RIP Mr Deepfakes!

The king of deepfake porn, “Mr. Deepfakes,” has finally been dethroned, and his kingdom of creepy content has been reduced to a digital ghost town. This weekend, the most visited online hub for non-consensual pornographic videos pulled the plug, leaving a trail of disappointed (and probably angry) users behind. According to 404 Media, the site, which at its height hosted 43,000 videos viewed a staggering 1.5 billion times, has gone dark. That’s a lot of unsuspecting celebrities getting digitally exploited.

The site, which drew a crowd of wrong-brained users eager to drop up to $1,500 for custom deepfakes, has been shut down permanently. The creators, nearly 4,000 strong, who made a profit from the seedy and now illegal business of re-imagining the likes of Scarlett Johansson being pounded by black cocks, are left without a platform. The forums where new requests were made have also gone quiet, and the videos are no longer available to view. A notice on the platform blamed a “critical service provider” for the shutdown, stating that data loss made it impossible to continue operations. They warned users not to trust any impostor platforms that might pop up in their absence. Mr. Deepfakes also mentioned that they are not responsible for any future use of their domain, which will eventually expire.

Rumors are swirling about which service pulled the rug out from under Mr. Deepfakes, with researchers pointing fingers at “free-tier cloud GPU access” provided through Google Colab notebooks as a crucial component for these deepfake creators. Google, however, has yet to confirm or deny their involvement in this digital drama. So, while the deepfake porn empire crumbles, users are left to wonder what the future holds for their digital fixations.