Mr. Deepfakes, the largest deepfake porn site on the Internet, closes for good
The world's largest repository of non-consensual pornography says it will shut down its domain and not return.
A technician edits a porn film at Vivid Entertainment studio (File).
Mr. Deepfakes, the Internet's largest site for obtaining non-consensual "deepfake" pornography, announced its permanent shutdown because it lost its main service provider and critical data.
A report by 404 Media recalled Tuesday that the Web repository had become the main hub for creating and sharing videos that swapped faces of female celebrities and even unsuspecting people into pornographic content without their consent.
The loss of data "has made continued operations impossible," states a notice that appears when visiting Mr. Deepfakes. The site's forums and videos are no longer available online, at least this week.
"We will not be relaunching it. Any website claiming this is false. This domain will expire and we are not responsible for future use. This message will be removed in approximately one week," reads the platform's text.
Development, distribution and monetization of "deepfake" videos with a crucial engine
The site did not offer further details of its shutdown or explain which service it removed. The person behind the repository also remains anonymous, although in January the German newspaper Der Spiegel claimed to have identified him as a 36-year-old man from Toronto who has been working in a hospital for nearly a decade.
Shortly after reporting on the emergence of deepfake videos in 2017, named after the Reddit user of the same name who began sharing existing porn recordings featuring the faces of female celebrities, the practice quickly spread to other corners of the Internet.
However, no website was as crucial to the development, distribution and monetization of porn videos in this "category" as Mr. Deepfakes, which quickly gained popularity after sites like Pornhub and others banned deepfake porn and similar forms of non-consensual content.
How did Mr. Deepfakes work?
Mr. Deepfakes' forums also became a key resource for those creating non-consensual multimedia content. Users of the site flocked to these discussions to develop new techniques, connect to apps and tools that helped them create deepfakes, and share data sets designed to recreate the image of real people.
Other ways to share content and migration to Telegram
Although the site no longer exists, at least for now, the community it built has since connected on Telegram, where much of the same type of techniques are developed and non-consensual multimedia content is shared.
The tools and apps he popularized have also spread across the Internet, with companies like Apple and Google fighting to keep him off their platforms, and social networks like Instagram preventing the spread of his ads.
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