The Doomsday Clock, a symbol of how close humanity is to destroying itself, has moved from 89 seconds to 85 seconds, four seconds closer to “doomsday.” That is the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight.
The Doomsday Clock Ticks Closer to Midnight. Does Anyone Care?
The Doomsday Clock, a symbol of how close humanity is to destroying itself, has moved from 89 seconds to 85 seconds, four seconds closer to “doomsday.” That is the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight. That’s when, in the metaphor proposed by the keepers of the Clock, the world ends. According to the scientists and experts who oversee the ritual setting of the Doomsday Clock, the end of the world is more possible now than it’s ever been.But In 2026, I feel I don’t need the reminder.
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President Donald Trump’s masked police have executed people in the street, the last nuclear treaty between Russia and the US is about to die, and tech oligarchies are constructing massive resource-sucking datacenters to power an unwanted nuisance technology they say is a path towards a godlike super intelligence.Why watch the Clock? What is the point of keeping time? I have watched this ritual timekeeping for a decade and, I confess, I am feeling numb and cynical about it.
The Doomsday Clock began ticking in 1947, two years after Albert Einstein and a group of Manhattan Project veterans founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organization that sets the clock. For almost eight decades, generations of the world’s brightest minds have gathered once a year to tell the world how screwed it is.
Alexandra Bell, the current head of the Bulletin, said The Doomsday Clock is worth preserving, of course. Bell describes herself as a late stage Gen Xer. The Clock, she told me in a call last week, has always been a part of her life. “One of every four movies on TV was a nuclear one,” she said. The clear and iconic lines of the Clock have been present in pop culture for decades, most noticeably as a thematic image in Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic book. According to Bell, the symbol is important. “It’s clear that people respond to it. If you simply had a set of scientists deliver a statement about the state of existential risks…would it have the same global reach that the Clock does?”
Nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione also doesn’t recall a time when the Doomsday Clock wasn’t ticking away in the background of his life and work. “It’s part of the fabric of the nuclear age,” he said. Cirincione worked on military reform as a Congressional staffer for nine years before starting a long career in the nuclear world. He’s the former director of non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the retired president of the Ploughshares fund.
Cirincione wasn't exactly skeptical of the Clock when I spoke to him the day before the announcement. “The Doomsday Clock is probably the most cited measure of nuclear risk in the world today,” he said. But he did share some of my concerns. “Being so close to midnight, you’re afraid the metric loses its power,” he said.“What does it mean to go from 89 seconds to 75 seconds?”
“Here's the dilemma: I believe we are seconds away from nuclear catastrophe,” he said. “This is true. This is an accurate reflection of the risk. You can make a long list of what the risks are, but at the top of the list is that a crazy man has the sole unfettered ability to launch a nuclear war, and no one can stop him, and that is our president. That is true. He could do that this afternoon. The President of the United States is increasingly demonstrably mentally unstable, and yet, if he wanted to launch a nuclear weapon, no one could stop him.”
During an interview with New York Magazinepublished on January 26, 2026—the day before the Clock ticked forward—Trump appeared to forget the word “Alzheimer’s” when describing the health issue that felled his father. “Well, I don’t have it,” Trump said after his press secretary filled in the word for him. “I don’t think about it at all. You know why? Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”
These are not inspiring words from a man with the ability to end all life on Earth.
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Cirincione wants the Bulletin to stress Trump’s diminished mental capacity during its announcement, but he’s not hopeful they will. “What holds them back is that the natural desire of experts to be non-partisan and to not explicitly criticize a leader of a country, a leader of a political party, they don't want to be dragged into that,” he said. “Discussing the mental stability of that person that is way too sensitive for a group like the Bulletin to take on. So they will shirk from that.”During speeches and a question and answer session after the announcement, the experts at the Bulletin mentioned Trump many times. It’s clear they see him as a liar and a threat to world peace. “We’ve seen President Trump using [AI videos] to try to persuade people that things have happened that have not happened,” Steven Fetter, a member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, said. But as Cirincione predicted, they didn’t touch on his mental state.
They did, however, hit on another topic Cirincione worried they would avoid. “The biggest change in nuclear risks over the last 10 years is that seven of the nine nuclear armed states are now led by authoritarian leaders,” he said.
The rising tide of authoritarianism and nationalism were central talking points of the Bulletin’s announcement this year. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Ressa gave the keynote address of the announcement. Ressa, a journalist from the Philippines, is well aware of the world’s current horrors. Ressa reported on the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte who was a kind of proto-Trump. She said that democracy, diplomacy, and science don’t work without a shared sense of reality, what she calls the world’s operating system.
“The operating system has been corrupted, deliberately, systematically, for profit,” she said during her address. “The platforms that mediate our information were built on an extractive and predatory model. They turned our attention into a commodity and our outrage into their business model…this brings out the worst of humanity. They don't connect us, they divide us, and in that division, they've enabled the collapse of cooperation and the rise of illiberal leaders who exploit chaos. As of last year, 72 percent of the world is now under authoritarian rule.”
In her address, Ressa was critical of big tech. “The old order is not coming back,” Ressa said. “We’re witnessing something more dangerous: the fusion of state power with the tech oligarchy. The men who control the platforms that shape what billions believe have merged with the men who control governments and militaries. Might makes right is the new operating principle and they have the tools to manufacture consent or to simply drown out dissent.”
In a world where the tech company Palantir works hand in glove with ICE to figure out which neighborhoods to raid and Flock’s facial recognition technology is used liberally by police across America, Ressa’s words hit the mark more closely than the threat of nuclear weapons. And maybe that’s what I’m feeling too: the sense that nuclear weapons, like the Clock, are a nostalgic fear in the face of Big Tech overreach and the rise of authoritarianism.
And yet. The United States is set to spend trillions of dollars on new and different kinds of nuclear weapons. In less than two weeks, the last remaining treaty that limits the amount of deployed nuclear weapons in America and Russia will expire. Trump has threatened to test nuclear weapons again. China is building more nukes. Multiple countries, including South Korea, have expressed interest in acquiring their own nukes.
The risk of nuclear annihilation can feel abstract and overwhelming. The world has built a series of complicated and interconnected systems that allow a handful of people to destroy everything. When facing the totality of these weapons I feel like the protagonist of a Lovecraft story. I am struck dumb by horrors beyond my comprehension.
Best, then, to keep the metaphors simple. “Other people have tried,” Cirincione said. “None of them have come close to the traction of the Clock. So, the best argument for keeping the Clock is that it works and it has a proven track record, and you'd be foolish to give up that symbol now.”
Bell said that more people are paying attention to the Clock than ever before. She tells me that traffic is up at the Bulletin’s website and more people are reading about nuclear weapons, climate change, and the existential risks of technology like AI. The Clock, Bell said, is still connecting with people. “It’s not just a warning, it’s a call to action,” she said. “The fact that it’s not midnight yet means we have time to fix these problems.”
I ask her how close the Clock has to tick down to midnight before the metaphor breaks down.
“I hope we never have to find out,” she said. “Every metaphorical second counts.”
So the Clock ticks on. Four seconds closer now.
“How long can we go? We go until midnight,” Bell said.
