The 404 Media Podcast
The 404 Media Podcast is a weekly show from 404 Media, a journalist-owned digital media company. Hosts Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason discuss the stories they published that week, covering how technology shapes and is shaped by our world. The podcast offers investigative reporting, smart blogging, and breaking news on hidden worlds both online and IRL.
Episodes
404 Media x The Intercept LIVE: How AI Is Used to Surveil and Kill
In this bonus collaboration with our friends at The Intercept, 404 Media's Jason Koebler and the Intercept's Sam Biddle and Akela Lacy discuss the ways AI is already used to empower private surveillance companies that filter data to the government, how AI is used in war, and the prospect of an AI apocalypse. This podcast was recorded live in Los Angeles at The Loved One on September 12.
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Humans Are Reading Your ChatGPT Conversations
We start this week with Joseph’s story about the people who are reading real ChatGPT users’ prompts and conversations. He got a bunch of documents all about these contractors and saw real prompts himself. After the break, Sam tells us all about the Automattic CEO getting kicked out. Then coming back again. In the subscribers-only section, Emanuel tells us why a16z thinks enshittification is not re
Fighting for the Future of Libraries (With Jennie Rose Halperin)
This week we’re joined by Jennie Rose Halprein. Jennie is the executive director of Library Futures, a non-profit that advocates for a fair digital future for libraries and the communities they serve. We have written a bunch of stories about libraries over the years, and I have talked to Jennie a few times for those stories. I always have really interesting conversations with her, but a lot of wha
DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over
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We start this week with Joseph’s story about the secretive predictive policing units inside DHS that are analyzing Americans’ financial data and having local cops pull them over.
This Innocent Woman Spent 13 Days in Jail Because of a False Flock Hit
This week Jason talks to Lindsey Isaacs and her lawyer, Patrick McGeehan. Last year, Lindsey was falsely arrested and imprisoned after authorities used Flock’s license plate reader system to pull over the wrong person in a hit-and-run that killed three people. Lindsey spent 13 days in jail because of this screwup.
This all happened because authorities were looking for a black dodge Durango, and u
We Spoke to an Amazon Worker Destroying Books for AI
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We start this week with Emanuel’s follow-up to his Amazon book scanning story, in which he spoke to someone who worked in the Amazon warehouse which destro
How Cyber Sleuths Tracked Down a Nigerian Scammer
This week Joseph talks to Paul Raffile, a cybercrime researcher, and Erin West, founder of Operation Shamrock. The pair recently traveled to Nigeria to track down a scammer and meet a bunch more. This conversation is some fascinating insight into how scammers live, how they can be identified, and platforms like Meta’s responsibility.
I Hunted the Men Who Blackmail Children Online
Cops Are Making Fake Flock Cameras and Amazon Packages
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We start this week with Jason’s piece on a cop making a fake Flock camera to catch a vandal. How can you be charged with destroying expensive property if…
Your AI Companion Doesn’t Love You with Bridget Todd
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Tech companies want you to believe that the chatbots they profit from are the always ready, never judgemental, constantly affirming friend in our pockets. But are the people using them as companions under some kind of deep self-delusion? Or are they seeking something else?
This w
Amazon is Destroying Rare Books to Train AI
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We start this week with Emanuel’s big story about Amazon buying, and destroying, masses of books to train AI. After the break we talk about a couple of wild
The Future of Deepfakes and the Decline of Reality with Hany Farid
The past, present, and future of deepfakes, as seen by the world’s leading expert on synthetic media.
I think we’re pretty good at telling the difference between an AI generated image and a real photograph, but when I need help I call Hany Farid.
Farid is the cofounder of GetReal, a company that specializes in detecting deepfakes and other AI-generated images, and is the developer of PhotoD
Mark Zuckerberg’s 'Superintelligent' AI Future That No One Wants
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We start this week with Jason’s article about Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for Meta’s AI agents. They don't sound fun at all. After the break, Emanuel tells us how a company offe
How to Surveil the Police (with William Gude)
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This week, we talk to William Gude, who runs Film the Police LA. Film the Police LA is a YouTube channel, Instagram account, and Twitter account where William does exactly what it says in t
This Man Might Go to Prison for Wiping His Phone
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We start this week with Joseph’s article about Samuel Tunick, the man charged with allegedly wiping his phone before DHS officials could search it. It’s a wild case with a lot to unpack. After the break, Jason tells us all about a TikTok Shop scheme powered by AI. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about possibly the dum
Former Flock Employee Speaks Out: Says He Was ‘Lied To’
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This week Joseph speaks to Jonathan Paz, a former Flock employee and now candidate for Congress in Massachusetts’ 5th District. They talk all about Paz’s w
Flock Came to My Town. Here’s What I Did
We start this week with Matthew’s experience of what happened when Flock came to his small town. It’s a microcosm of what is happening all across the United States. After the break, Sam tells us about a bunch of no phone Luddite events. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains why anti-Flock influencers making up BS are bad, actually.
