Aron Jemaneh

Old Dominion University

CYSE201S

Article #1 Review
The Immorality of Deepfakes and Fear of the Metaverse
The article that I have chosen is one that was made by Julia Stavola and Kyung-Shick Choi that
talks about deepfakes in the metaverse. The article begins with describing what exactly a
deepfake is (a piece of media that is altered digitally for malicious purposes as well as to deceive
people) and what the metaverse is. The use and creation of deep fakes are extremely immoral
and ethically wrong due to the fact that the entire aim is to trick people on the internet. If you are
someone that is a frequent user of social media such as myself and many others that are a part of
my generation you would have seen many different types of deep fakes. Some examples include
using it for fake news, pornographic reasons, framing people of crimes, and a long list of many
others. The aim of this article and study is to figure out the different uses of deepfakes in the
metaverse and find how it contributes to victimization. Victimization being a topic recently
talked about in the week 4 discussion topic and after re reading and going over it again I can very
clearly see how these two can relate. When you think and hear the word “metaverse” nowadays,
you typically think of the virtual world that was created and released by Mark Zuckerberg and
his company Meta. Originally the term “metaverse” was used in a book called Snow Crash that was written by Neal Stephonson. In the book it was a place characters would go to escape a
“dreary totalitarian reality”. In a cyber space where you can do as much as play games or attend
concerts, with the potential and more development that goes into creating and improving a
metaverse it does bring more methods for more cyber crime to occur. Toward the end of the
article they talk about Eysenck’s theory of criminality and how it could explain criminals’
motivations and behaviors behind crimes and this applies to cyber criminals as well. To wrap this
up I believe that deepfakes is becoming very dangerous in this world as there are many methods
in which people could potentially use them. Especially in the new metaverse virtual space that
will only grow and develop overtime it will bring new ways and methods of cybercrime. We can
only find different work around’s and ways to avoid these new crimes from happening.

References
Marr, B. (2017, November 9). A Short History Of The Metaverse. Forbes. Retrieved
February 11, 2024, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/03/21/a-short-
history-of-the-metaverse/?sh=294754935968
Stavola, J., & Choi, K.-S. (2023). Victimization by Deepfake in the Metaverse: Building
a Practical Management Framework. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence
& Cybercrime, 6(2), 1. https://vc.bridgew.edu/ijcic/vol6/iss2/2

References
Marr, B. (2017, November 9). A Short History Of The Metaverse. Forbes. Retrieved
February 11, 2024, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/03/21/a-short-
history-of-the-metaverse/?sh=294754935968
Stavola, J., & Choi, K.-S. (2023). Victimization by Deepfake in the Metaverse: Building
a Practical Management Framework. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence
& Cybercrime, 6(2), 1. https://vc.bridgew.edu/ijcic/vol6/iss2/2