I wrote about The Daily Beast's April 12th article and how a fact-check could have saved them a lot of anguish.
The article's author, Jake Lahut, said he knew that conspiracy theorist and cyberstalker Steven Jarvis was "a mess with his keyboard activism". Still, he used Jarvis as a primary source without fact-checking his claims.
In two weeks since the article's publishing, not one employee of The Daily Beast has stepped forward with a statement.
In my Medium post, I focus on my area of expertise, StyleGAN images.
Steven Jarvis claims that an image of his 4-year-old daughter was altered to change the child's gender and then "run through a GAN program".
I replicated the methods by which Jarvis claims the image was created and found most claims highly implausible while others were verifiably false.
Tomorrow is May 1st. The Daily Beast has said nothing about their Apr 12 article. No staff writer has stepped forward. The "source" of the article wrote about me on their blog calling me a "fake person", a "sock account", and "in cahoots with thugs targeting children".
This was written because I debunked an image that served as the main anecdote for The Daily Beast's article.
Good to know that TDB uses sources that resort to ad hominem when challenged. Very professional.
EJ Gibney