The combined situation

Reface is the largest face swap mobile application by downloads, with hundreds of millions of installs. It is marketed for entertainment use but the technology is identical to that used in deepfake NCII production. When Reface output appears on Mastodon, removal proceeds through the statutory takedown process under 47 USC 223a combined with source attribution to strengthen the legal claim.

Why this combination is high risk

Reface is broadly considered a low risk service due to active content moderation, but its model architecture has been replicated in higher risk derivative services. On Mastodon specifically, federated content spreads across multiple instances through reposts and replies. removing from the originating instance does not remove from the cached copies on every instance that federated the post.

How removal proceeds

Mastodon is federated across thousands of independent instances. Removal requires identifying the specific instance hosting the content and contacting that instance's admin directly. Source attribution to Reface is documented through reface outputs display a characteristic logo watermark in the free tier and use a recognizable temporal smoothing algorithm in video output, which strengthens the takedown notice and supports parallel legal action.

Choose your legal action

Reface on other platforms