Community Signal

This conversation with Mohamed Mohammed, a community manager and a PhD student studying deepfakes, is timely. Just last week, a deepfake emerged attempting to spread misinformation that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was announcing surrender to Russia’s invasion. In that situation, preparation and rapid response helped minimize the spread of misinformation. So, what’s your community strategy against deepfakes? Mohamed recommends starting with learning from the information and experts in our field. He also shares an important reminder: As community professionals, while we may want to prevent all harms from happening, we simply can’t. However, we can minimize the harm that’s caused, and we can educate our community members to identify and flag suspicious behaviors. Just as many platforms adjusted their community guidelines and enforcement rubrics to prevent the spread of misinformation, deepfakes represent a new area for us to learn about and help our communities adapt. Mohamed and Patrick also d