Latest news with #JackMalon
The Star
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
YouTube pirates are cashing in on Hollywood's summer blockbusters
SAN FRANCISCO: After spending about US$100mil on Lilo & Stitch, a live-action remake of a 2002 animated film, Disney had plenty to celebrate. The film pulled in US$361mil (RM1.53bil) worldwide on its opening weekend in May and bested Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning at the box office. But the company also had cause to be concerned. In the days after the Disney film's opening, a pirated version of Lilo & Stitch proved to be a hit on YouTube, where more than 200,000 people viewed it, potentially costing Disney millions of dollars in additional sales, according to research from Adalytics, a firm that analyses advertising campaigns for brands. The findings of the research shed new light on the copyright issues that once threatened to upend YouTube's business. They also show how advertisers have unwittingly supported illicit content on YouTube, and they provide rare data about piracy on the platform. YouTube has long tried to tamp down piracy, but users who upload stolen films and television shows have employed new tactics to evade the platform's detection tools, the research showed, including cropping films and manipulating footage. YouTube then recommended the uploaded videos to users on its homepage, promoting pirated streaming of box office releases like Lilo & Stitch, or movies exclusively available on streaming platforms, like Captain America: Brave New World, according to screen recordings compiled by Adalytics and an analysis by The New York Times. YouTube, which is owned by Google, may also have generated revenue from some stolen videos, though it's unclear how much money it may have made. The company has a program known as Content ID to identify videos protected by copyright. It allows copyright holders to block the videos, share in advertising sales of the videos or receive data about who views the videos. Over the years, YouTube has paid billions of dollars to rights holders. YouTube reported flagging 2.2 billion videos last year and said rights holders permitted about 90% of those videos to stay on the platform. Jack Malon, a spokesperson for YouTube, said the company does not analyze the less than 10% of videos it removes at the request of copyright holders and does not track how many of those videos may be recently released, full-length movies. The channels that uploaded the videos of Lilo & Stitch and Captain America: Brave New World were terminated for violating YouTube's policies on spam, Malon said. He declined to say whether the company had profited from commercials shown in copyrighted videos that evaded detection by Content ID or racked up views before rights holders asked that they be taken down. At YouTube's request, Adalytics and the Times provided 200 videos for YouTube to review, most of them full-length films. YouTube analysed the videos but declined to provide insight into what percentage of the films their rights holders had permitted to stay up or had required to be removed. 'To frame these videos as 'illicit' without first reviewing the specific choices made by each rights holder misunderstands how the media landscape on YouTube works today,' Malon said. While 'mistakes do occur' on YouTube, he said, he dismissed the Adalytics report as an effort to get companies to sign up for the firm's services. Holders of copyrights for the videos, including all the major film studios, did not respond when asked for comment by the Times. The founder of Adalytics, Krzysztof Franaszek, who conducted the research, said he had observed 9,000 examples of possible copyright violations, 'including full-length movies that were in theatrical release, Netflix exclusives such as Extraction 2, TV shows such as Family Guy and live NCAA college football games.' The videos collectively had more than 250 million views. More than 100 of these uploads were also reviewed by the Times. Movies from every major film studio were found on YouTube in unofficial streams uploaded from last July to May, Adalytics found. When briefed on the research findings, Larissa Knapp, the chief content protection officer of the Motion Picture Association, a trade group for movie studios, said she found them concerning. At one point, the anti-piracy work between the studios and YouTube 'did work', Knapp said. 'But now it seems like some of the stuff may have gone off the rails if illegal content is being placed with ads.' The research recalled a time in YouTube's history when Hollywood accused the platform of profiting from its stolen content. In 2007, Viacom sued YouTube, claiming it engaged in 'brazen' copyright infringement by allowing uploads of the media company's material without its permission. In 2012, YouTube won the suit by arguing it was shielded from liability by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which exempted YouTube from liability for hosting copyrighted work. The law shifted the burden for protecting a copyright from the platform and video creators to rights holders, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. Without the rule, he said, 'the Internet would not be able to exist in its existing format.' YouTube has tried to work with film studios, television networks and streaming services to combat