Our New FOIA Forum! 7/30, 1PM ET
What Happened Wh
This Man Bought Phone Location Data from Around the World
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This week Joseph talks to Mike Yeagley. As you’ll hear, he is a very interesting guy. He introduced parts of the government to the whole idea of commercially sourced location data. He s
Flock is Tracking People, Not Just Cars
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Our listeners can buy one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at https://WarbyParker.com/404 — and using our link helps support the show. #W
404 Media Live: How AI Is Destroying the Internet
404 Media teamed up with the Los Angeles Public Library's LA Made to do a live show at the LA Central Library at the end of May. Jason, Sam, and our friends Dexter Thomas and Gita Jackson talked about the ways AI is threatening workers in all industries, changing how we consume the internet, and slopifying Hollywood, video games, social media, and art.
Support Gita's work: www.aftermath.site
We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’
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Our listeners can buy one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at https://WarbyParker.com/404 — and using our link helps support the show. #WarbyParker #ad
We
Liberation, Eroticism, and Sex in Public (with Angela Jones)
Is your sex life as private and personal as you think it is? Or is it shaped by – and constantly shaping, in turn – the society and systems you exist in?
This week we’re joined by Dr. Angela Jones, who asks these questions and much more in her new book, Sex in Public. Angela is a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. In addition to scholarly works publish
How Influencers Fake Being Rich
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This week, we talk about Jason's dive into the world of LARPing, where hustlebros and influencers use fake YouTube, OnlyFans, and Stripe dashboards as "
Is the Best Game of the Year a Failure?
Remap Radio’s Rob Zacny and Emanuel dive deep into their current favorite game, Marathon, and what its middling success says about the future of games.
If you listen to the 404 Media podcast by now you probably realized that Joe and I are a little obsessed with a game called Marathon. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve played it for almost 300 hours since it was released in March.
But as much as
The Tokenpocalypse Is Here
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We start this week with Joseph’s story about the Tokenpocalypse, which is companies scrambling to stop spending so much on AI after providers started charging per AI token. After the break,
How Brands Use Reddit to Poison AI Search
This week, we're doing a deep dive into how marketing companies are poisoning AI search results by manipulating Reddit. You may remember when Google’s AI search results first launched, it recommended that people put glue on their pizza. Well that happened because it scraped a 10 year old Reddit comment. We’ve learned over the last year or so that this sort of thing can be done on purpose, and bran
If AI Is Sentient Then So Is ‘Age of Empires II
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Our listeners can buy one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at WarbyParker.com/404 — and using our link helps support the show.
We start this week with Matthew’s story about
Stopping Tech Company Censorship (with Jake Hanrahan)
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Our listeners can buy one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at WarbyParker.com/404 — and using our link helps support the show.
This week Joseph speaks to Jake Hanrahan, creator of
The Government Wants to End Anonymity on Phones
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We start this week with Joseph’s story about the FCC’s wild proposal to require peoples’ government ID numbers to even get a phone plan. The FCC is doing it to curb robocalls, but also said it would be useful for a bunch of other stuff. After the b
Meet Me at the Opsec Rave (with Imani Thompson)
This week, I’m thrilled to be joined by Imani Thompson. Imani is a digital security trainer and host of a series of events called Cache Me Outside, where she and partner orgs help people understand their personal security, divest from big tech platforms, and learn how to stay safe online. She recently hosted a “de-Googling” party and a self-doxxing rave.
We get into how platforms have tried to
Google Employees Meme About How Bad Their AI Is
We start this week with Emanuel’s story about the internal memes Google employees are making all about AI. Definitely check out some of the examples in the article or on YouTube. After the break, Jason tells us how Microsoft explicitly wants to “make people addicted” to its new AI assistant, according to an internal document. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how companies are using
It’s So Not Over for Hollywood (with Devindra Hardawar)
Emanuel talks to Devindra Hardawar about AI in Hollywood and the state of the movie industry.
