Proposal to United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Pre-empting the problem of Deepfake videos Dr J Ostrowick, 2021 Background We presently stand on the edge of an abyss in which social media threatens to uproot our world order and cast us into chaos, as we see with the recent attacks (6 January 2021) on the American Capitol by conspiracy theorists incentivised on social media. Deepfake videos are motion pictures that are created to look like they depict the actions and words of an existing person, usually a celebrity, but which contain content, words or actions which were not performed by that person and which may impugn on thei r dignity. Other risky technologies include photoshopping, that is, using the well-known graphics software, Adobe Photoshop ( www.adobe.com/photoshop/ ), to modify a photo of a person to change the context of an image. For example, it is possible to photoshop a picture of a head of state and place them amongst undesirabl...
Ditto Music Blocks Anti-Fascist Release: A Statement on Free Speech and Corporate Censorship This week I received a message from Ditto Music regarding my forthcoming release titled Dulce et Decorum Est . In their words: “In compliance with music platform guidelines your release contains content that is deemed insensitive or showing political or cultural bias. For this reason we are unable to distribute your content to stores.” Let’s be clear: what they mean is that my music is politically engaged — and more to the point, it is intolerant of fascism . The track in question deals with the realities of war, nationalism, and settler-colonial violence. In other words, it dares to challenge the status quo. It refuses to be neutral in the face of injustice. It honours Wilfred Owen’s legacy not by sanitising it, but by updating it for the brutalities of our time. If Ditto Music finds such content objectionable, then the inference is hard to avoid: they are protecting fascism from c...
So, Ramaphosa met Trump. Cue the performative outrage. But behind the cameras, away from the staged handshakes, something bigger happened. Something quieter, and a lot whiter. Let’s talk about the new policy direction that suddenly appeared in our Government Gazette on 23 May 2025. Titled with all the dull, bureaucratic camouflage they could find, it’s really about one thing: letting multinational ICT corporations into South Africa without forcing them to sell equity to black South Africans — as long as they “invest” in transformation through what they call Equity Equivalent Investment Programmes (EEIPs). Sounds progressive? Read slower. It’s a corporate bypass valve, one already designed and requested long ago by the same big players who always seem to need a “special exemption” from black economic empowerment. Now, let’s talk timing. You don’t have to be a political analyst to notice that this policy shift drops immediately after Ramaphosa’s charm offensive in the US — where he rolle...