Good riddance: The webs top deepfake porn site is shutting down

Mr. Deepfakes is no more.

One of the internet's biggest destinations for nonconsensual deepfake porn has announced that it is shutting down. The website, Mr. Deepfakes, has already gone offline, as first noticed by 404 Media. Mr. Deepfakes's URL now redirects to a "shutdown notice" message announcing the end of the site.

Deepfakes are essentially hyperrealistic face-swapping videos that are created with machine-learning technology. Deepfakes became very popular on social media platforms like Reddit in 2017, with users superimposing celebrities' likeness into various movie and TV show clips. For example, one popular deepfake at the time superimposed Arnold Schwarzenegger's face over Bill Hader while the latter impersonated Schwarzenegger in an late night TV interview with Conan O'Brien. However, users also began to use deepfakes to make nonconsensual porn, which digitally inserted celebrities into pornographic videos.

In 2018, Reddit officially banned deepfake porn. Mr. Deepfakes was created in response to the ban, giving those deepfake-creating users somewhere to go to share and consume this nonconsensual content. Little is known about the creator or creators of Mr. Deepfakes. Earlier this year, an investigation by German outlet Der Spiegel claimed to have identified the individual behind the site as a 36-year-old from Toronto.

According to the shutdown message on Mr. Deepfakes, however, the website's end was not by choice. It appears Mr. Deepfakes was forced to pull the plug.

“A critical service provider has terminated service permanently," Mr. Deepfakes' website says in its shutdown notice. "Data loss has made it impossible to continue operation. We will not be relaunching. Any website claiming this is fake. This domain will eventually expire and we are not responsible for future use. This message will be removed around one week."

Mr. Deepfakes did not share what service provider they were using or why the provider cut the website from its service. 

The timing of the Mr. Deepfakes shutdown is interesting. Just last week, Congress passed the Take It Down act, which criminalized nonconsensual intimate imagery, such as deepfake porn. The Take It Down act also requires that online platforms take action to remove such content as well.