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I didn’t plan it this way, but it’s a good coincidence that my interview with Devindra Hardawar is coming out on the week that the first Star Wars movie in year
Hackers Asked Meta AI To Let Them In. It Worked
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We start this week with Jason’s story about one of the wildest hacking stories in a while. Hackers simply asked Meta’s AI to change the email address on a target Instagram account, and the chatbot did so. Insane. After the break, Emanuel tells us a
A Repairable, No-Tech Tractor
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Ursa Ag is an Alberta, Canada-based company that is selling a repairable, no tech tractor. It’s not often we have companies on this podcast, but listeners of the show will know we have been covering the right to repair movement for years.
How Deepfakes Destroyed a High School
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We start this week with Sam’s deeply reported story on how deepfakes rocked a high school, and how those kids were failed at each step. After the break, Joseph tells us about BusPatrol, a company that plans to turn school buses into roaming surveil
Millions of People Are Installing Malware on Their Partners’ Phones
This week Joseph speaks to Zack Whittaker, an editor at TechCrunch. Zack has been leading coverage into the spouseware or stalkerware industry. This is malware sold to ordinary people, which they then often install on their girlfriend’s or someone else’s phone. Zack talks about the crazy scope of this problem.
Behind the stalkerware network spilling the private phone data of hundreds of thou
Boo-sters
We start this week with Sam telling us all about the commencement speeches where speakers have been praising AI, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. That did not go down well! After the break, Jason tells us how he was offered the chance to buy a bunch of images of poop to train AI (really). In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains how researchers planned to stick cameras onto presch
The Physical Politics of the Internet with Britt Paris
This week, I’m delighted to be joined by Britt Paris. Britt is a critical informatics scholar and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University’s School of Communication & Information. Her work focuses on Internet infrastructure, artificial intelligence-generated information objects, digital labor, civic data, and social epistemology. She’s also a fellow with AI Now.
The Chinese Deepfake Software Powering Scams
We start this week with Joseph’s story about how we obtained Haotian AI, a sought-after piece of realtime video deepfake software that lets you turn into anyone else during Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, or Zoom calls. After the break, Matthew tells us about some insane Yu-Gi-Oh trading card drama. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how the hard drive shortage is impacting those archiving
How the World Became a Casino (With Natasha Schüll)
The logic behind Polymarket, Kalshi and sports betting apps can be traced back to the inner workings of the slot machine.
How did we get to a point where it’s legal for anyone to bet on anything? Be it the results of a baseball game or a land war in Europe, if you have access to a credit card and a computer you can try to predict the outcome of anything that’s happening in the world and win a
Flock Used Cameras at a Children’s Gymnastics Center for a Sales Pitch
This week we start with Jason's story about Flock accessing cameras in a children's gymnastics room as a sale pitch demo. After the break, Emanuel tells us why Nature retracted a paper about the alleged benefits of ChatGPT in education. In the subscibers-only section, we talk all about the cancellation of RightsCon after pressure from the Chinese government.
City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras
The New Luddites: Why People Are Destroying Surveillance and AI Infrastructure
This week, we talk to Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, about a rash of people physically destroying AI and surveillance infrastructure. Brian puts this wave of attacks in the historical context of the Luddites, who are notoriously misunderstood and fought for worker protections against automation during the Industrial Revolution. Over the last few months, we have seen people in San
How This Trippy Image Started A Massive Conspiracy Theory
This week, Jason explains the conspiracy theory circulating behind a trippy stock image that went viral after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—was it sent here by a time traveler? (Spoiler: It was not.) Then Sam unpacks what’s happening at Arizona State University with a messy rollout of a new AI-powered tool that generates lessons by scraping professors’ lectures without their knowledge. In
Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
This week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employee of Trenchant, a government malware vendor that is supposed to only sell to the ‘good’ guys, secretly sold a bunch of hacking tools to a Russian company. Those tools, it looks like, then ended up wit
How Algorithms Make Us Feel Bad and Weird
This week Sam unpacks how social media algorithms manipulate our emotions around everything from engagement rings to wedding dresses to babies, and what it feels like getting lost in the #Weddingtok sauce, and Emanuel breaks down a satirical but functional AI tool that rips off open source software. There’s a long history in “clean room” software that’s really interesting. In the section for subsc
Why Journalists Are Leaving Big Media (with Maddy Myers)
This week, Sam is joined by Maddy Myers, editor-in-chief of Mothership. She’s also a co-host of the video games podcast Triple Click.
