It's comical because I posted this knowing that the publisher was blatantly lying. You could literally look at the image they posted for 5 seconds and spot what was wrong with it. I just wanted to see how many other people would notice. It's interesting the retraction come shortly after I posted it, though.
Also worth noting at the time of this comment the lovely fact-checking website Axios is also still blatantly lying. Absolutely crazy this is all getting swept under the rug.
It's not unreasonable to expect End Wokeness to be spreading more lies about Somalian immigrants, given his track record. But the truth here was obvious to anybody willing to simply look at the evidence.
That’s not the question. The question is “were they even there” before the “screenshot”.
As an example, I can screenshot your comment and have AI edit it to have you say “I really enjoy misleading people on the internet for money”, post it, and then say “I took this screenshot before they deleted it.”
But also just look at the bottom-left of the image as is mentioned elsewhere in this comment thread: they didn't even bother to photoshop the entire image in their "debunk".
As much as I hate to have to defend Jack Posobiec (aka EndWokeness), saving the "real" screenshot from this article and uploading it to OpenAI's verification tool[0] indicates that it, in fact, was AI-generated. I welcome any correction on this.
Of course it doesn't conclusively prove that the flag was definitely right side up, but you'd really have to bend over backwards to explain why Oregon Journalism Project's "debunking" is watermarked but the counter-debunkings aren't.
There's only two images in the article, the "real" (fake) image (which appears twice), and the screenshot of the tweet; the latter returns "No OpenAI signals detected" for me, unlike the other.
Then just try looking in the bottom left corner of the "real" image to see the leftovers of the upside-down flag. The SynthID watermark isn't even necessary here to spot the obviousness of the fake.
I don't understand why the people manipulated with lies aren't offended at the liars. They are primed to believe the lies, but aren't they mad that someone sought to manipulate them?
This keeps happening because it works. But why does it work? Why isn't there blowback?
It's embarrassing. Instead, they tell themselves, "well, it could have just as easily been real."
This has always been the case.
However, the more interesting thing going on is that we have never had to reckon with this problem anywhere near as much as we do now, since the barrier to creating fakes has been reduced from "skilled, motivated software user" to "all five billion humans who can write".
Edit: I think this comment is neutral enough to stand even under the new information that this might have been a cries-wolf situation, but I am acknowledging the fact.
Do not address people in this way. You are contributing to the exact problem we're talking about (how easy it is for information to turn out to be wrong).
Simply provide the new information, rather than snarkily implying that the parent is some kind of asshole. Save that for the normal internet.
>Do not address people in this way. You are contributing to the exact problem we're talking about (how easy it is for information to turn out to be wrong).
It's pretty obvious the OP is a thinly veiled attack at whoever believed the "lie", dressed up as a question. The only saving grace is that the wording was so ambiguous that regardless of whether it was the debunking or counter-debunking that was correct, the comment would still be applicable.
The ironic part is that the veracity of the debunking is being questioned, so depending on how this turns out, this could either be referring to "haha dumb right wingers falling for AI generated meme" or "haha dumb left wingers falling for AI generated debunking". Truly a rorschach test of a comment.
edit: the story was retracted so the "people manipulated with lies" are the people who believed oregon journalism project?
Candidate shouldn't have lied here (which seems likely based on the available evidence) and should have just owned it. Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do in 2026, IMO, speaking as a white male, many-generational American. America is very much in distress.
But it is also ridiculous that the people predisposed to the other side (and who only made a big deal out of the original clip in the first place because they are racist misogynists) will hold up this relatively insignificant lie as some sort of an outrage while pulling the lever for the likes of Trump who lies as easily as he breathes.
I honestly could care less about the lie. I'm more offended about the upside down flag because, like the other person replied, it's not in fact an appropriate use. But I guess that automatically enrolls me into the racist misogynist group of people to simply disagree on the proper use of an upside down flag.
"The U.S. Flag Code (4 U.S.C. § 8(a)) states that the flag 'should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.'"
Treating institutional or policy disagreements as equivalent to "extreme danger to life or property" is an insane stretch of the meaning of those words. But in the post-modern world every word means whatever the person thinks it means, so it's not surprising to see people able to reconcile that in their minds.
When did I say there was a "requirement." Yes, anyone can do anything, but you moved the goal post because that's not what we were talking about. I'm simply staying that I personally find it offensive because I think its a gross misuse of the flag and then quoted the code under which I base that judgement on. Placing the American flag upside down has a documented, historical reason for it, enshrined in the flag code. You can't just pretend that doesn't exist. You can choose to blatantly ignore that and flip it for some other reason, but that doesn't at all negate my argument.
