The Three-Finger Deepfake Test Has Already Failed

The institutional failure is not that viewers missed a clue; it is that clues became the verification system. The Netanyahu rumor was treated as a visual forensics puzzle after a freeze-frame showed a sixth finger, and that style of public checking rewards suspicion before it rewards evidence. Once the test is a visible artifact, every compression error and awkward gesture becomes usable material for the next false claim. Schools, campaigns, and newsrooms now need provenance records, source trails, and response protocols because the crowd has already learned to argue with…