piracy. Google, YouTube's parent company, developed its Content ID technology to recognise copyrighted videos, and YouTube became more aggressive at policing its platform for piracy. Copyright holders gained the right to either have the content removed or collect a share of the advertising revenue the videos generated. The box office in the United States and Canada routinely loses US$1bil (RM4.25bil) each year to piracy, which is roughly 15% of its annual haul, according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a trade group of 50 entertainment companies that tries to reduce piracy. Franaszek began the research after his advertising clients noticed that as much as 60% of their ad spending on YouTube went to videos or channels that were labelled 'no longer available'. After digging deeper, he found that his clients had paid to support content that YouTube later removed because it violated company policies against nudity, violence or hate speech, or because of other offenses. When videos are removed from the platform, YouTube scrubs advertisers' records so that they can no longer see the name of the video. Advertisers have to go to the link for the removed video to see if it was removed for a copyright violation, Franaszek said. He added that the platform did not fully reimburse the advertisers for the cost of commercials in those videos. Erich Garcia, a senior vice president at which lets consumers compare insurance offerings, said his company's ads routinely ran with videos that had disappeared, limiting his insight into the effectiveness of his promotions. Malon said YouTube advertisers could get more insight into those videos by asking their account representatives for more information. Representatives can provide advertising credits. Ads from Disney, Hulu, HBO Max, Focus Features and dozens of other companies from various industries were found alongside unauthorised film and television uploads, Adalytics said. Pirates deployed a range of deceptive tactics to evade YouTube's anti-piracy algorithms. Some uploaded and voluntarily removed copyrighted videos on the same day, racking up viewers before being caught. Other pirates mirrored the videos to reverse the images, or cropped the frames in an effort to trick the Content ID system. Still others placed clips of regular people at the end of a Hollywood blockbuster video to further cover their tracks, Adalytics and the Times found. Franaszek said Adalytics clients who paid for advertising in videos that were removed over copyright issues had a simple request: 'to have visibility into what content their YouTube ad dollars are funding, and where their ads appear.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Indian Express
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
YouTube pirates are cashing in on Hollywood's summer blockbusters
After spending about $100 million on 'Lilo & Stitch,' a live-action remake of a 2002 animated film, Disney had plenty to celebrate. The film pulled in $361 million worldwide on its opening weekend in May and bested 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' at the box office. But the company also had cause to be concerned. In the days after the Disney film's opening, a pirated version of 'Lilo & Stitch' proved to be a hit on YouTube, where more than 200,000 people viewed it, potentially costing Disney millions of dollars in additional sales, according to research from Adalytics, a firm that analyzes advertising campaigns for brands. The findings of the research shed new light on the copyright issues that once threatened to upend YouTube's business. They also show how advertisers have unwittingly supported illicit content on YouTube, and they provide rare data about piracy on the platform. YouTube has long tried to tamp down piracy, but users who upload stolen films and television shows have employed new tactics to evade the platform's detection tools, the research showed, including cropping films and manipulating footage. YouTube then recommended the uploaded videos to users on its homepage, promoting pirated streaming of box office releases like 'Lilo & Stitch,' or movies exclusively available on streaming platforms, like 'Captain America: Brave New World,' according to screen recordings compiled by Adalytics and an analysis by The New York Times. YouTube, which is owned by Google, may also have generated revenue from some stolen videos, though it's unclear how much money it may have made. The company has a program known as Content ID to identify videos protected by copyright. It allows copyright holders to block the videos, share in advertising sales of the videos or receive data about who views the videos. Over the years, YouTube has paid billions of dollars to rights holders. YouTube reported flagging 2.2 billion videos last year and said rights holders permitted about 90% of those videos to stay on the platform. Jack Malon, a spokesperson for YouTube, said the company does not analyze the less than 10% of videos it removes at the request of copyright holders and does not track how many of those videos may be recently released, full-length movies. The channels that uploaded the videos of 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Captain America: Brave New World' were terminated for violating YouTube's policies on spam, Malon said. He declined to say whether the company had profited from commercials shown in copyrighted videos that evaded detection by Content ID or racked up views before rights holders asked that they be taken down. At YouTube's request, Adalytics and the Times provided 200 videos for YouTube to review, most of them full-length films. YouTube analyzed the videos but declined to provide insight into what percentage of the films their rights holders had permitted to stay up or had required to be removed. 