I'm really curious to get your take on how that makes me a racist misogynist though.
I don't see your posts about Trump or the many people at his rallies blatantly ignoring the code.
I do see this woman wears a hijab.
Just a simple deduction.
P.S. The culture warriors on X that made this go viral to begin with are very much racist and misogynist. So it is a safe bet to assume you, who is posting the story here, are also one.
I posted this here because it had to do with AI deepfakes being used in politics to lie to the masses. Extremely relevant to this website. Someone wearing the American flag as underwear? I'd be impressed if you can find a single submission on this website where that was the topic.
Besides, I'm neither a Trump supporter nor a supporter of the fascists posing as communists. I believe late stage capitalism is basically broken and needs regulation, that immigration should be encouraged through legal means, that people can do whatever they like with their body, etc. I wouldn't even know what to label my political beliefs as now. Some weird combination of libertarian, classical liberalism, and an anarchist bent. I am, however, a veteran and served my country for many years so that (assuming you're American) you can freely call me names on the internet (unlike our friends across the pond).
Regardless, tt sounds more like you're just predisposed to label people based on a broad set of unreliable attributes. Which is exactly what the racists and misgoynists you seem to hate do. You should probably stop that if you're going to have any sort of moral ground to criticize them from.
> I am, however, a veteran and served my country for many years so that (assuming you're American) you can freely call me names on the internet (unlike our friends across the pond).
No recent military action undertaken by the US has had any effect on free speech at home, except possibly negatively if you bundle it with the various laws that came about after 9/11. Likewise, no military action is linked to the state of free speech in the UK, it's just how things have worked out culturally and socially. Nothing wrong with serving, but you didn't get to go and defend American ideals particularly.
> Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do
It is a really dumb virtue-signaling protest thing. In fact, it has nothing to do with the actual "distress signal" that it is meant to be.
> America is very much in distress
But you don't invert the flag when your nation is in distress. You invert the flag when your vessel is in distress. Inverted flag is a 9-1-1 call to all who can see it. It indicates immediate and extreme danger to life, limb, or property.
Furthermore, it is not up to us dumb citizens to determine when our entire nation is in distress. Honestly, our nation is bigger than you or me, and she can fend for herself on her own merits, without us telling her how she should feel. If "all America is in distress" then who will come and save her, huh? We are sovereign and that means we take care of our own messes, and solve our own problems!
Let's leave the inverted flag for its true meaning, which is individual or vessel-wide distress. Anything else is just posturing and performative slacktivism.
Sorry you don't understand the concept of symbolism.
> Furthermore, it is not up to us dumb citizens to determine when our entire nation is in distress. Honestly, our nation is bigger than you or me, and she can fend for herself on her own merits, without us telling her how she should feel. If "all America is in distress" then who will come and save her, huh? We are sovereign and that means we take care of our own messes, and solve our own problems!
Nonsensical.
> Let's leave the inverted flag for its true meaning, which is individual or vessel-wide distress. Anything else is just posturing and performative slacktivism.
Running for office is slacktivism now? You gotta try harder to justify your fake outrage, this is just lazy.
OJP has published a retraction. https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/editors-note-october...
I'm confused. So was the flag really upsidedown or rightside up?
upside down. The retracted article was "debunking" the upside down picture, claiming it was fake.
https://archive.is/kRbug
So the debunkers using AI to make the upsidedown flag look like it was rightside up, were the actual deepfakers?
>A Fai campaign supporter then provided a different video of the event to OJP that showed the flag right side up.
It would be interesting to know where the "corrected" deepfake originated.
That also contradicts the original article, which claims the right side up photo was "Provided by Nafisa Fai".
In that case, lmao at all the people who were downvoted to grey (or rather, the people who downvoted them into grey), despite being in the right.
screenshot for posterity: https://i.postimg.cc/vTCTyYZ1/Screenshot.png
It's comical because I posted this knowing that the publisher was blatantly lying. You could literally look at the image they posted for 5 seconds and spot what was wrong with it. I just wanted to see how many other people would notice. It's interesting the retraction come shortly after I posted it, though.
Also worth noting at the time of this comment the lovely fact-checking website Axios is also still blatantly lying. Absolutely crazy this is all getting swept under the rug.
It's not unreasonable to expect End Wokeness to be spreading more lies about Somalian immigrants, given his track record. But the truth here was obvious to anybody willing to simply look at the evidence.
This story is fake; the flag was in fact upside down: https://x.com/alx/status/2112383598934573506
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://lookaside.fbsbx...
And you trust this source because?
It's from their own Facebook page, it's the Google Image Search results from their own page.
