A History of Fake Things on the Internet

by Walter Scheirer

As all aspects of our social and informational lives increasingly migrate online, the line between what is "real" and what is digitally fabricated grows ever thinner―and that fake content has undeniable real-world consequences. A History of Fake Things on the Internet takes the long view of how advances in technology brought us to the point where faked texts, images, and video content are nearly indistinguishable from what is authentic or true. Computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer takes a deep dive into the origins of fake news, conspiracy theories, reports of the paranormal, and other deviations from reality that have become part of mainstream culture, from image manipulation in the nineteenth-century darkroom to the literary stylings of large language models like ChatGPT. Scheirer investigates the origins of Internet fakes, from early hoaxes that traversed the globe via Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), USENET, and a new messaging technology called email, to today's hyperrealistic, AI-generated Deepfakes. An expert in machine learning and recognition, Scheirer breaks down the technical advances that made new developments in digital deception possible, and shares behind-the-screens details of early Internet-era pranks that have become touchstones of hacker lore. His story introduces us to the visionaries and mischief-makers who first deployed digital fakery and continue to influence how digital manipulation works―and doesn't― computer hackers, digital artists, media forensics specialists, and AI researchers. Ultimately, Scheirer argues that problems associated with fake content are not intrinsic properties of the content itself, but rather stem from human behavior, demonstrating our capacity for both creativity and destruction.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, History, Sociology, Cultural

264 pages, Hardcover

Published December 5, 2023

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

The context and historical parts here are most interesting and convincing, making the argument that internet fakery is much older than, and not as monolithically terrifying as, we think, and that a lot of it was/is playful, creative, teasing--essentially a continuation of the mythic function of finding an order for the world beyond or below mere random procession of events. Early sections comparing, say, Greek pottery to current memes highlight the continuities between satirical images presented visually, and his discussion of hacker culture's production of textfiles in the 1990s does suggest a more complex reading of these stories as metanarratives that both were and weren't true and in which the pleasure was in part derived from the culture-jamming. And his own background in hacking makes him a good guide for the rest of us, who could not tell the first thing about how real/fake an ASCII-art document purporting to show massive hacks of sensitive sites might actually be.

But, and wow is this a big "but," his understanding of the contemporary political and cultural world is...embarrassing? So completely detached from reality that I can't imagine how he got it past an editor? The whole conclusion is a straightforward utopian fantasy of an entirely virtualized world, complete with celebration of the liberatory power of NFTs, whose falsehood, or at best partiality, strikes me as tragically obvious already. While paying lip service to the fact that there are in fact bad actors all over the internet, his solution, true story, is that "platforms shouldn't have to tell people what they're doing wrong, they should instead be showing them a better alternative....Why target an outgroup to soothe your woes when you have the building blocks to create a globally inclusive alternative culture?" Oh, is that all we needed to tell them? I guess the tidal waves of COVID lying could have been avoided by this simple expedient. Later he discusses the problem of in-group language being misread by people outside the group, suggesting that this is all pretty much like the situation hackers encountered in the 90s when their references got mainstreamed. So it's not that there are literal Nazis out there; it's just that edgy talk is stirring up the newbs. Having just read Naomi Klein's significantly more nuanced discussion of these questions, I guess I'd just tell him to read that book and get back to us.

[Stephen Sorensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an alright book but after reading, the title feels a bit click-baity. Many times throughout the book I was left wondering "why am I reading about this? These pages could've been used to focus more on the core topic of the book". There are some really good parts, and then other parts that really could've been skipped or subjugated to an endnote.

Chapter 1 talks a lot about mythmaking and very little about the relation between fake and genuine, the latter of which I think is much more relevant than the prior. Chapter 6 begins focused on the main topic but then loses the plot in the second half. Chapter 7 is hardly related to fake things on the internet and discusses predictions made by AI.

Page 11 talks about no evidence of fact checking in the ancient world, but I'm almost certain this is nonsense. One work of many that come to mind that discusses detecting and exposing deception (aka fact checking) in the ancient world is Anthony Grafton's Forgers and Critics.

Overall there is some good internet history in this book, but the author would've done better to stick to the main subject and leave out the fluff.

There are some explicit parts in this book, so reader-discretion is advised.

It has endnotes, a bibliography, and an index.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book from a New Yorker article called “What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes.” The premise is intriguing: basically, humans have been lying and creating their own creative mythologies since the dawn of antiquity (and certainly the dawn of the internet), so it’s alarmist to think anything is so fundamentally different now.

I thought this thesis was thought-provoking and rung with some kernel of truth. Humans absolutely have a unique relationship with lying and storytelling; the phrase “taking creative liberties” comes to mind. Fake content is often playful and artistic, and Schreirer finds plenty such examples throughout the historical record (I liked the melodramatic “Self Portrait as a Drowned Man”).

In one of my favorite chapters, Schreirer follows the advent of Photoshop and other historical image manipulation techniques. It was interesting to juxtapose rising social anxieties about the trustworthiness of images with the reality that images were already being doctored all the time before software entered the scene. If humanity survived Photoshop, why would the next technical revolution be any different?