'To frame these videos as 'illicit' without first reviewing the specific choices made by each rights holder misunderstands how the media landscape on YouTube works today,' Malon said. While 'mistakes do occur' on YouTube, he said, he dismissed the Adalytics report as an effort to get companies to sign up for the firm's services. Holders of copyrights for the videos, including all the major film studios, did not respond when asked for comment by the Times. The founder of Adalytics, Krzysztof Franaszek, who conducted the research, said he had observed 9,000 examples of possible copyright violations, 'including full-length movies that were in theatrical release, Netflix exclusives such as 'Extraction 2,' TV shows such as 'Family Guy' and live NCAA college football games.' The videos collectively had more than 250 million views. More than 100 of these uploads were also reviewed by the Times. Movies from every major film studio were found on YouTube in unofficial streams uploaded from last July to May, Adalytics found. When briefed on the research findings, Larissa Knapp, the chief content protection officer of the Motion Picture Association, a trade group for movie studios, said she found them concerning. At one point, the anti-piracy work between the studios and YouTube 'did work,' Knapp said. 'But now it seems like some of the stuff may have gone off the rails if illegal content is being placed with ads.' The research recalled a time in YouTube's history when Hollywood accused the platform of profiting from its stolen content. In 2007, Viacom sued YouTube, claiming it engaged in 'brazen' copyright infringement by allowing uploads of the media company's material without its permission. In 2012, YouTube won the suit by arguing it was shielded from liability by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which exempted YouTube from liability for hosting copyrighted work. The law shifted the burden for protecting a copyright from the platform and video creators to rights holders, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. Without the rule, he said, 'the internet would not be able to exist in its existing format.' YouTube has tried to work with film studios, television networks and streaming services to combat piracy. Google, YouTube's parent company, developed its Content ID technology to recognize copyrighted videos, and YouTube became more aggressive at policing its platform for piracy. Copyright holders gained the right to either have the content removed or collect a share of the advertising revenue the videos generated. The box office in the United States and Canada routinely loses $1 billion each year to piracy, which is roughly 15% of its annual haul, according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a trade group of 50 entertainment companies that tries to reduce piracy. Franaszek began the research after his advertising clients noticed that as much as 60% of their ad spending on YouTube went to videos or channels that were labeled 'no longer available.' After digging deeper, he found that his clients had paid to support content that YouTube later removed because it violated company policies against nudity, violence or hate speech, or because of other offenses. When videos are removed from the platform, YouTube scrubs advertisers' records so that they can no longer see the name of the video. Advertisers have to go to the link for the removed video to see if it was removed for a copyright violation, Franaszek said. He added that the platform did not fully reimburse the advertisers for the cost of commercials in those videos. Erich Garcia, a senior vice president at which lets consumers compare insurance offerings, said his company's ads routinely ran with videos that had disappeared, limiting his insight into the effectiveness of his promotions. Malon said YouTube advertisers could get more insight into those videos by asking their account representatives for more information. Representatives can provide advertising credits. Ads from Disney, Hulu, HBO Max, Focus Features and dozens of other companies from various industries were found alongside unauthorized film and television uploads, Adalytics said. Pirates deployed a range of deceptive tactics to evade YouTube's anti-piracy algorithms. Some uploaded and voluntarily removed copyrighted videos on the same day, racking up viewers before being caught. Other pirates mirrored the videos to reverse the images, or cropped the frames in an effort to trick the Content ID system. Still others placed clips of regular people at the end of a Hollywood blockbuster video to further cover their tracks, Adalytics and the Times found. Franaszek said Adalytics clients who paid for advertising in videos that were removed over copyright issues had a simple request: 'to have visibility into what content their YouTube ad dollars are funding, and where their ads appear.'