“Before they deleted them” aka no way to check if this is BS.
Nonsense, the google image search result clearly still has the linkage established. There's nothing fake about it.
And why wouldn't you question why they deleted the original lol
That’s not the question. The question is “were they even there” before the “screenshot”.
As an example, I can screenshot your comment and have AI edit it to have you say “I really enjoy misleading people on the internet for money”, post it, and then say “I took this screenshot before they deleted it.”
Please just look at the bottom left corner of the "real" image.
You don't understand: https://x.com/alx/status/2112585386929397799
But also just look at the bottom-left of the image as is mentioned elsewhere in this comment thread: they didn't even bother to photoshop the entire image in their "debunk".
As opposed to trusting "Oregon Journalism Project"?
As much as I hate to have to defend Jack Posobiec (aka EndWokeness), saving the "real" screenshot from this article and uploading it to OpenAI's verification tool[0] indicates that it, in fact, was AI-generated. I welcome any correction on this.
[0] https://openai.com/research/verify/
e: Okay, now I feel stupid for even bothering to do that. Look below her name and you'll see the leftovers of the old flag.
edit 2: Retracted. https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/editors-note-october...
Even more damning seems to be the video of the event and cached images from google, which does not have an openai watermark (yes, verified myself).
https://x.com/kgallella/status/2112332869461045733
https://x.com/Honest_Bender/status/2112301833708519659
Of course it doesn't conclusively prove that the flag was definitely right side up, but you'd really have to bend over backwards to explain why Oregon Journalism Project's "debunking" is watermarked but the counter-debunkings aren't.
lol I didn't see that at all, wow they soooo poorly photoshopped this and then had their all friends in the media like Axios push their lies
Unless I’m missing something all of the pictures in the article and on X that it links to return as being AI generated?
There's only two images in the article, the "real" (fake) image (which appears twice), and the screenshot of the tweet; the latter returns "No OpenAI signals detected" for me, unlike the other.
I’m including all of the images linked in both.
And now that you’ve said that I’ve retried the same image 5 times and gotten AI 3 times and Not AI twice.
Something tells me that tools is about as reliable as Pangram.
Then just try looking in the bottom left corner of the "real" image to see the leftovers of the upside-down flag. The SynthID watermark isn't even necessary here to spot the obviousness of the fake.
[dead]
Is this a Monty Python scene about sacking people?
Why was the upside down flag even going viral?
Oh wait, she is Somali and all the rabid racists right wing trolls latched on to it. Now I am supposed to be concerned about the fake edit. I'm not.
I don't understand why the people manipulated with lies aren't offended at the liars. They are primed to believe the lies, but aren't they mad that someone sought to manipulate them?
This keeps happening because it works. But why does it work? Why isn't there blowback?
It's embarrassing. Instead, they tell themselves, "well, it could have just as easily been real."
This has always been the case.
However, the more interesting thing going on is that we have never had to reckon with this problem anywhere near as much as we do now, since the barrier to creating fakes has been reduced from "skilled, motivated software user" to "all five billion humans who can write".
Edit: I think this comment is neutral enough to stand even under the new information that this might have been a cries-wolf situation, but I am acknowledging the fact.
Are you going to update your comment now that a retraction was issued? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50173029
Do not address people in this way. You are contributing to the exact problem we're talking about (how easy it is for information to turn out to be wrong).
Simply provide the new information, rather than snarkily implying that the parent is some kind of asshole. Save that for the normal internet.
>Do not address people in this way. You are contributing to the exact problem we're talking about (how easy it is for information to turn out to be wrong).
It's pretty obvious the OP is a thinly veiled attack at whoever believed the "lie", dressed up as a question. The only saving grace is that the wording was so ambiguous that regardless of whether it was the debunking or counter-debunking that was correct, the comment would still be applicable.
Now that the story has been retracted, and the "real" image proven to be an obvious fake, are you mad that someone sought to manipulate you?
Truth isn't important anymore.
The ironic part is that the veracity of the debunking is being questioned, so depending on how this turns out, this could either be referring to "haha dumb right wingers falling for AI generated meme" or "haha dumb left wingers falling for AI generated debunking". Truly a rorschach test of a comment.
edit: the story was retracted so the "people manipulated with lies" are the people who believed oregon journalism project?
Because they want it to be true.
I feel the same way. Anyone who lies to you is fundamentally insulting you.
Candidate shouldn't have lied here (which seems likely based on the available evidence) and should have just owned it. Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do in 2026, IMO, speaking as a white male, many-generational American. America is very much in distress.