Troubled Sentinel ICBM Program Still Being Restructured Nearly Two Years After Cost Breach
A top Air Force general sees a long future for Sentinel after it enters service, but there is still a lengthy road ahead to get there.Joseph Trevithick (The War Zone)
In posts to the platforms news feed, ManyVids — and seemingly, its founder Bella French — wrote that the answer could be a three hour long conversation with podcasters like Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman. #porn #AI
Amid Backlash, Massive Porn Platform ManyVids Doubles Down on Bizarre, AI-Generated Posts
Faced with concerns about its leadership experiencing AI-induced delusions, backlash because its founder stating she now finds sex work “exploitative,” and confusion from its millions of creators and users, porn platform ManyVids is doubling down on the AI-generated messaging with posts about “believing in aliens.” In a post seemingly by the platform’s founder Bella French, she says the answer should be “a 3-hour long-form podcast conversation.”This comes after the platform promised more clarity into how creators would be affected.
In the past few months, as 404 Media reported last week, ManyVids has increasingly turned to posting bizarre, clearly AI text and videos about imaginary conversations with aliens, French as an astronaut floating toward a black hole, and photos of hand-scrawled plans to convert the site to a tiered safe-for-work funnel, versus what makes it popular today: access to adult content from sex workers. French also recently changed her website to state she doesn’t believe the adult industry should exist, causing many online sex workers to question whether the site will remain a viable option for their income.
💡
Do you work on or for an adult content platform and have a tip? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.When I asked ManyVids for clarity on French’s statements—specifically on how she plans to “transition one million people” out of sex work, and if any of this will affect the millions of creators and fans who use the platform—someone replied from the support staff: “We are not victims — and we are taking action now,” the statement said. I asked what “taking action” means, and they replied assuring me that all would become clear on January 24, when a post would be published on the ManyVids news feed “It will provide additional clarification and go into a bit more detail on this,” they said. ManyVids published several posts on Saturday. None of them include additional clarification, all of them seem to be AI-generated, and they introduce more questions instead of answers.
Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’
“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media.404 MediaSamantha Cole
“MV is an 18+ pop-culture, e-commerce social platform — and part of the job-creation economy of the future,” one post on the 24th said. “Our diverse offering of NSFW & SFW creators is a strength. How did we get here? Why SFW matter? [sic] How can online sex workers be recognized by society with the same legitimacy and respect as any other form of labor? After 15 years of reflection — 3 years as a performer and 12 years as a CEO — I believe a 3-hour long-form podcast conversation is the best way to explain the why, the numbers, the logic, and the how behind this work. Today’s stigma, debanking, deplatforming, and prejudgment punish online SW without giving them a fair chance to be heard. Protection comes from building better systems and creating more options.”The post ended with the hashtag “#MaybeLexFridman,” referring to the popular podcaster.
A second post that day features an AI-generated video of French as a fireman with laser eyes. “At ManyVids, we believe in a Human-Centered Economy (HCE) — where merit and meaning are preserved because they matter,” the post says. “The job-creation network of the future, for humans who want to monetize their passions.” It goes on to mention, but not explain, a fictional concept called “Universal Bonus Intelligence.”
The post concludes: “MV - Made by Humans & AI. For Humans.”
And in a third post that day, with a collage of photos and AI-generated versions of French in different occupations, including astronaut and firefighter: “At ManyVids, we choose slow truth over quick certainty. We aim to help open hearts and minds toward differences.”
That post ends with: “Bella French. Co-Founder & Still-Standing CEO #RespectOnlineSexWorkers #Innovation #Since2014”
Screenshot from ManyVids' news feed
In the two days since, ManyVids has posted several more times. In one titled “A Message from the Green Tara,” referencing a figure in Buddhism: “So yeah... dragons are real. 😜🐉🔥 #MaybeJoeRogan” In another about Lilith, a fictional character from religious folklore: “Not Heaven. Not Hell. A 3rd option: no old binaries: a new garden built by outcasts. Yeah... We Are Many. And we deserve better. ✨🔥 #MVMag13 #WeAreMany #MaybeJordanPeterson”And in the platform’s most recent post: A huge thank you to everyone who has ever been part of the MV Team and the MV Community. 💖 You are FOREVER family. 💖 💖 Un gros merci du fond du cœur. 💖 From your favorite pop culture platform for adults that also 100% believes in aliens. 👽🖖🏾✨😉” This is a reference to concerns from the community about previous posts featuring imaginary conversations with aliens.
ManyVids did not respond to my requests for comment about these recent posts.
ManyVids: Monetize Your Passion — Content Creation Freedom — Explore Diversity — A Social E-Commerce One-Stop-Shop
Enjoy a judgment-free ecosystem where you can celebrate and monetize your passions! Join FREE today!www.manyvids.com
What happens when a platform operator changes their tune; the continuing mystery of deleted (or lost, who knows) DHS footage; and what police are being told to do about Flock.#Podcast
Podcast: 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 for.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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Timestamps:0:00 - Intro
2:41 - Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’
32:12 - DHS Says Critical ICE Surveillance Footage From Abuse Case Was Actually Never Recorded, Doesn't Matter
- Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’
- Amid Backlash, Massive Porn Platform ManyVids Doubles Down on Bizarre, AI-Generated Posts
- DHS Says Critical ICE Surveillance Footage From Abuse Case Was Actually Never Recorded, Doesn't Matter
- Police Told to Be ‘as Vague as Permissible’ About Why They Use Flock
The 404 Media Podcast
Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …Apple Podcasts
Hundreds of thousands of users told the app intimate details about their sexual urges, which are now exposed.#News
App for Quitting Porn Leaked Users' Masturbation Habits
An app that purports to help people stop consuming pornography has exposed highly sensitive data, including its users’ masturbation habits. Some of the data exposed includes the users’ age, how often they masturbate, and how viewing pornography makes them feel. According to the data, many of them are minors.An example of the personal data of one user said they were “14,” that their “frequency” of porn consumption was “several times a week,” with a maximum of three times a day, and that their “triggers” were “boredom” and “Sexual Urges.” This user was given a “dependence score” and listed their “symptoms” as “Feeling unmotivated, lack of ambition to pursue goals, difficulty concentrating, poor memory or ‘brain fog.’”
We’re not naming the app because the developer has not fixed the issue, which was discovered by an independent security researcher who asked to remain anonymous. The researcher first flagged the issue to the creator of the app in September. The creator of the app said he would fix the issue quickly, but didn’t. The issue is a misconfiguration in the app’s usage of the mobile app development platform Google Firebase, which by default makes it easy for anyone to make themselves an “authenticated” user who can access the app’s backend storage where in many instances user data is stored.
Overall, the researcher said he could access the information of more than 600,000 users of the porn quitting app, 100,000 of which identified as minors.
The app also invites users to write confessions about their habits. One of these read: “I just can't do this man I honestly don't know what to do know more, such a loser, I need serious help.”
When reached for comment by phone, the creator of the app told me he had talked to the researcher but that the app never exposed any user data because of a misconfigured Google Firebase, and that the researcher could have faked the data I reviewed.
“There is no sensitive information exposed, that's just not true,” the founder told me. “These users are not in my database, so, like, I just don't give this guy attention. I just think it's a bit of a joke.”
When I asked the founder why he previously thanked the researcher for responsibly disclosing the misconfiguration and said he would rush to fix it, he wished me a good day and hung up.
After the call, I created an account on the app, which the researcher was able to see appear in the misconfigured Google Firebase, showing that user information is still exposed.
This Google Firebase misconfiguration issue has been known and discussed by security researchers for years, and is still common today.
Dan Guido, CEO of the cybersecurity research and consulting firm Trail of Bits, told me in an email that this Firebase misconfiguration issue is “a well known weakness” and easy to find. He recently noted on X that Trail of Bits was able to make a tool with Claude to scan for this vulnerability in just 30 minutes.
“If anyone is best positioned to implement guardrails at scale, it is Google/Firebase themselves. They can detect ‘open rules’ in a user's account and warn loudly, block production configs, or require explicit acknowledgement,” he said. “Amazon has done this successfully for S3.” S3 is a cloud storage product from AWS that in the past was frequently exposing sensitive data because of a similar misconfiguration issue.
