SoatDev IT Consulting
SoatDev IT Consulting
  • About us
  • Expertise
  • Services
  • How it works
  • Contact Us
  • News
  • January 3, 2024
  • Rss Fetcher
Screenshot of a deepfake video of Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko on YouTube.
It’s a scam! | Screenshot: Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge

The video is almost convincing: it features Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko announcing a “historic day” for Solana. He thanks the “S-O-L” community and offers a giveaway through a QR code and a website. Sure, he sounds a little robotic — his voice is a monotone, unusual for him — and he hardly makes eye contact with the camera, but it’s a video, and seeing is believing, right?

It’s a fake, of course. And it’s been up on YouTube for a day. Not only that, at least one internet user says they saw it as an ad. It’s not just YouTube, either. The fake video is appearing in ads on the platform formerly known as Twitter and which Elon Musk would prefer you call X.

“There has been a substantial increase in deepfakes and other AI-generated content recently,” says Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation. (He notes it is not just a crypto problem.) He told me that Solana takes these fakes seriously, reporting them as quickly as possible. But Solana isn’t in charge of actually taking down the fakes. That’s up to platforms like YouTube and X. And they’re poky about it — Solana reported that video to YouTube last night.

Google, YouTube’s parent company, did not respond to a request for comment. Shortly after this article was published, YouTube terminated the account associated with the video.

Oh my god what is going on at twitter, I just got a deepfaked @aeyakovenko ad. @Austin_Federa you have contacts at Twitter, no? pic.twitter.com/FlVOx8tWjX

— CherryWorm ️ (@CarryWorm) January 3, 2024

Crypto industry participants have complained to me for years that Big Tech platforms don’t act quickly enough to remove scams. But deepfakes get better, the scams become more convincing, and quick removal becomes increasingly important.

This is a moderation problem, of course, but it’s one with real consequences, particularly since the possibility of a Bitcoin ETF looms on the horizon. One of the perks of that kind of financialized product is that it’s handled by finance professionals — making it seem relatively safer. Those participants, after all, are less likely to be taken in by this kind of faked video.

Update January 3rd, 5:25PM ET: Adds that the video was pulled after the article was published.

Previous Post
Next Post

Recent Posts

  • Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is choosing chatbots over podcasts
  • MIT disavows doctoral student paper on AI’s productivity benefits
  • Laser-powered fusion experiment more than doubles its power output
  • TechCrunch Week in Review: Coinbase gets hacked
  • Epic Games asks judge to force Apple to approve Fortnite

Categories

  • Industry News
  • Programming
  • RSS Fetched Articles
  • Uncategorized

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023

Tap into the power of Microservices, MVC Architecture, Cloud, Containers, UML, and Scrum methodologies to bolster your project planning, execution, and application development processes.

Solutions

  • IT Consultation
  • Agile Transformation
  • Software Development
  • DevOps & CI/CD

Regions Covered

  • Montreal
  • New York
  • Paris
  • Mauritius
  • Abidjan
  • Dakar

Subscribe to Newsletter

Join our monthly newsletter subscribers to get the latest news and insights.

© Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved by Soatdev IT Consulting Inc.