But it is also ridiculous that the people predisposed to the other side (and who only made a big deal out of the original clip in the first place because they are racist misogynists) will hold up this relatively insignificant lie as some sort of an outrage while pulling the lever for the likes of Trump who lies as easily as he breathes.
I honestly could care less about the lie. I'm more offended about the upside down flag because, like the other person replied, it's not in fact an appropriate use. But I guess that automatically enrolls me into the racist misogynist group of people to simply disagree on the proper use of an upside down flag.
It is a perfectly appropriate use if you want to symbolize the country is in distress.
Do you get so upset about the flag when it's used as napkins, plates, thongs, or toilet paper?
Yes, surprisingly my views are consistent.
"The U.S. Flag Code (4 U.S.C. § 8(a)) states that the flag 'should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.'"
Treating institutional or policy disagreements as equivalent to "extreme danger to life or property" is an insane stretch of the meaning of those words. But in the post-modern world every word means whatever the person thinks it means, so it's not surprising to see people able to reconcile that in their minds.
The flag code is a suggestion. Her choice of symbolism has no requirement to be grounded in that. So arguing about the wording is meaningless.
When did I say there was a "requirement." Yes, anyone can do anything, but you moved the goal post because that's not what we were talking about. I'm simply staying that I personally find it offensive because I think its a gross misuse of the flag and then quoted the code under which I base that judgement on. Placing the American flag upside down has a documented, historical reason for it, enshrined in the flag code. You can't just pretend that doesn't exist. You can choose to blatantly ignore that and flip it for some other reason, but that doesn't at all negate my argument.
I'm really curious to get your take on how that makes me a racist misogynist though.
I don't see your posts about Trump or the many people at his rallies blatantly ignoring the code.
I do see this woman wears a hijab.
Just a simple deduction.
P.S. The culture warriors on X that made this go viral to begin with are very much racist and misogynist. So it is a safe bet to assume you, who is posting the story here, are also one.
I posted this here because it had to do with AI deepfakes being used in politics to lie to the masses. Extremely relevant to this website. Someone wearing the American flag as underwear? I'd be impressed if you can find a single submission on this website where that was the topic.
Besides, I'm neither a Trump supporter nor a supporter of the fascists posing as communists. I believe late stage capitalism is basically broken and needs regulation, that immigration should be encouraged through legal means, that people can do whatever they like with their body, etc. I wouldn't even know what to label my political beliefs as now. Some weird combination of libertarian, classical liberalism, and an anarchist bent. I am, however, a veteran and served my country for many years so that (assuming you're American) you can freely call me names on the internet (unlike our friends across the pond).
Regardless, tt sounds more like you're just predisposed to label people based on a broad set of unreliable attributes. Which is exactly what the racists and misgoynists you seem to hate do. You should probably stop that if you're going to have any sort of moral ground to criticize them from.
> I am, however, a veteran and served my country for many years so that (assuming you're American) you can freely call me names on the internet (unlike our friends across the pond).
No recent military action undertaken by the US has had any effect on free speech at home, except possibly negatively if you bundle it with the various laws that came about after 9/11. Likewise, no military action is linked to the state of free speech in the UK, it's just how things have worked out culturally and socially. Nothing wrong with serving, but you didn't get to go and defend American ideals particularly.
> Flying an upside-down flag is a perfectly patriotic thing to do
It is a really dumb virtue-signaling protest thing. In fact, it has nothing to do with the actual "distress signal" that it is meant to be.
> America is very much in distress
But you don't invert the flag when your nation is in distress. You invert the flag when your vessel is in distress. Inverted flag is a 9-1-1 call to all who can see it. It indicates immediate and extreme danger to life, limb, or property.
Furthermore, it is not up to us dumb citizens to determine when our entire nation is in distress. Honestly, our nation is bigger than you or me, and she can fend for herself on her own merits, without us telling her how she should feel. If "all America is in distress" then who will come and save her, huh? We are sovereign and that means we take care of our own messes, and solve our own problems!
Let's leave the inverted flag for its true meaning, which is individual or vessel-wide distress. Anything else is just posturing and performative slacktivism.
Sorry you don't understand the concept of symbolism.
> Furthermore, it is not up to us dumb citizens to determine when our entire nation is in distress. Honestly, our nation is bigger than you or me, and she can fend for herself on her own merits, without us telling her how she should feel. If "all America is in distress" then who will come and save her, huh? We are sovereign and that means we take care of our own messes, and solve our own problems!
Nonsensical.
> Let's leave the inverted flag for its true meaning, which is individual or vessel-wide distress. Anything else is just posturing and performative slacktivism.
Running for office is slacktivism now? You gotta try harder to justify your fake outrage, this is just lazy.