Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart

Nature of the Incident and Harm

• Many see the core harm not as “technology” but as sexual harassment, bullying, and misogyny among teens.
• Debate over whether deepfake CSAM is morally close to actual sexual abuse or fundamentally different because “the depicted acts never occurred.”
• Some argue the article blurs this line by treating non-real imagery as equivalent to real abuse, which may obscure the real social issues: bullying, body image, lack of empathy.

Defenses and Legal Responses

• Common proposal: treat these images as CSAM or revenge porn; prosecute blackmailers, creators, distributors, and commercial “nudify” services.
• Others note practical limits: offenders can be anonymous, abroad, and hard to extradite; laws are national but the internet is global.
• Disagreement over liability for AI model makers: some argue strict-liability if models can generate CSAM; others say that’s like blaming pencil manufacturers unless training data included CSAM.

Posting Images of Children

• Strong split:
  • One side: schools and parents should stop posting kids’ photos publicly; revert to private yearbooks/newsletters.
  • Other side: public celebration of kids (sports, graduations, local papers) was historically normal; banning it feels like a loss and punishes victims, not perpetrators.

Punishment vs Rehabilitation for Teens

• One camp wants very harsh consequences (including jail, publicized cases) to deter future incidents.
• Others argue this is disproportionate for minors with immature judgment; emphasize education, empathy, counseling, and restorative responses instead.
• Some argue harm is “just pixels,” others respond that social and psychological impact (including risk of suicide) is very real.

Deepfakes, Evidence, and Trust Online

• Concern that as fakes get trivial to make, society will:
  • Either stop trusting any digital media at all, or
  • Let bad actors deny genuine evidence as “deepfakes.”
• Proposals include cryptographically signed camera output and treating unsigned media as suspect; critics note such systems can be spoofed or hacked.
• Some predict normalization: once everyone knows anything can be faked, images lose power as “evidence,” which might reduce moral panics but also erode accountability.

Responsibility: Big Tech vs Community

• Some focus on Apple/Google/app stores enabling such tools and call for tighter platform control.
• Others push back: deepfakes “didn’t do anything”; local culture, parenting, and school/community norms are primary.
• Broader critiques surface: individualism, lack of compassion, and a toxic online culture (especially among boys) as root causes, not just tools or laws.