On the day before New Hampshire’s presidential primary, a number of voters received a rather disconcerting phone call.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office says it is investigating what appears to be an “unlawful attempt” at voter suppression after NBC News reported on a robocall impersonating President Joe Biden telling recipients not to vote in Tuesday’s presidential primary.
“Although the voice in the robocall sounds like the voice of President Biden, this message appears to be artificially generated based on initial indications,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. “These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters. New Hampshire voters should disregard the content of this message entirely.”
The investigation comes after a prominent New Hampshire Democrat, whose personal cell phone number showed up on the caller ID of those receiving the call, filed a complaint.
“What a bunch of malarkey,” the robocall phone message begins, echoing a favorite term Biden has uttered before.
The message says that “it’s important that you save your vote for the November election.”
This NBC News story included the audio of the call. It sounded a little strange to me—but I was listening to it knowing it was fake, in the context of a news story. If I’d simply picked up my phone and heard it, I may have believed it could be real (if I also put aside the fact that it’s highly unlikely President Biden would ever do such a thing).
Still, this makes it clear that the era of video and audio deepfakes is here. The dangers of deepfakes go beyond politics and government—other recent news stories have covered a fake Taylor Swift selling cookware, a fake Russell Crowe selling real estate in Malta, and, horrifyingly, a 17-year-old actress being victimized by sexually explicit deepfakes on social media.
But it’s now clear that bad actors who want to influence opinions—and therefore elections—have yet another tool at their disposal. While some states are pondering legislation to deal with deepfakes, I can’t say I am optimistic that, in this internationally interconnected world, state laws will do much good. We al need to be
Folks, we all need to be extra vigilant at making sure the information we get online is trustworthy—and we especially need to be vigilant here in Northern Nevada. Washoe County is the swing county in a swing state, so it’s very plausible that the Reno area could decide the presidency of the United States.
As the cliche goes, looks (and sounds) can be deceiving—and people with ill will are working hard, right now, to deceive YOU.
Thanks to all of you who attended our community meeting at The Generator on Jan. 3, and to all of you who reached out to offer suggestions or assistance as we head down the figurative road toward nonprofit status. We’ll have another community meeting here in a month or two, and we’ll be updating you on our progress here in the pages of the RN&R.
I want to quickly address a couple of things that have come up in conversations, phone calls and emails with concerned readers.
• The RN&R is not in imminent danger of closing. Things have not been trending in the right direction, but barring anything cataclysmic and unforeseen, we’re going to be here next month, and the month after that, and so on. We’re acting now so we don’t reach the point where our existence is in imminent danger.
• Our problems have to do with revenue, not readership. A lot of readers have offered suggestions about content we could add to attract more readers and advertisers—everything from “do more investigative journalism” to “add features pandering to casinos.”
Two things here. One: More content equals more expense; writers and additional print pages cost money.
Two: We already have the readers that casinos, real estate agents, attorneys, restaurants, etc. want to reach—but too many of these businesses are still not advertising. We’re distributing 25,000 print copies each month and getting tens of thousands of visitors to RenoNR.com.
This is not to say that we can’t improve our content—we can—and that we don’t want to add content—we do. We’re working on both of those things, but having a lot of amazing readers who are desirable to advertisers isn’t the issue. After all, you’re reading this, right?
Thanks to everyone who’s offered suggestions and/or assistance. If you have any thoughts, my email address: jimmyb@renonr.com.