This is hardly new.

There is technology today to even make a deep fake video of a person using his image and voice, looking exactly realistic, showing a video of him doing whatever you want him to be seen doing.

Welcome to epistemology, @coffeeaddict! Philosopher Donald Davidson famously said that the reason for a belief is just another belief. While a belief can be justified by the awareness of a sensation, the awareness of a sensation is “just another belief.”

Oh no! I believe coffee’s account was hacked!

There are legitimate books questioning entire historical events that everyone “knows” happened because the only reports were third hand years after they happened. Questioning what people tell you, even with pictures and sound, isn’t anything new.

In 1938, the New York Times reported that a CBS drama based on H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds was taken as a serious broadcast by thousands of people across the nation. They barricaded themselves in their homes, and some even committed suicide rather than be taken by aliens! They printed a picture of a farmer holding a rifle behind a wall, protecting his home from the invaders.

Well, it never happened. The recording was widely available at any records store, and anyone listening to it would be immediately skeptical (it was announced that this was a special fictional program several times, there were commercial breaks, and the whole fake news broadcast segment was only about half of it, maybe 25 minutes long). And yet people to this day believe it to be true.

Anon, check out the first piece of meshech chochma in parshas shemos, very fundamental piece of hashkofa. He writes that while we accept neviim, and testimony of witnesses in halacha, it’s a gezeras hakasuv, because even a true navi can go off, like chananiah ben azor, who became a navi sheker and went against yirmiah. Witnesses can lie, and neviim can produce miracles to orove themselves even if they’re lying, so we only believe them because of a gezeras hakasuv.

Not so Moshe rabbeinu and the torah itself; ‘gam becha yaaminu leolam” we believe in nevuas moshe because our ancestors were brought to his level of nevuah, and Hashem told them openly that this is my emissary, listen to his Torah, and of course we heard Hashem giving us the Torah itself. But we don’t believe in it because of krias yam suf or the makos, etc..

Very true. This is something very new and that will get worse with time. You definitely should not trust random videos forwarded on WhatsApp. The biggest problem is stopping these sources from spreading to those who will believe them. Public opinion can be easily bolstered by fake videos. People generally don’t fact check sources that prove what they already “know.” Videos and pictures without context spread on social media like wildfire. Great efforts will be needed to stop this from happening.

It’s no better than mipi k’savam

Yes, video surveillance is used by hashgochos, even the badatz, but that’s not testimony – like you said, it’s establishing knowledge.

What I’m referring to is if we have a video of a person doing an aveirah, it’s not admissible for chiyuvei misa or makos(even if there’s no hasraah, i.e. a talmid chacham or megadef)

That’s because there’s no hagadah, no al pi shnayim. The camera isn’t an “aid”

Nevermind the mipi ksavam – i retract that part.

To OP, it’s getting scarier by the day.