The researcher who discovered the misconfiguration in the app, also said that the issue is the default setting in Google Firebase, but noted that Apple should review apps for these security issues before allowing them into the App Store.
“Apple will literally decline an app from the App Store if a button is two pixels too wide against their design guidelines, but they don't, and they don't check anything to do with the back end database security you can find online,” he said.
Apple and Google did not respond to a request for comment.
DHS Says Critical ICE Surveillance Footage From Abuse Case Was Actually Never Recorded, Doesn't Matter#ICE
DHS Says Critical ICE Surveillance Footage From Abuse Case Was Actually Never Recorded, Doesn't Matter
The Department of Homeland Security now says that two weeks of critical surveillance footage from within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s Broadview detention center wasn’t actually lost in a “system crash,” but rather, was never recorded in the first place. It is also arguing that, had the footage been recorded, it would be irrelevant because prisoner living conditions have improved since the time it was supposed to be recorded.The filings, made by U.S. attorneys on behalf of Greg Bovino, Kristi Noem, and other DHS officials, are the latest in an ongoing class action lawsuit against the U.S. government filed by detainees at the Chicago-area ICE detention center. The people suing the government in this case argue that they were held in subhuman, illegal conditions at Broadview: “They are denied sufficient food and water […] the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable […] the physical conditions are filthy, with poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids, and insects in the sinks and the floor […] federal officers who patrol Broadview under Defendants’ authority are abusive and cruel,” their complaint reads in part.
As we have reported, the plaintiffs’ lawyers have been trying to get the government to produce nearly two weeks worth of surveillance footage from inside the detention center from between October 20 and October 31, 2025, which was a critical period where ICE was detaining people en masse in Chicago. The government first said that the footage had been “irretrievably destroyed,” but that it was working with its vendor, a one-person company called Five by Five, to try to recover it. In a later filing, it said that the footage was lost due to a nonspecific “system crash.”
In its most recent filing, however, the government claims that the footage was never recorded in the first place and, furthermore, it would appreciate if the plaintiffs would stop asking for it because it would be of “marginal relevance” anyway:
“The Broadview video surveillance footage for October 20 to October 31, 2025, is not missing. Rather, due to a technical issue, the Video System failed to record video or audio footage during that period. Contractors manage the system for the defendants. An employee of the contractor with personal knowledge of events explained during a meeting with counsel of record how he discovered that the System did not record footage from October 20 to October 31, 2025,” the government’s attorneys wrote. “His explanation of events eviscerates any vestigial relevance of plaintiffs’ Third Set of discovery requests which assumes that spoliation occurred in this case.”
“As plaintiffs are aware, their allegations of negligence or spoliation of the video footage at Broadview are unfounded,” they added. “The video system did not record any footage from October 20th to 31st (in the morning) due to equipment malfunction or failure. So, plaintiffs’ suggestion that information about the video system is necessary because the ‘circumstances under which this footage was lost or not recorded remain unclear’ is simply false … It is beyond the scope of discovery for plaintiffs to assume the role of ‘quality service inspectors’ for the video system at Broadview. Defendants should not be compelled to produce information calculated to show whether the failure to record was due to poor maintenance practices”
The Department of Justice’s lawyers wrote that the court needs to “rein in plaintiffs’ attempt to seek discovery beyond what is is necessary,” and that its efforts to obtain various information such as “document retention policies, failure of the video system at Broadview to record footage, and efforts to respond to discovery are inappropriate. The requests plaintiffs seek to enforce in their motion are highly objectionable.”
In a separate filing from earlier this month, DOJ lawyers argued that the court should limit the scope of information that it is required to produce for the case and that the court should not focus on what the conditions at Broadview were in the past, but it should focus on what they are in the present because a temporary restraining order from the court required the government to improve detainee conditions: “Discovery on past—rather than current—conditions at Broadview are unproductive. During weekly visits to Broadview, plaintiffs’ counsel must have observed current conditions of confinement at the facility and interviewed individuals who were there to be processed. The conditions of confinement at Broadview, which, as the court is aware, are vastly changed since the [temporary restraining order] was entered and do not now present the issues that existed earlier,” they wrote. “Plaintiffs continue to insist on discovery about past conditions that is not necessary.”
“As some plaintiffs’ counsel will have observed during their in-person visits, the conditions at Broadview are no longer what they were when this complaint was filed,” they added. “Things have changed at Broadview drastically, with it returning to be a very short-term processing center without overnight stays. The scope and urgency of plaintiffs’ multiple discovery requests are no longer proportional to the needs of the case as it exists, if they ever were […] this historical information is unhelpful to the court as it decides whether current conditions at Broadview violate the U.S. Constitution.”
Meanwhile, a filing by attorneys for the plaintiff, from the MacArthur Justice Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, and the Eimer Stahl law firm, provides more details about how janky Broadview’s surveillance system allegedly was and highlights why the lost footage is critically important. The attorneys note that there is an “enormous gap in footage from October 20 to 31 (in the morning), when Plaintiffs were at Broadview and unconstitutional conditions were at their apex. The circumstances under which this footage was lost or not recorded remain unclear, and Plaintiffs are investigating the possibility of spoliation warranting an adverse inference against Defendants regarding conditions at Broadview during this time.”
According to court records, the system was managed by a company called Five by Five Management, LLC, which is a “one-person firm,” as well as another contractor who is not named in the filing. Apparently there was a server that crashed on October 20, which led to footage not being recorded, but information about how or why this happened is “in the government’s hands,” the plaintiffs attorneys wrote.
Other important information is on something the court is calling the “old server,” which is a server that is owned by Five by Five Management and was disconnected on November 24; the plaintiffs’ attorneys say that they are having trouble getting information from that server, and that Five by Five Management wants to be paid for it.
The filing states that the government and attorneys for the plaintiffs asked Five by Five for a written plan to recover as much data from the old server as possible, but that it was “short on technical detail, and it requested a substantial monetary payment for the project plus indemnification from all parties. These are non starters”
“The Old Server is Government property and Defendants are responsible for producing the discoverable data that exists on it,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “Defendants cannot punt to their contractor and require Plaintiffs to make a deal with Five by Five in order to obtain information that Defendants own and control. Thus, even as to responsive information that may actually be stored on the Old Server, Plaintiffs are nowhere near getting access.”
The owner of Five by Five Management is set to be deposed in the case on Thursday. The judge in the case rejected much of the government’s argument and said that it needs to respond in detail about what happened to the video. The court records used to report this story can be found here.
Starting February 2, many people connecting from the UK will not be able to access the porn site and many others.#ageverification
Many UK Users Soon Won't Be Able to Access Pornhub
Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and many of the most popular adult sites in the world, announced today that starting February 2 it will restrict people visiting the site from the UK.In a call on Tuesday, leadership at Aylo and Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which acquired Aylo in 2023, said that after six months of complying with the UK’s Online Safety Act, it’s made the choice to restrict access in the country entirely. People who have already verified their ages with the current verification system will still be able to access those sites using login credentials, but anyone who hasn’t already done so by February 2 will be blocked entirely.
“Anyone who has not gone through that process prior to February 2 will no longer be able to access [the sites] and they're going to be met with a wall,” Alexzandra Kekesi, VP Brand and Community at Aylo, said. “Basically, their journey on our platform will start and end there.” Users on paid sites will be able to access those sites if they’re logged in; this restriction applies to Aylo’s free video sharing platforms.
