Digital blackface flourishes under Trump and AI: ‘The state is bending reality’

From TikTok deepfakes to smears put out by the White House, fake videos modeled on Black archetypes are running rampant - putting Black users at riskLate last year, as a US government shutdown cut off the Snap benefits that low-income families rely on for groceries, videos on social media cast the fallout in frantic scenes. “Imma keep it real with you,” a Black woman said in a viral TikTok post, “I get over $2,500 a month in stamps. I sell ’em, $2,000 worth, for about $1,200-$1,500 cash.” Another Black woman ranted about taxpayers’ responsibility to her seven children with seven men, and yet another melted down after her food stamps were rejected at a corn-dog counter.Visible watermarks stamped some videos as AI-generated – apparently, too faintly for the racist commentators and hustlers more than happy to believe the frenzy was real. “You got people treating it like a side hustle, selling the stamps, abusing the system,” the conservative commentator Amir Odom whinged. Fox News as if they were authentic, before . Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt people were using Snap “to get their nails done, to get their weaves and hair”. (Lost in the outrage was a basic fact: white Americans 37% of Snap’s 42 million beneficiaries.)