Fresh from banning all political advertising Oct. 30, Twitter Inc.’s latest cause célèbre is deepfakes — but the microblogging platform’s new draft policy does not go far enough, according to some.

Asking for feedback, Twitter’s draft policy on deepfakes — in its words, “synthetic and manipulated” media — is not proposing to ban all such material but instead label any tweets with such content.

Also, the content would include links so that users can see why a tweet is believed to include fake media and warn users before sharing it. If the material is misleading or could threaten someone’s safety or lead to other serious harm, Twitter would then remove the content.

The devil may be in the details. Twitter defines synthetic and manipulated media as “any photo, audio, or video that has been significantly altered or fabricated in a way that intends to mislead people or changes its original meaning.” Although the company said these are “sometimes referred to as deepfakes or shallowfakes,” it could also be describing memes and other material manipulated for satire.

That said, some of the hysteria around deepfakes may have some validity. A deepfake video of Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg designed to highlight the technology made headlines in July. Back in the real world, there has been some use of the technology for nefarious purposes. In September an unnamed energy company was defrauded of $243,000 by scammers who used deepfake audio to mimic the voice of its chief technology officer.

“It’s commendable that Twitter has committed itself to tackle deepfakes, which are an inherent invasion of privacy,” Damien Mason, digital privacy advocate at ProPrivacy, told SiliconANGLE. “Not only do they imitate our likeness without consent of the subject, but they can also be humiliating, misleading and have serious ramifications on politics and other sensitive areas.”

Not impressed with the draft, however, Mason added that “unfortunately, the social media’s approach is severely lacking, with one foot firmly out the door at all times. Twitter stays intentionally vague on when it will remove manipulated media, requiring deepfakes to be physically threatening or already having caused enough harm after the fact.”

Twitter is running a survey on the draft policy in English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese to gain feedback from users on the draft police, but there are concerns there as well.

“It does state within the survey that it could make considerations for those who feel their privacy, dignity, mental or emotional health have been affected, but the subjectivity of this situational approach is not adequate protection given the damage that deepfakes can do after such exposure,” Mason said. “It is also incredibly difficult to police, as algorithms have been questionably spotty in the past when detecting synthetic media and manually flagging items is sure to be time-consuming.”

Labeling the material is less than half the battle and does nothing to help the true victims of such attacks, Mason concluded. “It helps to avoid political catastrophes, such as defaming government officials with doctored videos but ignores the larger scope of deepfake content creators.”

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