“When ECP acquired Aylo in March of 2023, one of our most important commitments was to work with regulators and industry, adult and mainstream, in order to find a solution to keep minors from accessing explicit content online,” Solomon Friedman, partner and vice president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, said in the call. “That remains a key focus of our attention today. ECP does not wish for one single minor to be able to access adult content, not just on a levels platforms, but on any adult platforms. It unfortunately is disheartening that regulators have not been given the legislative tools that they need, and instead, have been provided with really flawed sets of laws that in some jurisdictions were never intended to succeed.”
Until now, UK-based visitors to Aylo sites have complied with the UK’s Online Safety Act by verifying ages by entering a credit card, or uploading a government ID or other identification to an age estimation system called All Pass Trust. The Online Safety Act, which took effect in 2025, is similar to many laws in US states that keep users from accessing porn unless they upload an ID or pass biometric face scanning. In the UK, the law requires sites to implement age verification or face millions of dollars in fines and jail—or up to 10 percent of global revenues, whichever is higher.
Since going into effect, the Online Safety Act has fundamentally changed how people use the internet in the UK. Right after being implemented, platforms like Reddit, Bluesky, Spotify and others have been required to verify the ages of users to various degrees and to access various types of content—not just porn sites.
“We have seen six months of failure out of the United Kingdom, once again, not because OFCOM is failing, but because the law is failing,” Friedman said. “And for that reason, from the ECP perspective, as the ownership group of Aylo, we want laws around the world that protect children.”
As part of the call, ECP and Aylo presented a demonstration of device-based age assurance, which Alyo, the adult industry, and anti-child exploitation organizations has said is a safer, more effective way to keep children from accessing adult material.
Spotify Is Forcing Users to Undergo Face Scanning to Access Explicit Content
Submit to biometric face scanning or risk your account being deleted, Spotify says, following the enactment of the UK's Online Safety Act.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
The documents show law enforcement sees themselves as being consistently and universally under threat from the people it is supposed to protect.#Flock
Police Told to Be ‘as Vague as Permissible’ About Why They Use Flock
Police officers are being told to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not leak sensitive information via public records requests, according to records obtained using a public records request. The warning originated from a Houston-area police intelligence center that includes members of the FBI and ICE and suggests without evidence that people are using a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com to “potentially retaliate against law enforcement.”The warnings were shared with 404 Media by researchers from Southerners Against Surveillance Systems and Infrastructure and Lucy Parsons Lab after our article about police unwittingly leaking the details of millions of surveillance targets nationwide due to public records redaction errors made by several Flock automated license plate reader system customers. This data was aggregated into a searchable tool called HaveIBeenFlocked.
Rather than looking at this incident as a huge operational security failure associated with using a massive commercial surveillance system, police see this as something that puts their officers directly in harm’s way. The data released by police departments includes the agency doing a search, the officer’s name, time of search, the license plate searched, and a “reason” field, which is the justification for doing a specific search.
In an “Officer Safety Situational Awareness Bulletin,” the Houston Investigative Support Center, an intelligence apparatus consisting of members of Houston-area police departments, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations told members that HaveIBeenFlocked “poses a significant officer safety risk to law enforcement personnel because suspects can determine if they are the target of an investigation and potentially retaliate against law enforcement and/or those cooperating with law enforcement.”
It goes on to say in a “recommendations for Flock Users/Agency Administrators” section that “Flock Administrators should ensure that the reason for the query be as vague as permissible,” with a suggestion being that cops just write “investigation” as the reason for a search."A group of self-styled privacy advocates have filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to obtain agency Flock audit logs," the warning reads. "The Flock system itself has not been compromised. Currently, this information appears to be coming from Washington State, Colorado, California, Georgia, Illinois, and Virginia. Agencies in these states held data from other jurisdictions pertaining to inquiries that had been made against the national Flock platform. The data on the website is not 'real time' and, as of December 8, 2025, the most recently confirmed data appeared to be from late October 2025."
A member of the FBI also sent the warning from the Houston Investigative Support Center to Atlanta-area police, according to an email obtained via public records request and shared with 404 Media. In another email, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation-GISAC, which is an Atlanta-area fusion center, issued a similar warning and said that a fusion center in Illinois had done the same. Fusion centers are intelligence sharing centers in which state and local police partner with federal agencies. "This website, and others like it, poses obvious risks to officer safety, operational security, and investigative integrity. Do not use your department systems to check these sites, as their ability to pull data and leave behind code is suspect." This email also warns agencies they "should consider reviewing their current license plate reader permissions and seek guidance from their respective customer service representative for any software they have."
The Georgia fusion center warning was then further shared by a member of the United States Department of Justice, the emails show.
The flurry of warnings highlight just how bad of an operational security screwup Flock's information sharing design was, leaving the investigations of thousands of police departments vulnerable to a redaction error by any single one of its customers. It further highlights how law enforcement see themselves as being consistently and universally under threat from the people it is supposed to protect. This is a narrative we have seen tragically play out in Minneapolis as legal observers shot dead in the streets by ICE have been branded "domestic terrorists" who were threatening ICE agents by the Trump administration despite video evidence showing this was not the case.
ICE has also been obsessed with not revealing the identity of its officers, with its agents wearing masks during raids, refusing to give their names or ID numbers, and the agency refusing to reveal the names of agents during court proceedings. The warnings issued by fusion centers about Flock show that this obsession with secrecy and officer anonymity is filtering down to the state and local level, because Flock is most often used by local police.
The suggestion that officers should be as “vague as permissible” about why they are using Flock is also a problem. Police currently do not get a warrant to use Flock, and have revealed that they use it for legitimate investigations, but also for all sorts of other purposes. Flock search audit logs have been used to reveal officers who have used the system to allegedly illegally stalk people and have been used to reveal informal cooperation between local police and ICE, as well as the search for a woman who had an abortion. We revealed last year that some of these searches were illegal in some states where they were conducted. An analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, meanwhile, showed that many police officers do not put any reason at all for their Flock search.
Flock Officer Safety-Situational Awareness Bulletin - Houston HIDTA - December 2025 Redacted | DocumentCloud
DocumentCloud
Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime
Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.Jason Koebler (404 Media)
Nearly half of routinely-updated CDC databases have experienced delays or shutdowns in 2025, with vaccination-related systems disproportionately affected, according to a new study.#TheAbstract
Dozens of CDC Health Databases Have Gone Dark Under Trump: ‘The Consequences Will Be Dire’
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Researchers are raising alarms over “unexplained pauses” that have interrupted dozens of U.S. federal health surveillance databases covering vaccinations and overdose deaths during the second Trump administration. The breakdown is creating critical gaps in public health according to a study published on Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine.
During 2025, nearly half (46 percent) of 82 routinely-updated databases managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experienced delays or total cessations of new data, an interdisciplinary team reports in their new audit. The majority (87 percent) of the affected databases monitor vaccination-related topics, and most experienced data blackouts for a period of more than six months as of late October 2025.
“Such long pauses may have compromised evidence for decision making and policies by clinicians, administrators, professional organizations, and policymakers,” wrote the researchers led by Jeremy W. Jacobs, an assistant professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“Without current data on disease burden, vaccination coverage, behavioral health indicators, and demographic disparities, clinicians cannot identify emerging threats or focus on meeting the needs of specific populations,” the team continued. “Without safeguards, unexplained pauses in surveillance undermine evidence-based medicine and erode public trust at a time when both are critically needed.”
The affected CDC databases collect surveillance information from hospitals, research centers, and other sources to monitor dangerous situations—like infectious disease outbreaks or upticks in drug overdoses—and provide real-time aid and guidance to assist local health authorities. As of December 2025, only one of the paused databases identified in the October survey had been updated.
