Beyond Regulation: Rethinking Deepfake Pornography Prevention Through Digital Literacy

Abstrak

The rapid advancement of digital technologies has generated new forms of visual manipulation, most notably deepfake pornography, which poses serious threats to individual privacy, dignity, and informational integrity. Within the framework of Islamic legal thought, such practices may be conceptualized as jarīmah fī al-maʿlūmāt (information-based crimes) that undermine fundamental ethical and legal protections. This study examines the role of digital literacy as a preventive mechanism against exposure to and dissemination of deepfake pornographic content among urban social media users, with a particular focus on young adults in Jakarta. It further investigates how legal awareness and moral reasoning mediate individuals’ critical engagement with manipulative digital content, and how deepfake technology is perceived and contested within Islamic legal norms emphasizing the protection of honor (ḥifẓ al-ʿird) and intellect (ḥifẓ al-ʿaql). Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from 100 respondents using purposive sampling and measured across five dimensions of digital literacy. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) via SmartPLS. The findings demonstrate that visual, informational, social–emotional, and critical digital literacy significantly contribute to the prevention of deepfake pornography, with critical thinking emerging as the most influential factor. These results suggest that digital literacy functions not merely as a technical competence but as a normative and ethical safeguard against information-based crimes that violate human dignity. The study underscores the necessity of integrating ethical, legal, and faith-based digital literacy into broader regulatory and educational frameworks, advocating a collaborative approach involving state institutions, educational actors, and community leadership to address emerging digital harms in a culturally and normatively grounded manner.