Unfortunately, it was here that I thought Scheirer’s argument was weakest—I believe things may indeed be different because the new technologies are unprecedented in their verisimilitude and democratized access to creation. I would have loved some more scholarship around how online communities have actually been responding to AI-generated content to supplement his theorizing. Instead, this book focuses largely on the 1990s and 2000s (worthwhile academically, but perhaps a little counter to the marketing the book is receiving). I still think there’s a chance he’s onto something, but it would have been nice to see more corroborating data that past patterns will hold.

Overall, I enjoyed this book’s historical scholarship and learned some fun things about photo editing, digital forensics, and memes (though I could have done with a little less on the textfiles of 90s hackers!). It will be interesting to supplement this text with more anthropological books about LLMs/generative images and how they are affecting society.

[Thom Behrens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is bursting with good ideas and creative energy. Reading it, I was inspired to see the internet not as the homogenous, commercialized, moderated place it sometimes seems to be; but rather as the space for creativity and collaboration that it was first envisioned. It made me excited and re-inspired about my own work as a programmer.

https://www.thombehrens.com/2024/05/2...

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

More academic than I tend to stick with. Some really interesting ideas on how digital fakery has been part of the internet for longer than we think it has, with lots of great case studies, but completely whiffs the ending by looking to the metaverse/NFTs as a potential vision for the future when that's already been mostly abandoned by the powers-that-be he cites as examples.

[Stephen Watt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to start this short review off by disclosing that I was a featured interview source for this book.... incidentally, that almost makes me reluctant to review it.

I did not enjoy or rate this book favorably because my name was printed in it; rather, I made a rare effort of cooperating with the author because it became very quickly clear to me that he was in the rarefied group of writers who both tackled these subjects and also deeply understood them - even before starting his formal interviews.

My decision was vindicated once I got an author's copy and I saw that I had been quoted very accurately and within proper context - which is also less common than it might sound.

I'll focus narrowly on the few chapters that are in my wheelhouse - those dealing with fake things in the 90s and 00's, especially as they relate to the computer security underground. Now, this is about as authentic and accurate a treatment of that subject matter as you're ever going to find rolling off a printing press.

Somebody else can provide a summary of those chapters, but do definitely make a point of grabbing a copy of this book if that material interests you. There's nothing else quite like it out there.

[JustEvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I very much enjoyed this book. It wasn't what I expected, that being more old school Snopes stories and the like. But no, it's a good academic survey of internet inside baseball topics. Not overly technical to frighten away laypeople, but in depth enough for people in the know to enjoy.
Good stories and history about deep hacking history, interesting info on photo manipulation, a good chapter on generative AI that's slightly out of date, but still fascinating.
As always, I have to point out that contra the assertion in introduction that there won't be discussion of the winner of the 2016 election, there was. Like most people Scheirer is unable to see his own biases. Every mention of negatives related to modern (2015-2021) politics is based on Republican/Trump/Right of center stories. Every positive is Democrats/Clinton/Left of Center.
It's small and doesn't really detract from the overall book, but completely unnecessary mark against it.

[Mark Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This brings us back to the earliest days of the Internet; where I was too! Yes, I was working in the Bell System and used ARPANET to do mundane word processing and to exchange files on the information research and then market research I was doing. Bit by bit it expanded and improved in its GUI (graphical user interface) so we didn't have to memorize UNIX codes and so many Bell acronyms. The connection with people in the cloud was and is what makes this so wonderful. Productivity was neanderthal compared to what we have today. In one lifetime, to witness so much change is overwhelming. I also worked briefly in the earliest days of OCLC (Ohio College Library Consortium) that became the worldwide shared catalog resource for libraries. Heady days they were!

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history and contemporary analyses of Internet fakery are fascinating, but the introduction is overly prosaic. Given that this book comes from an academic press, I'm assuming editors called for more rigorous scholarship contextualizing the arguments to follow. That's fine, I guess, but it detracts from Scheirer's playfulness and humor, which comes through so much more clearly elsewhere in the book.

[Paul Blaschko · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful, entertaining, and nuanced book that provides deep context for the moment we find ourselves in. In non-technical language, Scheirer tells the story of the various subcultures that drove the development of communications technologies over the past 50 years. We get a history of early hacking communities, an overview of advances in the way photographs have been edited (before and after the digital revolution), and — throughout — an argument that none of the creation of content in the contemporary world is all that different from the ways humans have been creating stories and myths from the beginning. It is refreshingly optimistic (though not naive) about problems involving things like “fake news” and “disinformation,” and argues that the knee-jerk alarmism we’re used to (from both academia and cable news) is overblown. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a carefully researched, engaging take on the history and creative potential of communications technology.

[Taylor Barkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history with hard to decipher point. Some fascinating stories though.

[Mattschratz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good solid history of fake stuff on the internet and why it's a different kind of problem from the kind people expect.

[Rachel Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun, interesting book written by my professor

[Alexander Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for a simply written and well informed history of the technical and legal history of "fake things" and the digital forensics techniques used to construct what "fake things" are, then this is your book. This takes a great deal of time and effort to explain the ways in which technology work and how they are motivated through technological cultures, and how they have been incriminated as an extension of the history of hacker culture.

If you're looking for an anthropologically informed history with a full understanding of moral/ethical implications and explanations, this is not the book you should read. Early on the author makes a few moral choices that inform his moral interpretations and implications of history which are not quite as thorough as it could be.

Note: I was invited to write an academically published review for Internet Histories.