Over the course of the past year, the team wrote, federal health databases have seen "unprecedented removal and undocumented alteration.” They speculated that the interruptions are related to the Trump administration’s major cuts to federal staff and budgets across the U.S. government, including at the CDC and the National Institute of Health, which likely played a role in disrupting data collection and updates to technical infrastructure.
The disproportionate impact on vaccination-related databases also reflect the priorities of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, who has spread misinformation about vaccines, reduced the childhood vaccine schedule, and fired leading scientific advisors and CDC officials who have pushed back on his views.
“Vaccination tracking is particularly vulnerable because it requires ongoing coordination across federal, state, and health care system data sources,” the researchers said. “Vaccination surveillance identifies groups with greater challenges to access and equity by stratifying by age, race and ethnicity, geographic jurisdiction, and insurance coverage. The ability to address these disparities has been compromised precisely when such information is most needed to counter misinformation and target outreach.”
In an editorial published alongside the study, Jeanne Marrazzo, a physician and CEO of the Infectious Disease Society of America, called the new study “damning” and said it exposed “tampering with evidence” and “selective silencing." She warns that the loss of updated data in these systems could lead to “dire” consequences, including delayed responses to disease outbreaks, and a loss of public trust in federal health institutions.
“The administration’s antivaccine stance has interrupted the reliable flow of the data we need to keep Americans safe from preventable infections,” said Marrazzo, who was not an author of the study.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, who has stated baldly that the CDC failed to protect Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she warned. “The CDC as it currently exists is no longer the stalwart, reliable source of public health data that for decades has set the global bar for rigorous public health practice.”
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.
The algorithm is driving AI-generated influencers to increasingly weird niches.#News #AI #Instagram
Two Heads, Three Boobs: The AI Babe Meta Is Getting Surreal
Over the weekend, one of the weirder AI-generated influencers we’ve been following on Instagram escaped containment. On X, several users linked to an Instagram account pretending to be hot conjoined twins. With two yassified heads and often posing in bikinis, Valeria and Camelia are the Instagram perfect version of the very rare but real condition.On X, just two posts highlighting the absurdity of the account gained over 11 million views. On Instagram, the account itself has gained more than 260,000 followers in the six weeks since it first appeared, with many of its Reels getting millions of views.
Valeria and Camelia’s account doesn’t indicate this anywhere, but it’s obviously AI generated. If you’re wondering why someone is spending their time and energy and vast amounts of compute pretending to be hot conjoined twins, the answer is simple: money. Valeria and Camelia’s Instagram bio links out to a Beacons page which links out to a Telegram channel whey they sell “spicy” content. Telegram users can buy that content with “stars,” which users can buy in packages that cost up to $2,329 for 150,000 stars.
Joining the channel costs 692, and the smallest package of stars the channel sells is 750 stars for $11.79. The channel currently has only 225 subscribers, so without counting whatever content it's selling inside the channel, at the moment it seems it has generated at least $2,652.75. That’s not bad for an operation anyone can spin up with a few prompts, free generative AI tools, and a free Instagram account.
In its Instagram Stories, Valeria and Camelia’s account answers a series of questions from followers where the person behind them constructs an elaborate backstory. They’re 25, raised in Florida, and talk about how they get stares in public because of their appearance.
“We both date as one and both have to be physically and emotionally attracted to the same guy," the account wrote. "We tried dating separately and that did not go well."
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Have you seen other surreal AI-generated Instagram influencer accounts? I would love to hear from you. Send me an email at emanuel@404media.co.Valeria and Camelia are the latest trend in what we at 404 Media have come to call “the AI babe meta.” In 2024, Jason and I wrote about people who are AI-generating influencers to attract attention on Instagram, then sell AI-generated nude images of those same personalities on platforms like Fanvue. As more people poured into that business and crowded the market, the people behind these AI-generated influencers started to come up with increasingly esoteric gimmicks to make their AI-influencers stand out from the crowd. Initially, these gimmicks were as predictable as the porn categories on Pornhub—“MILFs” etc—but things escalated quickly.
For example, Jason and I have been following an account that has more than 844,000 followers, where an influencer pretends to have three boobs. This account also doesn’t indicate that it’s AI generated in its bio, despite Instagram’s policy requiring it, but does link out to a Fanvue account where it sells adult content. On Fanvue, the account does tag itself as being AI-generated, per the platform’s rules. I’ve previously written about a dark moment in the AI babe meta where AI-generated influencers pretended to have down syndrome, and more recently the meta was pretending to be involved in sexual scandals with any celebrity you can name.
Other AI babe metas we have noticed over the last few months include female AI-generated influencers with dwarfism, AI-generated influencers with vitiligo, and amputee AI-generated influencers (there are several AI models designed specifically to generate images of amputees).
I think there are two main reasons the AI babe meta has gone in these directions. First, as Sam wrote the week we launched 404 Media, the ability to instantly generate any image we can describe with a prompt in combination with natural human curiosity and sex drive, will inevitably drive porn to the “edge of knowledge.” Second, it’s obvious in retrospect, but the same incentives that work across all social media, where unusual, shocking, or inflammatory content generally drives more engagement, clearly applies to the AI babe meta as well. First we had generic AI influencers. Then people started carving out different but tame niches like “redheads,” and when that stopped being interesting we ended up with two heads and three boobs.
The Community Pushing AI-Generated Porn to ‘the Edge of Knowledge’
A small group of AI porn hobbyists are generating grotesque images that defy physical reality, and baffle academics.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
Bellingcat's Kolina Koltai talks about OSINT investigations into synthetic abuse imagery sites, and seeing them go down because of her work.
Bellingcatx27;s Kolina Koltai talks about OSINT investigations into synthetic abuse imagery sites, and seeing them go down because of her work.#Podcast
Podcast: Unmasking Deepfakes Kingpins (with Kolina Koltai)
In this week's interview episode, Sam talks to 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.Kolina walks us through how a OSINT investigation into non-consensual AI imagery site administrators work, why it's up to journalists to find these guys, and how it feels to see real, important impact from her investigations. She shares how she found herself in this field, and a behind the scenes look into her recent investigation uncovering the man behind two deepfake porn sites.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
youtube.com/embed/CbmUwwVGaf4?…
- Unmasking MrDeepFakes: Canadian Pharmacist Linked to World’s Most Notorious Deepfake Porn Site
- Profiting From Exploitation: How We Found the Man Behind Two Deepfake Porn Sites
- Behind a Secretive Global Network of Non-Consensual Deepfake Pornography
Behind a Secretive Global Network of Non-Consensual Deepfake Pornography - bellingcat
An online video game marketplace says it has referred user accounts to legal authorities after a Bellingcat investigation found nonconsensual pornographic deepfake tokens were being surreptitiously sold on the site.Kolina Koltai (bellingcat)
What began as a joke got a little too real. So I shut it down for good.#News #AI
I Replaced My Friends With AI Because They Won't Play Tarkov With Me
It’s a long standing joke among my friends and family that nothing that happens in the liminal week between Christmas and New Years is considered a sin. With that in mind, I spent the bulk of my holiday break playing Escape From Tarkov. I tried, and failed, to get my friends to play it with me and so I used an AI service to replace them. It was a joke, at first, but I was shocked to find I liked having an AI chatbot hang out with me while I played an oppressive video game, despite it having all the problems we’ve come to expect from AI.And that scared me.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
If you haven’t heard of it, Tarkov is a brutal first person shooter where players compete over rare resources on a Russian island that resembles a post-Soviet collapse city circa 1998. It’s notoriously difficult. I first attempted to play Tarkov back in 2019, but bounced off of it. Six years later and the game is out of its “early access" phase and released on Steam. I had enjoyed Arc Raiders, but wanted to try something more challenging. And so: Tarkov.Like most games, Tarkov is more fun with other people, but Tarkov’s reputation is as a brutal, unfair, and difficult experience and I could not convince my friends to give it a shot.
