Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire

42 episódios

Episode 4: The Fake Porn Pharmacist
10/03/2026 | 35min
Almost a year after Ida Herskind started her investigation in Copenhagen, the digital chase is over. The team have identified the person allegedly behind MrDeepFakes.com: a Toronto-area pharmacist named David Do.

CBC reporter Eric Szeto takes the investigation into the streets, closing in on the Canadian deepfake porn kingpin and demanding answers.

Featuring: Eric Szeto, Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins, Suzie Dunn, and Aaron Mackey.
E3: The Notorious D.P.F.K.S.
03/03/2026 | 34min
Journalist Ida Herskind is working at a Danish newspaper when she comes across a story that stops her cold: it’s about a porn video that looks real — but isn’t. And the woman in it never consented.

As Ida starts digging she discovers the top hit for this kind of material is a single site: MrDeepFakes.com. Determined to do something for the thousands of women targeted there, she teams up with Zakaria Hameed, an open-source intelligence specialist, and the team at the hot shot investigative outlet Bellingcat.

Together, they set out to answer a question no one has cracked: who is Mr. Deepfakes, really?

Featuring: Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins
E2: So You’ve Been Deepfaked
24/02/2026 | 31min
When “Taylor” found out she’d been deepfaked in 2020, she also learned she wasn’t alone. She teams up with another target, and together they start comparing notes to figure out who did this to them.

As they narrow their search, a familiar face emerges. But the user they uncover isn’t just targeting them. And when they dig even deeper, they’re led not to a single person, but to the factory where this material is being produced: the largest repository of deepfake porn online.

This episode features materials from the documentary “Another Body: My AI Nightmare”, directed by Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn, and produced by Something Films.
E1: The Dawn of Fake Porn
17/02/2026 | 38min
When a streamer who goes by QTCinderella starts trending on Twitter, she isn’t expecting to see her face on a porn site — her face, doing things she never did.

Because the videos weren’t of her. They were deepfakes. Instead of staying silent, QTCinderella decides to fight back.

And her story raises a bigger question: how did we get to a world where anyone can be put into realistic-looking digital porn? The answer stretches back to the earliest days of the internet.

Featuring archival tape from QTCinderella and Ian Goodfellow, and interviews with Walter Schrier.
Introducing Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire
13/02/2026 | 3min
Non-consensual deepfake porn is becoming increasingly pervasive, and it didn’t just come out of nowhere. These deepfakes were created and curated by people, on platforms, inside online subcultures. And they were allowed to spread, while governments dragged their feet, tech companies shrugged, and the targets — almost always women — paid the price.

Tech journalist Sam Cole has been covering deepfake porn since its inception. In this season of Understood, she follows the trail all the way to the source, tracing an investigation across three countries and four newsrooms into the very real person behind the world’s largest deepfake porn website: Mr. Deepfakes himself.

Mais podcasts de Notícias

Podcasts em tendência em Notícias

Sobre Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire

Deepfake porn is a billion-click industry built on stolen faces, while the people making it hide theirs behind screens. Hosted by journalist Sam Cole, Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire traces the decades-long rise of synthetic porn, the targets who are fighting back, and the global investigation that led to its Canadian kingpin.Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet — we explore the stories that define our digital age with hosts and characters embedded in the heart of the action.Season 1 - The Naked Emperor: the rise and fall of bitcoin king Sam Bankman-Fried.Season 2 - The Pornhub Empire: the story of how a Montreal-founded company came to dominate the adult industry.Season 3 - Modi’s India: how one man rose from poverty to the peak of political power.Season 4 - Céline: the surprising cultural, political and business alchemy that created a superstar.Season 5 - Who Broke the Internet? The internet sucks now, and it happened on purpose.Season 6 - The Making of Elon Musk: exploring the little known side of the polarizing billionaire

Sítio Web de podcast

Notícias Tecnologia Notícias de entretenimento