Maddy launched Mothership with co-founder Zoë Hannah in January. It’s a queer and women-owned independent publication that focuses on gender and games. They discuss Maddy’s early days of games journalism via a (print!) alt-weekly in Boston and then at the Mary S
How the FBI Extracted Deleted Signal Messages
We start this week with Joseph’s story on the inherent friction between secure chat apps like Signal and the phone they’re running on. Incoming message content can be stored in a phone’s internal notification database. After the break, Matthew tells us the latest about the data center pushback. Then in the subscribers’ only section, Emanuel tells us all about Marathon and its player numbers.
How the Internet Became Hell (with Whitney Phillips)
‘The Ambivalent Intent’ and ‘The Shadow Gospel’ author Whitney Phillips on how online got so bad
Why does the internet feel like it’s getting worse every single day, and why does it feel like the political landscape is getting worse in response? The answer might seem obvious, especially if you read 404 Media on a regular basis, where we’ve been documenting this decline, but it’s important to
Wildlife Cops Are Searching AI Cameras for ICE
This week we start with Jason’s story about how wildlife cops are doing Flock lookups for ICE. It shows that ICE is gaining access to this sort of information through pretty unexpected ways. After the break, Emanuel tells us all about the AI ban at Wikipedia. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down a set of vulnerabilities in the ‘secure’ chat app TeleGuard.
Wildlife Conservatio
The Lawyer Fighting Government Surveillance for 30 Years (With EFF's Cindy Cohn)
This week Jason brings you an interview he did with The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s executive director Cindy Cohn, who recently announced she would be stepping down from the legendary digital rights nonprofit after decades of service. Cindy's new book “Privacy’s Defender,” is a memoir of her work to protect Americans’ privacy and fight government surveillance.Privacy’s Defender weaves Cindy’s
Inside the AI Slop Propaganda Wars
This week Matthew Gault joins us to discuss his article about Iran’s AI slop and LEGO-focused propaganda, and why the creators chose LEGO. After the break, Jason tells us all about the new automated system in baseball and the drama it’s causing. In the subscribers-only section, Sam walks us through perhaps one of the worst sex apps of all time.
Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War
The Journalist Who Tracked Epstein Island Visitors’ Phones
This week Joseph talks to Dhruv Mehrotra, a journalist and technologist at Bloomberg. Before that, Dhruv was at WIRED, where you probably saw a ton of his interesting work. Dhruv sits in a very unusual space in journalism: he is able to both write technical tools to dig through data, or collect information, or really anything else, and is also able to just write a damn good story. That is a very u
The Company Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into Podcasts
This week we start with Emanuel’s crazy story about WebinarTV, a company that is secretly recording Zoom meetings and turning them into AI-powered podcasts. It’s nuts. After the break, Joseph tells us about the eccentric billionaire who tried to become a cocaine kingpin. In the subscribers-only section, we lament the lose of the metaverse.
1:06 - This Company Is Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meet
The Marketing Tricks of "Artificial Intelligence"
This week, Sam talks to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna about the marketing ploys of “artificial intelligence,” why ridicule works to keep big tech’s claims in check, and what makes them hopeful for the future. They’re the authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want.Dr. Alex Hanna is a writer and sociologist of technology, labor, and politics. She’s the Director o
The Disappearing DOGE Depositions
This week we start with Joseph’s series of articles about the DOGE depositions. He watched hours and hours of them, then a judge ordered them removed from YouTube. But, they’ve already been archived all over the web. After the break, Jason tells us about the AI data labelers who are fighting back. In the subscribers-only section, Jason breaks down what’s wrong with all the AI job loss research at
Google Street View's Unmappable City
There's only one city in America that isn't on Google's Street View. Documentary filmmaker Chris Parr set out to map it, using North Oak, Minnesota's byzantine rules and the help of a drone. His experience shows who gets privacy in America, and who doesn't.
'I Mapped Google’s ONLY SECRET CITY'
YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/3iGvHBr0mJw
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Le
How to Talk to Your Friend Experiencing 'AI Psychosis'
This week we start with Sam’s story discussing something that has come up a lot but no one has really answered: how do you speak to your friend or family member falling into AI psychosis? After the break, Joseph breaks down what happened when the FBI wanted data from ProtonMail. In the subscribers-only section, Emanuel tells us about the viral developers behind an app called Quittr, and how they e
Understanding Roblox’s Grooming Problem
Cecilia D’Anstasio on Roblox efforts to protect children from pedophiles.