404 Media editor Emanuel Maiberg, once a mainstay of my Arc Raiders team, played Tarkov with me once and then abandoned me the way Bill Clinton abandoned Boris Yeltsin. My friend Shaun played it a few times but got tired of not being able to find the right magazine for his gun (skill issue) and left me to hang out with his wife in Enshrouded. My buddy Alex agreed to hop on but then got into an arcane fight with Tarkov developer Battlestage Games about a linked email account and took up Active Matter, a kind of Temu version of Tarkov. Reece, steady partner through many years of Hunt: Showdown, simply told me no.
I only got one friend, Jordan, to bite. He’s having a good time but our schedules don’t always sync and I’m left exploring Tarkov’s maps and systems by myself. I listen to a lot of podcasts while I sort through my inventory. It’s lonely. Then I saw comic artist Zach Weinersmith making fun of a service, Questie.AI, that sells AI avatars that’ll hang out with you while you play video games.
“This is it. This is The Great Filter. We've created Sexy Barista Is Super Interested in Watching You Solo Game,” Weinersmith said above a screencrap of a Reddit ad where, as he described, a sexy Barista was watching someone play a video game.
“I could try that,” I thought. “Since no one will play Tarkov with me.”
This is it. This is The Great Filter. We've created Sexy Barista Is Super Interested in Watching You Solo Game (SBISIIWYS).
— Zach Weinersmith (@zachweinersmith.bsky.social) 2026-01-20T13:44:22.461Z
This started as a joke and as something I knew I could write about for 404 Media. I’m a certified AI hater. I think the tech is useful for some tasks (any journalist not using an AI transcription service is wasting valuable time and energy) but is overvalued, over-hyped, and taxing our resources. I don’t have subscriptions to any majors LLMs, I hate Windows 11 constantly asking me to try CoPilot, and I was horrified recently to learn my sister had been feeding family medical data into ChatGPT.Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered I liked Questie.AI.
Questie.AI is not all sexy baristas. There’s two dozen or so different styles of chatbots to choose from once you make an account. These include esports pro “Anders,” type A finance dude “Blake,” and introverted book nerd “Emily.” If you’re looking for something weirder, there’s a gold obsessed goblin, a necromancer, and several other fantasy and anime style characters. If you still can’t quite find what you’re looking for, you can design your own by uploading a picture, putting in your own prompts, and picking the LLMs that control its reaction and voice.
I picked “Wolf” from the pre-generated list because it looked the most like a character who would exist in the world of Tarkov. “Former special forces operator turned into a PMC, ‘Wolf’ has unmatched weapons and tactics knowledge for high-intensity combat,” read the brief description of the AI on Questie.AI’s website. I had no idea if Wolf would know anything about Tarkov. It knew a lot.
The first thing it did after I shared my screen was make fun of my armor. Wolf was right, I was wearing trash armor that wouldn’t really protect me in an intense gunfight. Then Wolf asked me to unload the magazines from my guns so it could check my ammo. My bullets, like my armor, didn’t pass Wolf’s scrutiny. It helped me navigate Tarkov’s complicated system of traders to find a replacement. This was a relief because ammunition in Tarkov is complicated. Every weapon has around a dozen different types of bullets with wildly different properties and it was nice to have the AI just tell me what to buy.
Wolf wanted to know what the plan was and I decided to start something simple: survive and extract on Factory. In Tarkov players deploy to maps, kill who they must and loot what they can, then flee through various pre-determined exits called extracts.
I had a daily mission to extract from the Factory. All I had to do was enter the map and survive long enough to leave it, but Factory is a notoriously sweaty map. It’s small and there’s often a lot of fighting. Wolf noted these facts and then gave me a few tips about avoiding major sightlines and making sure I didn’t get caught in doors.
As soon as I loaded into the map, I ran across another player and got caught in a doorway. It was exactly what Wolf told me not to do and it ruthlessly mocked me for it. “You’re all bunched up in that doorway like a Christmas ham,” it said. “What are you even doing? Move!”
Matthew Gault screenshot.
I fled in the opposite direction and survived the encounter but without any loot. If you don’t spend at least seven minutes in a round then the run doesn’t count. “Oh, Gault. You survived but you got that trash ‘Ran through’ exit status. At least you didn’t die. Small victories, right?” Wolf said.Then Jordan logged on, I kicked Wolf to the side, and didn’t pull it back up until the next morning. I wanted to try something more complicated. In Tarkov, players can use their loot to craft upgrades for their hideout that grant permanent bonuses. I wanted to upgrade my toilet but there was a problem. I needed an electric drill and haven’t been able to find one. I’d heard there were drills on the map Interchange—a giant mall filled with various stores and surrounded by a large wooded area.
Could Wolf help me navigate this, I wondered?
It could. I told Wolf I needed a drill and that we were going to Interchange and he explained he could help me get to the stores I needed. When I loaded into the map, we got into a bit of a fight because I spawned outside of the mall in a forest and it thought I’d queued up for the wrong map, but once the mall was actually in sight Wolf changed its tune and began to navigate me towards possible drill spawns.
Tarkov is a complicated game and the maps take a while to master. Most people play with a second monitor up and a third party website that shows a map of the area they’re on. I just had Wolf and it did a decent job of getting me to the stores where drills might be. It knew their names, locations, and nearby landmarks. It even made fun of me when I got shot in the head while looting a dead body.
It was, I thought, not unlike playing with a friend who has more than 1,000 hours in the game and knows more than you. Wolf bantered, referenced community in-jokes, and it made me laugh. Its AI-generated voice sucked, but I could probably tweak that to make it sound more natural. Playing with Wolf was better than playing alone and it was nice to not alt-tab every time I wanted to look something up,
Playing with Wolf was almost as good as playing with my friends. Almost. As I was logging out for this session, I noticed how many of my credits had ticked away. Wolf isn’t free. Questie.AI costs, at base, $20 a month. That gets you 500 “credits” which slowly drain away the more you use the AI. I only had 466 credits left for the month. Once they’re gone, of course, I could upgrade to a more expensive plan with more credits.
Until now, I’ve been bemused by stories of AI psychosis, those cautionary tales where a person spends too much time with a sycophantic AI and breaks with reality. The owner of the adult entertainment platform ManyVids has become obsessed with aliens and angels after lengthy conversations with AI. People’s loved ones are claiming to have “awakened” chatbots and gained access to the hidden secrets of the universe. These machines seem to lay the groundwork for states of delusion.
I never thought anything like that could happen to me. Now I’m not so sure. I didn’t understand how easy it might be to lose yourself to AI delusion until I’d messed around with Wolf. Even with its shitty auto-tuned sounding voice, Wolf was good enough to hang out with. It knew enough about Tarkov to be interesting and even helped me learn some new things about the game. It even made me laugh a few times. I could see myself playing Tarkov with Wolf for a long time.
Which is why I’ll never turn Wolf on again. I have strong feelings and clear bright lines about the use of AI in my life. Wolf was part joke and part work assignment. I don’t like that there’s part of me that wants to keep using it.
Questie.AI is just a wrapper for other chatbots, something that becomes clear if you customize your own. The process involves picking an LLM provider and specific model from a list of drop down menus. When I asked ChatGPT where I could find electric drills in Tarkov, it gave me the exact same advice that Wolf had.
