Inside thriving deepfake porn bazaar

At least 1 lakh deepfake porn videos are available on the Internet globally, according to a recent assessment. Based on interviews of victims of deepfake porn last year, the study said 63 per cent of participants talked about experiences of “sexual deepfake abuse” and reported that their sexual deepfakes had been monetized online. Nearly 90 per cent of all deepfake porn is hosted by dedicated platforms, that charge for long-duration premium fake content and for creating porn – of whoever a user wants, and take requests for celebrities. While some direct users to third-party sites, others use personal PayPal accounts to manually collect money in the personal accounts of their employees/stakeholders, which potentially violates the platform's terms of use that ban the sale of “sexually oriented digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium.” In August last year, then-VISA CEO Al Kelly said that the company’s rules “explicitly and unequivocally prohibit the use of our products to pay for content that depicts non-consensual sexual behavior”. The access to the jar feature opens many doors for the platform – enabling people to pay through their cards and Google’s payment service GPay – a potential violation of its terms of use which says: “Don’t abuse or harm others or yourself including against children — for example, by misleading, defrauding, illegally impersonating, defaming, bullying, harassing, or stalking others; hosting or publishing any obscene content; or inciting the violation of applicable laws.