FakeMark is a simple marker added to media files to signify that the content has been altered significantly from the original. The intent is to enable content producers to signal that the media was intentionally altered and prevent many use cases of misunderanding when the media is shared or taken out of context. The goal of FakeMark is not to propose a secure solution to the problem of fake media, but to enable new norms to grow and evolve surrounding how altered media is produced and consumed.
Media presented for consumption generally has a tacit grounding: real, fake, or ambiguous.
Real media is meant to be a depiction of reality while fake media has been altered for effect. Media can also be intentionally presented with ambiguous provenance in order to provoke more critical thought from the viewer. The advance of technology has seen the rapid increase of fake and ambiguous media in popular culture.
FakeMark is a small, first step to allow media producers a simple way of signaling that their content is intended as fake. The initial use case focuses on providing researchers and those showcasing media manipulation techniques a tool to keep their produced works from being easily shared and misunderstood out of context. However as other domains find explicit visually signaling useful, FakeMark will aim to adapt to fit other contexts.
FakeMark is not intended to be a secure solution to adversaries. Use of FaceMark is strictly voluntary as there are often very compelling reasons to present media that is ambiguous in nature. FakeMark is instead meant to be a starting point to establish richer social norms on how media is produced and shared.
Currently, FakeMark can be applied to visual media such as images or videos. The content consists of a blue uppercase "F" and should appear in the bottom right corner. This repo contains reference implementations, but content providers are free to reinterpret these within the spirit of the proposal.
As a general design guide: FakeMark is intended to be dead-simple to implement. One of the reasons a simple blue F was chosen is that a baseline implementation can be done to any image by simply adding four rectangles in two colors. The current suggested implementation is to overlay the provided transparent png in the bottom right corner.
This repo will continue to communicate best practices along with reference implementations. We welcome all suggestions, but explicitly favor any proposal not increasing the complexity of deploying FakeMark.
We welcome feedback to FakeMark, such as:
- Reference Implementations
- Simple Design Guides
- Suggestions for Use
If you have ideas for how FakeMark can be more effective, please open a github issue or pull request.