Observer
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
YouTube pirates cashing in on Hollywood's Blockbusters
SAN FRANCISCO — After spending about $100 million on 'Lilo & Stitch,' a live-action remake of a 2002 animated film, Disney had plenty to celebrate. The film pulled in $361 million worldwide on its opening weekend in May and bested 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' at the box office. However, the company also had cause for concern. In the days after the Disney film's opening, a pirated version of 'Lilo & Stitch' proved to be a hit on YouTube, where more than 200,000 people viewed it, potentially costing Disney millions of dollars in additional sales, according to research from Adalytics, a firm that analyzes advertising campaigns for brands. The findings of the research shed new light on the copyright issues that once threatened to upend YouTube's business. They also show how advertisers have unwittingly supported illicit content on YouTube, and they provide rare data about piracy on the platform. YouTube has long tried to tamp down piracy, but users who upload stolen films and television shows have employed new tactics to evade the platform's detection tools, the research showed, including cropping films and manipulating footage. YouTube then recommended the uploaded videos to users on its homepage, promoting pirated streaming of box office releases like 'Lilo & Stitch,' or movies exclusively available on streaming platforms, like 'Captain America: Brave New World,' according to screen recordings compiled by Adalytics and an analysis by The New York Times. YouTube, which is owned by Google, may also have generated revenue from some stolen videos, though it's unclear how much money it may have made. The company has a program known as Content ID to identify videos protected by copyright. It allows copyright holders to block the videos, share in advertising sales of the videos, or receive data about who views the videos. Over the years, YouTube has paid billions of dollars to rights holders. YouTube reported flagging 2.2 billion videos last year and said rights holders permitted about 90% of those videos to stay on the platform. Jack Malon, a spokesperson for YouTube, said the company does not analyze the less than 10% of videos it removes at the request of copyright holders and does not track how many of those videos may be recently released full-length movies. The channels that uploaded the videos of 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Captain America: Brave New World' were terminated for violating YouTube's policies on spam, Malon said. He declined to say whether the company had profited from commercials shown in copyrighted videos that evaded detection by Content ID or racked up views before rights holders asked that they be taken down. At YouTube's request, Adalytics and the Times provided 200 videos for YouTube to review, most of them full-length films. YouTube analyzed the videos but declined to provide insight into what percentage of the films their rights holders had permitted to stay up or had required to be removed. 'To frame these videos as 'illicit' without first reviewing the specific choices made by each rights holder misunderstands how the media landscape on YouTube works today,' Malon said. While 'mistakes do occur' on YouTube, he said, he dismissed the Adalytics report as an effort to get companies to sign up for the firm's services. Holders of copyrights for the videos, including all the major film studios, did not respond when asked for comment by the Times. The founder of Adalytics, Krzysztof Franaszek, who conducted the research, said he had observed 9,000 examples of possible copyright violations, 'including full-length movies that were in theatrical release, Netflix exclusives such as 'Extraction 2,' TV shows such as 'Family Guy' and live NCAA college football games.' The videos collectively had more than 250 million views. More than 100 of these uploads were also reviewed by the Times. Movies from every major film studio were found on YouTube in unofficial streams uploaded from last July to May, Adalytics found. When briefed on the research findings, Larissa Knapp, the chief content protection officer of the Motion Picture Association, a trade group for movie studios, said she found them concerning. At one point, the anti-piracy work between the studios and YouTube 'did work,' Knapp said. 'But now it seems like some of the stuff may have gone off the rails if illegal content is being placed with ads.' The research recalled a time in YouTube's history when Hollywood accused the platform of profiting from its stolen content. In 2007, Viacom sued YouTube, claiming it engaged in 'brazen' copyright infringement by allowing uploads of the media company's material without its permission. In 2012, YouTube won the suit by arguing it was shielded from liability by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which exempted YouTube from liability for hosting copyrighted work. The law shifted the burden for protecting a copyright from the platform and video creators to rights holders, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. Without the rule, he said, 'the internet would not be able to exist in its existing format.' YouTube has tried to work with film studios, television networks and streaming services to combat piracy. Google, YouTube's parent company, developed its Content ID technology to recognize copyrighted videos, and YouTube became more aggressive at policing its platform for piracy. Copyright holders gained the right to either have the content removed or collect a share of the advertising revenue the videos generated. The box office in the United States and Canada routinely loses $1 billion each year to piracy, which is roughly 15% of its annual haul, according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a trade group of 50 entertainment companies that tries to reduce piracy. Franaszek began the research after his advertising clients noticed that as much as 60% of their ad spending on YouTube went to videos or channels that were labeled 'no longer available.' After digging deeper, he found that his clients had paid to support