The timeline in so many of these cases tracks the gpt4o rollout www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/t...

"I am seeing a tool that’s going to be used for censorship... It’s going to be used to remove books from that are about queerness or sexuality or race or history. But institutions are going to buy this product because they have a mandate from state legislatures to do this”

Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads on Facebook are just a glimpse at the future of social media advertising. And Mark Zuckerberg? He's a fan. Welcome to the dystopic world of AI generated (and personalized) ads. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reports: Read more: www.404media.co/the-future-o...

"It's part of a fascist project to offload the work of thinking... If we can offload that cognitive work, it's far too easy to become reflexive and hateful, while having a robot cheerleader telling you that you were right about everything all along.”

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

we were overdue for some unnecessarily public and messy Automattic trademark beef www.404media.co/automattic-a...

Going to go ship a bunch of merch orders right now. Orders placed in the next ~hour will go out today. We have a bunch of new designs! And old favs! 404media.myshopify.com?srsltid=AfmB...

is a hot dog a sandwich? is cereal soup? is ravioli, dumplings? are glasses iphones????

This week on the pod, we're diving straight into Meta Ray-Bans. We'll get into: - How some people are abusing the glasses to film massage workers - A $60 mod that disables the privacy-protecting recording light in the smart glasses - The difference between a phone and a pair of smart glasses 🎧:

Do you want to support our work at Bolts? Sign up as a $5 monthly donor today, & we’ll immediately get $60 in matching funds! That’s right: The NewsMatch program, which launched on November 1, is multiplying all new monthly subscriptions by 12 right now.

Here is the app, called Mobile Identify (a variation on Mobile Fortify, which is the app CBP made for ICE we revealed). It's publicly available on the Google Play Store. It's specifically for local cops part of 287(g), the program for helping ICE detain immigrants www.404media.co/cbp-quietly-...

I’d love to be more specific about why working in the tech industry during this AI bubble is driving me crazy, but dissent isn’t exactly safe these days. Anyway, I blogged. www.aaron.mn/ideology-1-1

PSA from 404 Media: you can opt-out of a data broker selling your flight travel data to the government to be searched without a warrant. Here's how I did it. This is ARC, the data broker owned by major U.S. airlines like United, Delta, American, etc www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

......the robots are people too.... lmao what

I’m sorry, if someone has a birth certificate that proves they were born here but a mobile app with face recognition software disagrees, they will side with the app? What?

Microsoft isn't demanding these post be taken down cause Microsoft is fine with them. Microsoft donated to the White House demolition fund. @mjgault.bsky.social reached out multiple times to Microsoft for comment in his 404 piece about it and they declined to comment. That is tacit consent.

This is so bleak: www.404media.co/a16z-is-fund...

roblox legit scares me more than any other platform www.404media.co/lawsuit-accu...

Another case of a widely used dataset for AI training containing child sexual abuse material www.404media.co/ai-dataset-f...

new pfp for @mjgault.bsky.social imo www.404media.co/zennis-anti-...

Marc Andreessen, who sits on Meta's board, is funding a click farm www.404media.co/a16z-backed-...

People are opening up Meta AI Ray Ban glasses and modding out the LED recording light, then selling them on eBay. There is huge interest in disabling this functionality, which means basically you cannot trust anyone wearing these (i'm sure you already weren't) www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

some of you already doing this www.404media.co/breathing-th...

Here is the mod in action. We paid for a pair and of glasses and for the hobbyist to mod the glasses. Shows that the light is disabled, and yet taking photos/recording still works www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

So now Mark’s creeper specs do what they are intended to do and the company can claim users are circumventing the “guardrails” and violating the TOS. Everyone gets what they want, except for the rest of us, who get screwed.

people are already modding meta ray-bans to hide the light that tells other people they're being recorded www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

An urgent ask to community. Our friend and colleague @sinnamonlove.blacksky.app , who is here in Berlin for a film premiere to share her immense knowledge at panels the industry, needs our quick financial support for her beautiful family. Please donate and share! www.gofundme.com/f/help-sinna...

the women dating safety app Tea, which was breached multiple times, has been delisted from the Apple App Store www.404media.co/women-dating...

welcome to the reality of the market, sam www.404media.co/openai-sam-a...

(screaming at my computer) IT'S POOP! SAY POOP! www.404media.co/trump-no-kin...

follow @jasonkoebler.bsky.social on a journey to make not only the first @404media.co neon sign, but the first 404 Media mini-documentary: www.404media.co/how-artists-...

New from 404 Media: the same hackers who doxed hundreds of DHS, ICE, and FBI officials say they have personal data of tens of thousands more government officials, including thousands NSA, more in intel community. They sent me data from a dizzying list of agencies www.404media.co/hackers-say-...

wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

three GirlsDoPorn victims are suing some of the biggest payment processors for adult merchants, for many millions of dollars: www.404media.co/girlsdoporn-...

OpenAI has chosen the worst, weirdest possible time to embrace the fact that people want to fuck chatbots www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...

Hello~ i wrote something for @theverge.com about the surreal horror of online transness in a fascist surveillance state. it’s time to change tactics and make ourselves less legible to this machinery of death — but *without* sacrificing our connection and community.

look, sometimes you get so depressed that you upload terabytes of porn to a government computer connected to nuclear secrets so you can make better AI robot porn. Let's not make a federal case out of it!

Discounting some 404 merch this afternoon to clear out old stock: Our first logo tee is available 50% off ($18). Have a few in Medium, Large, XL. White horse tee also 50% off. just have a couple left: 404media.myshopify.com/products/404... 404media.myshopify.com/products/404...

The charging documents on this are a wild, wild ride.

the only thing people want to do on Sora, it seems, is generate images of copyrighted characters. now that they can't, they're crashing the fuck out www.404media.co/sora-2-conte...

It's laughably easy to remove the watermark from Sora 2 generated videos. 404 Media found dozens of websites and pieces of software that will do it.

love our youtube commenters

Today at 4:30 PM I'll be moderating a panel about AI and nuclear weapons. Risks? Technology? Games? The IAEA? We'll get into all of it. The expert list is stacked. Register here to watch live. secure.everyaction.com/rhSOFnj8ekO4...

Cops misled journalists about using a powerful surveillance tool to track a woman across state lines because she had an abortion, then tried to cover it up when we found out the truth. Huge story from @jasonkoebler.bsky.social and @josephcox.bsky.social this morning: www.404media.co/police-said-...

Got a tip recently about how Trump's tariffs are preventing libraries from sharing books, and causing their loaned books to get stuck or lost in other countries: www.404media.co/libraries-ca...

😑😑😑😑 www.404media.co/google-calls...

"Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move." www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

Here are screenshots of the document itself, showing that ICE considered two other companies (both of which we've covered before) but went with Penlink/Cobwebs because it's an "all-in-one" solution for location data and social media www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...