Tech companies allegedly profiting from the dehumanisation of immigrant communities
"AI-Generated Sora Videos of ICE Raids Are Wildly Viral on Facebook" 12 November 2025
...The latest trend in Facebook’s ever downward spiral down the AI slop toilet are AI deportation videos. These are posted by an account called “USA Journey 897” and have the general vibe of actual propaganda videos posted by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s social media accounts. Many of the AI videos focus on workplace deportations, but some are similar to horrifying, real videos we have seen from ICE raids in Chicago and Los Angeles. The account was initially flagged to 404 Media by Chad Loder, an independent researcher...
...The videos universally have text superimposed over the three areas of a video where OpenAI’s Sora video generator places watermarks. This, as well as the style of the videos being generated and tests done by 404 Media to make very similar videos, show that they were generated with Sora, highlighting how tools released by some of the richest companies in the world are being combined to generate and monetize videos that take advantage of human suffering (and how incredibly easy it is to hide a Sora watermark)...
...the person behind this account does not seem to actually have any sort of vested interest in the United States or in immigration. But they are nonetheless spamming horrific, dehumanizing videos of immigration enforcement because the Facebook algorithm is rewarding them for that type of content, and because Facebook directly makes payments for it. As we have seen with other types of topical AI-generated content on Facebook, like videos about Palestinian suffering in Gaza or natural disasters around the world, many people simply do not care if the videos are real. And the existence of these types of videos serves to inoculate people from the actual horrors that ICE is carrying out...
...Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the account violates its content standards...