content that YouTube later removed because it violated company policies against nudity, violence or hate speech, or because of other offenses. When videos are removed from the platform, YouTube scrubs advertisers' records so that they can no longer see the name of the video. Advertisers have to go to the link for the removed video to see if it was removed for a copyright violation, Franaszek said. He added that the platform did not fully reimburse the advertisers for the cost of commercials in those videos. Erich Garcia, a senior vice president at which lets consumers compare insurance offerings, said his company's ads routinely ran with videos that had disappeared, limiting his insight into the effectiveness of his promotions. Malon said YouTube advertisers could get more insight into those videos by asking their account representatives for more information. Representatives can provide advertising credits. Ads from Disney, Hulu, HBO Max, Focus Features, and dozens of other companies from various industries were found alongside unauthorized film and television uploads, Adalytics said. Pirates deployed a range of deceptive tactics to evade YouTube's anti-piracy algorithms. Some uploaded and voluntarily removed copyrighted videos on the same day, racking up viewers before being caught. Other pirates mirrored the videos to reverse the images or cropped the frames to trick the Content ID system. Still, others placed clips of regular people at the end of a Hollywood blockbuster video to further cover their tracks, Adalytics and The Times found. Franaszek said Adalytics clients who paid for advertising in videos that were removed over copyright issues had a simple request: 'to have visibility into what content their YouTube ad dollars are funding, and where their ads appear.' This article originally appeared in
AFP
06-06-2025
- AFP
AI-generated Pope sermons flood YouTube, TikTok
An AFP investigation identified dozens of YouTube and TikTok pages that have been churning out AI-generated messages delivered in the pope's voice or otherwise attributed to him since he took charge of the Catholic Church last month. The hundreds of fabricated sermons and speeches, in English and Spanish, underscore how easily hoaxes created using artificial intelligence can elude detection and dupe viewers. "There's natural interest in what the new pope has to say, and people don't yet know his stance and style," said University of Washington professor emeritus Oren Etzioni, founder of a nonprofit focused on fighting deepfakes (archived here and here). "A perfect opportunity to sow mischief with AI-generated misinformation." After AFP presented YouTube with 26 channels posting predominantly AI-generated pope content, the platform terminated 16 of them for violating its policies against spam, deceptive practices and scams, and another for violating YouTube's terms of service (archived here and here). "We terminated several channels flagged to us by AFP for violating our Spam policies and Terms of Service," spokesperson Jack Malon said. The company also booted an additional six pages from its partner program allowing creators to monetize their content (archived here). TikTok similarly removed 11 accounts that AFP pointed out -- with more than 1.3 million combined followers -- citing the platform's policies against impersonation, harmful misinformation and misleading AI-generated content of public figures (archived here, here and here). - 'Chaotic uses' - With names such as "Pope Leo XIV Vision," the social media pages portrayed the pontiff supposedly offering a flurry of warnings and lessons he never preached. Image Screenshot from YouTube taken May 28, 2025 But disclaimers annotating their use of AI were often hard to find -- and sometimes nonexistent. On YouTube, a label demarcating "altered or synthetic content" is required for material that makes someone appear to say something they did not (archived here). But such disclosures only show up toward the bottom of each video's click-to-open description. A YouTube spokesperson said the company has since applied a more prominent label to some videos on the channels flagged by AFP that were not found to have violated the platform's guidelines. Image Screenshot from YouTube taken June 6, 2025, with a newly added synthetic content label outlined by AFP TikTok also requires creators to label posts sharing realistic AI-generated content, though several pope-centric videos went unmarked (archived here). A TikTok spokesperson said the company proactively removes policy-violating content and uses verified badges to signal authentic accounts. Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University, said the moderation difficulties are the result of rapid AI developments inspiring "chaotic uses of the technology" (archived here). Many clips on the YouTube channels AFP identified amassed tens of thousands of views before being deactivated. On TikTok, one Spanish-language video received 9.6 million views while claiming to show Leo preaching about the value of supportive women. Another, which carried an AI label but still fooled viewers, was watched some 32.9 million times. No video on the pope's official Instagram page has more than 6 million views. Experts say even seemingly harmless fakes can be problematic especially if used to farm engagement for accounts that might later sell their audiences or pivot to other misinformation. The AI-generated sermons not only "corrode the pope's moral authority" and "make whatever he actually says less believable," Green said, but could be harnessed "to build up trust around your channel before having the pope say something outrageous or politically expedient." The pope himself has also warned about the risks of AI, while Vatican News called out a deepfake that purported to show Leo praising Burkina Faso leader Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in a 2022 coup (archived here). AFP also debunked clips depicting the pope, who holds American and Peruvian citizenships, criticizing US Vice President JD Vance and Peru's President Dina Boluarte. "There's a real crisis here," Green said. "We're going to have to figure out some way to know whether things are real or fake."