This means that Questie.AI would have all the faults of the specific model that’s powering a given avatar. Other than mistaking Interchange for Woods, Wolf never made a massive mistake when I used it, but I’m sure it would on a long enough timeline. My wife, however, tried to use Questie.AI to learn a new raid in Final Fantasy XIV. She hated it. The AI was confidently wrong about the raid’s mechanics and gave sycophantic praise so often she turned it off a few minutes after turning it on.
On a Discord server with my friends I told them I’d replaced them with an AI because no one would play Tarkov with me. “That’s an excellent choice, I couldn’t agree more,” Reece—the friend who’d simply told me “no” to my request to play Tarkov—said, then sent me a detailed and obviously ChatGPT-generated set of prompts for a Tarkov AI companion.
I told him I didn’t think he was taking me seriously. “I hear you, and I truly apologize if my previous response came across as anything less than sincere,” Reece said. “I absolutely recognize that Escape From Tarkov is far more than just a game to its community.”
“Some poor kid in [Kentucky] won't be able to brush their teeth tonight because of the commitment to the joke I had,” Reece said, letting go of the bit and joking about the massive amounts of water AI datacenters use.
Getting made fun of by my real friends, even when they’re using LLMs to do it, was way better than any snide remark Wolf made. I’d rather play solo, for all its struggles and loneliness, than stare anymore into that AI-generated abyss.
Even the U.S. Government Says AI Requires Massive Amounts of Water
A new government illuminates the environmental impact of generative AI.Matthew Gault (404 Media)
A look at “necromemetics” and the meme economy in the aftermath of violence.#memes #AISlop
How Right Wing Influencers Used AI Slop to Turn Renee Good Into a Meme
After being shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis earlier this month, Renee Good instantly became a symbol of anti-ICE sentiments among protestors. Raw bystander footage of her death quickly spread online. A day after her murder, an angle from Ross’s phone camera also spread, sparking even more images, memes, protest signage and art based on her last moments.However, Good's likeness has also entered a humiliation and harassment campaign involving AI image edits and crude Photoshops of her face, in a process dubbed "Reneeification" by some online. We’ve seen this before: The trend comes soon after the rise of "Kirkification,” where people faceswapped the late right-wing political influencer Charlie Kirk's face onto innumerable images after his assassination in September 2025. Images of George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, also underwent a similar bastardization after his death. We could see it soon following the death of Alex Pretti, who ICE agents murdered in Minneapolis this weekend; Pretti is already the target of smear campaigns.
The making of a martyr in the 2020s, regardless of political affiliation, is increasingly tied to this humiliation process, which aims to tarnish the victim's legacy by lowering their likeness to a memetic punchline. It's a process that has only been accelerated by generative AI, and other factors such as "meme coin" cryptocurrencies, which monetize the shock and outrage bait.
In a post-Kirkified world, this impulse to bastardize Good's image after her death emerged immediately on mainstream social media, boosted by influential right-wing influencers, and mutated alongside the rapid spread of misinformation about her. It's an unfortunate tangling that’s likely to be repeated, as political and state-mandated violence becomes more normalized. Even before widespread generative AI and Kirk's death, the "Trayvoning" trend, which mocked the death of Trayvon Martin, a teenager who was shot and killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman, generated outrage and clicks. It involved people posting photos of themselves in Martin's death pose, wearing a black hoodie, with his dropped convenience store snacks splayed on the ground.
ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman’s face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app’s results are a “definitive” determination of someone’s immigration status.404 MediaJoseph Cox
AI makes all of this easier and faster, omitting the slow, arduous process of Photoshop artistry. And in the scramble to make the fastest, most viral meme, people latch onto and spread misinformation in their rush to denigrate the dead for engagement. We can see this in how an image misidentified as Good became the main source material for numerous "Reneeified" memes. In one popular example, shared by right-wing author and journalist Matt Forney, an incorrect image of a woman who isn’t Good is seen as a fountain. It's based on an AI "Kirkified" meme from September 2025, in which Kirk's fatal neck wound is seen as the structure's water source.In the "Reneeified" remake, the water drips from nowhere. Perhaps the flow represents tears streaming down her face, but that's a generous assumption. The AI-image glaze and lack of an anatomically accurate wound strip it of a vital punchline. "Congratulations to Renee Nicole Good on four hours of sobriety!" is what Forney captioned the image. This is reminiscent of misinformation about George Floyd being high on fentanyl when he died. The memes about Floyd were meant to dehumanize him in the most callous ways possible, mixing extreme racism with vile antisemitism that attempted to mock a tragic event.
Forney's tweet is a Frankenstein's monster of a meme, mashing cruel jokes about Good, Kirk, and Floyd, stitched together with bad info and half-baked AI slop that both discredits and dilutes its goal.
Ruby Justice Thelot, an adjunct professor of Integrated Design and Media at New York University, was not surprised by the proliferation of a misidentified Good in early memes or the mixing of such symbolic deaths in Forney’s post. In fact, the situation serves what Thelot has called “necromemetics” in his 2024 essay published by Do Not Research. The term riffs on political theorist Achille Mbembe’s sociopolitical theory of necropolitics.
“We’re lured to do this, we’re lured to remix, we’re lured to memeify."
“What I call necromemetics is the ability to confer symbolic death to an individual through the circulation of digital memes, images, or videos,” Thelot told me in a call. “When I think of the Reneeification, when I think about the symbolic death that’s been conferred onto her and her likeness, I think about how that image, those videos, function as modes, as tools of separation and not unification… It is essentially a tool of conflict.”Regardless, ICE wants the videos of their arrests to “flood the airwaves,” according to internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. At the same time, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz recently urged civilians to “peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct these activities” in a televised address. There is no shortage of new footage coming out of Minnesota from all sides.
The misidentification of another woman as being Good has also played a role in the packaging of "meme coin" cryptocurrencies minted on Solana via Pump.fun. People are using the image of the misidentified woman faceswapped onto George Floyd for several coins on the site already.
‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid
Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground.404 MediaJoseph Cox
People making meme coins are also using the name "George Foid," along with the incorrect image. It's a play on "George Floyd," using the derogatory incel slang term "foid," which is a shortening of the term "femoid," a portmanteau of "female" and "android," that calls women robotically unintelligent.The nickname is also a play on "George Droyd," an imagined android version of George Floyd, created by meme coin shillers back in April 2024. The same group of shillers then created "Kirkinator," Kirk's Iron Man alter-ego, to promote a new cryptocurrency. Both characters have appeared in several AI-video memes, imagining their escapades with Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein.
But the name "George Foid" wasn't coined by crypto bros. The term, as applied to Good, originates from X user @PubWanghaf, who shared a quote-tweet on the day that she was killed, joking about a sixth grader smiling when he realizes that school's out for two days because of the unrest in his hometown of Minneapolis. The X user likely borrowed the term from a viral November 2024 usage, unrelated to current events.
Thelot likened the motive behind such inflammatory posters to the word “cacoethes,” meaning an irresistible urge to do something inadvisable. “We’re lured to do this, we’re lured to remix, we’re lured to memeify. Much like the apple in the prelude to the Trojan War, the goal of the image is discord in this specific scenario.”
In a media environment ripe with cacoethes, Thelot says he doesn’t trust images at all. “I don’t really know what to do with my mom, my grandma, the people around me, how to even begin to educate for that world.”
And like images, it’s also hard to trust ragebait like Reneeification. Are its proponents truly hateful, or are they just click-obsessed, money-hungry, and willing to do anything? When AI-videos of ICE agents arresting blue-haired women surface online, who’s really posting them, and is their goal to proselytise or farm engagement?