Roblox is one of those games that is more popular than you can imagine, but unless you are of a certain age group and live in that world, you’ll rarely hear about it unless it makes the news for some terrible reason. More recently, for example, we wrote about the Tumbler Ridge shooter who created a mass shooting simula
The Depravity Economy
This week we discuss our coverage of the U.S.-Israel strikes against Iran, specifically how Polymarket and Kalshi are letting people profit from death, and that Amazon data centers were on fire after missiles hit Dubai. Then Emanuel talks about how AI translations are adding 'hallucinations' to Wikipedia articles. In the subscribers-only section, Sam tells us about a change with Amazon wishlists t
How to Detect Phone Spying Tech (with Cooper Quintin)
Joseph speaks to Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Quintin is one of the people behind Rayhunter, an easy to install tool that can detect nearby IMSI-catchers. This tech, sometimes known as Stingrays, poses as a fake cellphone tower to track a phone’s location, intercept calls and texts, and can sometimes ev
Ring Is Just Getting Started
This week we start with Jason’s follow up to Ring launching its ‘Search Party’ feature. It turns out, according to a leaked email he got, the feature is only starting with finding lost dogs. After the break, Emanuel explains why we’ve learned nothing about amplification when it comes to the recent looksmaxxing trend. In the subscribers-only section, Sam explains how Grok produced the real name of
Privacy Under Pressure (With Harlo Holmes)
In this week’s interview, Sam is joined by Harlo Holmes. Harlo is the Chief Security Programs Officer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. She’s a media scholar, software programmer, and activist.
Harlo and Sam discuss the important work she does every day, and why it’s only becoming more crucial. They also get into how to fight back against privacy nihilism, digital security practices everyone ca
Inside an AI-Powered School
This week we start with Emanuel’s wild story about Alpha School, a very hyped AI-powered school. Emanuel got leaked documents and spoke to former employees. After the break, Sam tells us what happens when someone decides to make an AI nudify OnlyFans with your likeness. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph tells us about the agencies buying GeoSpy, an AI that can geolocate photos in seconds.
What It’s Like to Be a Data Labeler Training AI
I recently traveled to Kenya for a journalism and AI conference. While I was there, I really wanted to meet with Michael Geoffrey Asia, the secretary general of the Data Labelers Association. Data Labeling is a huge job in Kenya. Data labelers are the people who train AI, and who also work on ensuring the outputs are accurate. In some cases, data labelers are themselves pretending to be AI, in ord
Ring Is Back and Scarier Than Ever
We start this week with exciting news: we bought a Super Bowl ad! For… $2,550. We explain how. After the break, Jason tells us about Ring’s recently launched Search Party feature, and gives us a very timely reminder of what Ring really is and how we got here. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down Lockdown Mode and how it kept the FBI out of a Washington Post reporter’s phone.
Timest
The Screen Time Panic Sets Parents Up to Fail
Patrick Klepek on the reality of parenting in the age of Roblox and YouTube.
I listened to hours of podcasts about how screen time affects kids of all ages and how parents should manage screen time but I still felt completely unprepared for this challenge when I had a kid.
I think the reason for that is that there’s a lot of reporting about how screens are impacting kids, and a lot of repor
The Latest Epstein Dump is a Disaster
We start this week with Sam and Emanuel’s article about the latest Epstein dump, and how it’s really a disaster in a lot of ways. After the break, Matthew runs us through Moltbot and its terrible security. After the break, Emanuel breaks down his two recent stories about a fundamental issue exposing a bunch of very sensitive data.
0:00 - Intro
2:19 - DOJ Released Unredacted Nude Images in Ep
How Identity Literally Changes What You See (with Samuel Bagg)
This week Joseph talks to Samuel Bagg, assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. Bagg recently wrote a fascinating essay, linked below, about how the problem with lots of things might be knowledge-based (people believing stuff that’s wrong or dangerous) but the solution is not more knowledge. It’s all about social identity. This is an incredibly interesting disc
Creators Worry Porn Platform Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’
We start this week with Sam’s piece about ManyVids, and how some creators believe its CEO, and the person who controls their livelihood, may be experiencing ‘AI psychosis’. After the break, Jason gives us an update on some mysterious disappearing ICE footage. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Flock and what police are being told to do: not describe what they’re using the AI cameras fo
Exposing the People Behind Deepfake Porn Sites with Bellingcat Investigator Kolina Koltai
This week, Sam is in conversation with Kolina Koltai. Kolina is an investigator, senior researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. Her investigations focus on the people and systems behind AI companies and platforms that peddle non-consensual deepfake explicit imagery. They discuss how she found herself in this field, her recent investigation uncovering the man behind two deepfake porn sites, and how i
Here’s What Palantir Is Really Building
We start this week with Joseph’s article about ELITE, a tool Palantir is working on for ICE. After the break, Emanuel tells us how AI influencers are making fake sex tape-style photos with celebrities, who can’t be best pleased about it. In the subscribers-only section, Matthew breaks down Comic-Con’s ban of AI art.
