The great @marisakabas.bsky.social joined the 404 Media podcast to talk indie journalist, whassup in the federal government, how media has changed over the last decade, and lots more! Please listen! www.404media.co/podcast-land...

listen here! open.spotify.com/episode/3LyK...

what are @jasonkoebler.bsky.social and i chuckling about? listen and find out! open.spotify.com/episode/3LyK...

2025 was a big year for me and a horrifying year for the country. I hitched my wagon to 404 Media and trained my eye on the tide of nightmarish AI slop that's dominating our lives. Here's some of my favorites from my first year with 404.

SCOOP: Flock left at least 60 of its AI-powered, people-tracking surveillance cameras exposed and livestreaming to the open internet. We tracked ourselves. The exposure highlights the power of these cameras and types of things they're tracking. Not just cars. www.404media.co/flock-expose...

thermal label printer is best purchase of my life and it's not particularly close

does anyone have a non stickermule sticker printing service they like for high quality stickers? like, die cut etc. would be for a large amount of stickers (like several thousand)

'Magic balls' installed by drones could conquer US market thanks to game-changing performance: 'It's never been like this'

there's a guy on tiktok who lives in boston and sings like 9 songs at karaoke every night in a basically empty bar and every song he sings is a deep cut banger. he just announced a show in NJ where he will karaoke melodrama front to back. he is living my dream life www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrtsCpU8/

sad about de brun and this seems like a loooooot to trade but i like baz

not the absolute Yankee Doodle Disrespect in the alt text

wow, great question:

this is so funny: www.404media.co/the-governme...

is this good: www.404media.co/ice-contract...

New from 404 Media: ICE just paid hundreds of thousands to company making bounty hunter AI agents. The company says its AI agents “deliver rapid acceleration in finding persons of interest and mapping their entire network.” Comes as ICE spends millions on skip tracers www.404media.co/ice-contract...

According to a WaPo spokesperson, “This is how products get built and developed in the digital age: ideation, research, design and prototyping, development, and then Beta.”

the moment we start recording our podcast is the moment that people decide to have a lawn mower racing competition in front of our apartment, the trash truck comes, a clown car fire engine drives by, the dogs start barking, etc. without fail

NEW: A Discord community for gay gamers is in disarray after one of its moderators and an executive at Anthropic forced the company’s AI chatbot, Claude, on the Discord, despite protests from members.

The quotes in this story are unreal: www.404media.co/anthropic-ex...

first few episodes of pluribus I was like “wow I love this, really awesome. not sure how they’re going to make this premise last a full season or multiple seasons” now 7 episodes in I see the strategy is like “let’s make carol getting a Gatorade take 10 minutes of screen time” excruciatingly slow

An American citizen had his face scanned by immigration agents while he was walking home from the gym in Chicago. Our story with @revealnews.org here: www.404media.co/how-a-us-cit...

usually when i get a dropbox link of photos it's from someone who has developed my film and i'm very excited. this is the opposite of that in every way. extremely cursed

Sheer Spite's US store, started after it stopped being feasible to ship to the US from Canada, is coming along well! Tell a US-american you know who likes zines? Also all these are available at wholesale rates if you know a store you'd like to see them stocked :) sheerspite.bigcartel.com

Over on @tedium.co tonight, I explain what it was like to lay out the @404media.co zine in Affinity, using WINE on Linux. Yeah, it occasionally crashed. Yes, it did try to export a 17-exabyte PDF (not WINE’s fault). But YES, it was absolutely viable. Would do again. tedium.co/2025/12/10/4...

I have some sad news to share. We lost Chris today. To everyone who helped with this, thank you. I'm so glad he got his last hurrah with his family. It's so sad though.

404 Media zine has apparently outsold American Canto. Help continue that trend here: 404media.myshopify.com/products/pre... www.404media.co/behind-the-b...

It should be noted how stupid all of this is, which is perhaps appropriate for the year 2025, in which most of the economy consists of reckless gambling on AI. People spent more than $55m betting on the Time Person of the Year on Polymarket, $19m on Kalshi. www.404media.co/architects-o...

Was just saying yesterday that even for the internet, even for rule 34, it is alarming how much disney princess ai porn is out there. glad disney has decided this is a technology worth investing in and supporting www.404media.co/disney-inves...

Porn is being injected into dozens of government websites across the country using malicious PDFs. A separate attack is hijacking govt websites to redirect to penis enlargement scams and animal vagina masturbators. Cool stuff: www.404media.co/porn-is-bein...

making bolognese and the recipe calls for dry white wine and chicken broth but we are out of both of those so it actually calls for two cans of Coors light

your birthday present: you get to stay home in florida

PETE!!

Instagram is creating 2014 Buzzfeed-style SEO headlines for your Instagram posts and guess what? They're often misleading. Thanks to @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social and @mrdang.photos for flagging this to me www.404media.co/instagram-is...

Instagram has gotten into the automated SEO spam game, exciting stuff: www.404media.co/instagram-is...

follow/support @unraveledpress.com, who has been doing really critical ICE / ICE resistance reporting

in our interview episode this week, I talked to porn historian and professional pervert Noelle Perdue about the dangers of isolating intimacy, whether the cat is entirely out of the bag, and our favorite parody porn. watch it on youtube or listen wherever you get your podz youtu.be/9eqMXBwWtkA?...

New: A CBP agent in Charlotte wore Meta Ray Bans to an immigration raid and used it to record, based on photos shared with 404 Media. We've seen them wearing these glasses before but this is the first specific evidence we have of them recording www.404media.co/border-patro...

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

A new study has found that Chattanooga, Tennessee's decision to build their own affordable community-owned fiber broadband network has driven $5.3 billion in economic benefits back to the community. From my colleague and friend @seangon.bsky.social:

another happy reader

404 Media is making a print zine! About the surveillance technologies used by ICE. 16 pages, riso printed. Shipping early January. Features reworked versions of our best reporting and a few new things. We're very excited! And hope to do more if people like it: www.404media.co/404-media-is...

the comments on reddit for this video were like “this squid isn’t that giant” and discussion about how a 40 foot squid is not that crazy or scary and I spent all morning upset about the lack of respect

I am so happy I think football is boring because the Orioles give me enough heartbreak, could not handle also caring about the Commanders or Ravens

a type of content that makes me want to launch myself into space and is huge part of why everything is so bad: TikToker goes down a “rabbit hole,” makes 9-minute video. The “rabbit hole” was she found an Eater article. The Eater journalist did all the work: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTruBS8cp/

NEW — I put together a list of independent journalism subscriptions that would make great holiday gifts. From music to politics, astronomy to alcohol, tech to social justice, there’s something for [almost] everyone. Support indie media *and* surprise and delight your loved ones! My guide:

nature is healing: a restaurant near me that just opened a year ago but sucks and is offputting in every way is closing. and the narrative on instagram/reddit is "that place sucked," not "homelessness and crime and los angeles is impossible and and and and and"

Was really fun to talk to the @eff.org about 404, Defector and indie media: youtu.be/19pQAkStncI

Episode 3 of Gate Crashing is out now! Tune in to our conversation with @jasonkoebler.bsky.social of 404 Media and @davidjroth.bsky.social of Defector about finding a new path forward for journalism: youtu.be/19pQAkStncI...

We very rarely do sales at @404media.co but today is an exception so pls consider and get all this stuff: www.404media.co/cyber-monday...

We're running a 💻 CYBER MONDAY 💻 sale. Get 25% off an annual subscription: access to all of our articles, podcasts, bonus content, FOIA Forum trainings, full text RSS feed, no ads, and support independent journalism. Get yours here: www.404media.co/cyber-monday...