France 24
06-06-2025
- France 24
AI-generated Pope sermons flood YouTube, TikTok
An AFP investigation identified dozens of YouTube and TikTok pages that have been churning out AI-generated messages delivered in the pope's voice or otherwise attributed to him since he took charge of the Catholic Church last month. The hundreds of fabricated sermons and speeches, in English and Spanish, underscore how easily hoaxes created using artificial intelligence can elude detection and dupe viewers. "There's natural interest in what the new pope has to say, and people don't yet know his stance and style," said University of Washington professor emeritus Oren Etzioni, founder of a nonprofit focused on fighting deepfakes. "A perfect opportunity to sow mischief with AI-generated misinformation." After AFP presented YouTube with 26 channels posting predominantly AI-generated pope content, the platform terminated 16 of them for violating its policies against spam, deceptive practices and scams, and another for violating YouTube's terms of service. "We terminated several channels flagged to us by AFP for violating our Spam policies and Terms of Service," spokesperson Jack Malon said. The company also booted an additional six pages from its partner program allowing creators to monetize their content. TikTok similarly removed 11 accounts that AFP pointed out -- with over 1.3 million combined followers -- citing the platform's policies against impersonation, harmful misinformation and misleading AI-generated content of public figures. - 'Chaotic uses' - With names such as "Pope Leo XIV Vision," the social media pages portrayed the pontiff supposedly offering a flurry of warnings and lessons he never preached. But disclaimers annotating their use of AI were often hard to find -- and sometimes nonexistent. On YouTube, a label demarcating "altered or synthetic content" is required for material that makes someone appear to say something they did not. But such disclosures only show up toward the bottom of each video's click-to-open description. A YouTube spokesperson said the company has since applied a more prominent label to some videos on the channels flagged by AFP that were not found to have violated the platform's guidelines. TikTok also requires creators to label posts sharing realistic AI-generated content, though several pope-centric videos went unmarked. A TikTok spokesperson said the company proactively removes policy-violating content and uses verified badges to signal authentic accounts. Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University, said the moderation difficulties are the result of rapid AI developments inspiring "chaotic uses of the technology." Many clips on the YouTube channels AFP identified amassed tens of thousands of views before being deactivated. On TikTok, one Spanish-language video received 9.6 million views while claiming to show Leo preaching about the value of supportive women. Another, which carried an AI label but still fooled viewers, was watched some 32.9 million times. No video on the pope's official Instagram page has more than 6 million views. Experts say even seemingly harmless fakes can be problematic especially if used to farm engagement for accounts that might later sell their audiences or pivot to other misinformation. The AI-generated sermons not only "corrode the pope's moral authority" and "make whatever he actually says less believable," Green said, but could be harnessed "to build up trust around your channel before having the pope say something outrageous or politically expedient." The pope himself has also warned about the risks of AI, while Vatican News called out a deepfake that purported to show Leo praising Burkina Faso leader Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in a 2022 coup. AFP also debunked clips depicting the pope, who holds American and Peruvian citizenships, criticizing US Vice President JD Vance and Peru's President Dina Boluarte. "There's a real crisis here," Green said. "We're going to have to figure out some way to know whether things are real or fake."