0:00 - Intro
2:16 - ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods t
How Wikipedia Will Survive in the Age of AI (With Wikipedia’s CTO Selena Deckelmann)
The Wikimedia Foundation’s chief technology and product officer explains how she helps manage one of the most visited sites in the world in the age of generative AI.
Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, and it’s never been more important.
The online, collectively created encyclopedia has been a cornerstone of the internet decades, but as generative AI started flooding every platform with AI
The ICE Tool That Tracks Entire Neighborhoods
We start this week with Joseph’s article about Webloc, a tool ICE bought that can monitor phones in entire neighborhoods. After the break, Emanuel and Sam talk about their recent coverage of Grok. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how police inadvertently unmasked millions of their surveillance targets through a Flock redaction error.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
2:50 - First Story
23
How Benn Jordan Discovered Flock's Cameras Were Left Streaming to the Internet
This week, Jason is talking to YouTuber Benn Jordan, who has done some of our favorite reporting on Flock, the automated license plate reader surveillance company. A couple months ago, he found vulnerabilities in some of Flock’s license plate reader cameras. I have been following Benn’s work for a while, and soon after that video came out, he reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some o
The People Tracking America's AI Data Centers
We start this week with Matthew’s story about an organization tracking the location of AI data centers around the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. After the break, Jason tells us all about what Grok got up to over the holiday break, and we ruminate on what the breakdown in the information ecosystem means. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about how we bought 404media.com!
Timestamps:
1:
REPLAY: Pornhub Exec Alexzandra Kekesi Discusses Pulling Out of the South, Trad Wives, and Feet Pics
On this special guest episode of the 404 Media Podcast, Sam talks to Alexzandra Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Pornhub. Kekesi started in her current role in August 2023, after working for Pornhub and its parent company for more than a decade. She joined us from Montreal, where Pornhub is headquartered. They discuss the stigma facing the adult industry, Luigi Mangione porn, the trad wife to
REPLAY: Signal's Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI
This is a special interview episode with Meredith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation. I'm sure you all know, and maybe even use, the Signal messaging app. Here we sat down with Whittaker to talk all about the state of Signal today, the threat of AI to end-to-end encryption, what backdoors actually look like, and much more. This is a wide-ranging discussion where one of the few journ
The Shifting World of OSINT (with Craig Silverman)
Joseph speaks to Craig Silverman, one of the co-founders of Indicator. Indicator is a new, independent media company that Craig runs with Alexios Mantzarlis. For years Craig has covered the world of ad fraud and disinformation using all sorts of open source intelligence (OSINT) techniques. Definitely check out Indicator at Indicator.media. The site publishes its own investigations but also tips an
We Tracked Ourselves with Exposed Flock Cameras
We start this week with Jason’s story about Flock exposing a bunch of AI-powered cameras. These cameras zoom in on people as they walk by, sometimes so closely you can read what’s on their phone screen. After the break, we talk about some of our biggest stories this year. In the subscribers-only section, we give some of our personal recommendations of games, other reporting, or just a more chill l
Landing Big Scoops as an Indie Journalist (with Marisa Kabas)
Marisa Kabas is the founder of The Handbasket, an independent newsletter and website that has been breaking stories left and right about government workers, the media business, and Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Jason and Marisa share notes Marisa about doing journalism without a big newsroom, how the media business has changed over the last decade, and why sources often prefer to talk to jour
Is Wiping a Phone a Crime?
Joseph had to use a different mic this week, that will be fixed next time! We start this week talking about a very unusual case: someone is being charged for allegedly wiping a phone before CBP could search it. There are a lot of questions remaining, but a super interesting case. After the break, we talk about Matthew’s article on an Anthropic exec forcing AI onto a queer gamer Discord. In the sub
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