The only new thing here—from a societal standpoint—is a student being expelled for a single incident of fighting (zero tolerance policies).
Bullying and blackmailing people using manipulated images dates back to the invention of the camera.
I remember when Photoshop started to become easily pirated (via AOL, LOL). Around that time, kids we using it to paste girls faces on to other naked women's bodies. I also remember news articles from when Facebook was still new, with people creating fake profiles of people and sharing similarly-manipulated images.
What we need is for kids to be taught (in school) the first rule of porn: IT IS FAKE. Bullying will never cease but at the very least we can teach kids not to react so strongly to fake, transient nonsense about them.
They need to be reminded that when someone does something like generating a deepfake of them, it has no bearing on their life until it is distributed. They need to be taught how to gather evidence and the correct places to report such things.
We don't teach kids such things in school because schools want discretion. Since schools are so obviously failing to NOT abuse their powers of discretion with zero-tolerance policies, perhaps we should take that away.
Yes. I read that. I also said what I said.
I'm failing to see the issue.
People freak TF out because things like deepfakes exist. We need to be rational about stuff like this. Manipulating photos and videos isn't going away. The only point where we can reasonably do something about it is at the point of distribution.