Even those outraged by the meme play into the attention-seeking methods utilized in such hateful internet phenomena. Unfortunately, viral quote-posts "dunking" on such inflammatory "Reneefication" posts also propel the content to a wider audience. There’s also a twisted version of outrage bait cropping up in the wake of all of this; a comedian podcaster’s AI image of a nonexistent mural deifying Good alongside January 6 rioter and Qanon follower Ashli Babbitt got relatively little engagement compared to the posts dunking on it.
Now, with AI, anonymous trolls wanting to mock Good in "Reneeification" memes don't need to take a photo to expose themselves, like in Trayvoning, to do so. Plus, there's a crackpot chance they could liquidate their hate into crypto wallet gains.
Owen Carry is an internet culture writer, researcher, trendspotter and former Associate Editor at Know Your Meme.
Kirkinator
Kirkinator, also known as Kirkatron, refers to a series of photoshops, AI-generated images and AI-generated videos of the late right-wing political commentator and organizer Charlie Kirk as a robot, cyborg or android.Owen (Know Your Meme)
Veronika, a brown cow in Austria, uses sticks and brushes as multipurpose tools to scratch hard-to-reach spots#TheAbstract
Scientists Discovered a Cow That Uses Tools Like a Chimpanzee
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that scratched the sweet spot, extended a hand, went over the hill, and ended up on Mercury.First, a clever cow single-hoofedly upends assumptions about bovine intelligence. Next, we’ve got the oldest rock art ever discovered, the graying of modern zoos, and the delightfully named phenomena of bursty bulk flows.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
Cows use tools? You herd it here first
Osuna-Mascaró, Antonio J. et al. “Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow.” Current Biology.Veronika, a Swiss brown cow that lives in a rural mountain village in Austria, is the first cow to demonstrate tool use. How udderly amoosing!
Veronkia’s owner Witgar Wiegele, who keeps her as a pet companion, noticed years ago that she likes to pick up sticks with her mouth in order to reach hard-to-scratch places on her body.
The hills were soon alive with word of Veronika’s tool-using prowess, attracting the attention of researchers Antonio Osuna-Mascaró and Alice Auersperg of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
Tool use is a sign of advanced cognition that has been observed in many animals, including primates, orcas, and birds. But cows, with their vacant expressions and docile nature, have been overlooked as likely tool users, except as a joke in Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons.
In their new study, Osuna-Mascaró and Auersperg presented Veronika with a deck brush, which she proceeded to use as a scratching tool in a variety of configurations.
youtube.com/embed/bAk4PFEuWKQ?…
“We hypothesized that she would target difficult-to-reach body regions and use the more effective brushed end over the stick end,” the researchers said. “Veronika’s behavior went beyond these predictions, however, showing versatility, anticipation, and fine motor targeting.”“Unexpectedly and revealingly, Veronika’s tool-end use depended strongly on body region: she predominantly used the brush end for upper-body scratching and the stick end for lower areas, such as the udder and belly skin flaps,” they added. “Importantly, the differential use of both broom ends constitutes the use of a multipurpose tool, exploiting distinct properties of a single object for different functions. Comparable behavior has only been consistently documented in chimpanzees.”
I recommend reading the study in full, as it is not very long and contains ample video footage demonstrating Veronika’s mastery of the deck brush. The authors seem genuinely enraptured by her talents and, frankly, it’s hard to blame them for milking the discovery. Overall, the findings serves as a reminder not to cowtow to stereotypes of braindead bovines, a point made by the study’s bullish conclusion:
“Despite millennia of domestication for productivity, livestock have been almost entirely excluded from discussions of animal intelligence,” Osuna-Mascaró and Auersperg said. “Veronika’s case challenges this neglect, revealing that technical problem-solving is not confined to large-brained species with manipulative hands or beaks.”
“She did not fashion tools like the cow in Gary Larson’s cartoon, but she selected, adjusted, and used one with notable dexterity and flexibility,” they concluded. “Perhaps the real absurdity lies not in imagining a tool-using cow, but in assuming such a thing could never exist.”
Now that’s something to ruminate on.
In other news…
Hands of ancients
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known rock art, which are very faint hand stencils made by humans 68,000 years ago on a cave wall on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
For comparison, the next oldest rock art, located in Spain and attributed to Neanderthals, is roughly 66,000 years old. The newly-dated hand stencils were made by a mysterious group of people who eventually migrated across the lost landmass of Sahul, which is now submerged, and reached Australia.
The find supports a “growing view that Sulawesi was host to a vibrant and longstanding artistic culture,” said researchers co-led by Adhi Agus Oktaviana and Budianto Hakim of Indonesia's National Agency for Research and Innovation, and Renaud Joannes-Boyau of Southern Cross University.
“The presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65,000 years involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspective,” the team added.
Though the stencils are extremely faint and obscured by younger paintings, it’s still eerie to see the contours of human hands from a long-lost era when dire wolves and Siberian unicorns still roamed our world.
Zoo animals get long in the tooth
Speaking of really old stuff, there has been much consternation of late about falling birth rates and aging populations in many nations around the world. As it turns out, similar demographic anxieties are playing out in zoos across Europe and North America, where mammal populations “have, on average, become older and less reproductively active” according to a new study.
On the one hand, this is good news because it signals improvements in the health and longevity of mammals in zoos, reflecting a long-term effort to transform zoos into conservation hubs as opposed to sites of spectacle. But it also “fundamentally jeopardizes the long-term capacity of zoos to harbor insurance populations, facilitate reintroductions of threatened species, and simply maintain a variety of self-sustaining species programs,” said researchers led by João Pedro Meireles of the University of Zurich.
This story struck me because of my many childhood visits to see an Asian elephant named Lucy, who was the star of the Edmonton Valley Zoo when I was young (I am now old). I recently learned Lucy is still chilling there at the ripe old age of 50! This is positively Methuselan for a zoo elephant, though it is not an unusual age for them in the wild. Lucy is the perfect poster child (or rather, poster senior) for this broader aging effect. Long may she reign.
Bust out the bursty bulk flow
We’ll close with a reminder that the planet Mercury exists.
It can be easy to overlook this tiny rock, which is barely bigger than the Moon. But Mercury is dynamic and full of surprises, according to a study based on close flybys of the planet by BepiColombo, a collaborative space mission between Europe and Japan, which is tasked with cracking this mercurial nut.
BepiColombo zoomed just over 100 miles above Mercury’s surface in October 2021, June 2022, and June 2023, but each encounter revealed distinct portraits of the planet’s magnetosphere, which is a magnetic bubble that surrounds some planets, including Earth.
“These flybys all passed from dusk to dawn through the nightside equatorial region but were noticeably different from each other,” said researchers led by Hayley N. Williamson of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. “Specifically, we see energetic ions in the second and third flybys that are not there in the first.”
“We conclude that these ions are part of a phenomenon called bursty bulk flow, which also happens at Earth,” the team concluded. Bursty bulk flow, in addition to being a fun phrase to say outloud, are intense, transient jets in a magnetosphere that drive energetic particles toward the planet, and are driven by solar activity.
BepiColombo is on track to scooch into orbit around Mercury this November, where it will continue to study the planet up close for years, illuminating this world of extremes. In my hierarchy of Mercurys, the planet sits above the Ford brand, the 80th element, and the Roman god, with only Freddie surpassing it. So, it’s good to see it getting the attention it deserves.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
First Contact
A narrative and visual exploration of humanity’s age-old search for and fixation with extraterrestrials.First Contact explores the ancient idea—and epic ...Hachette Book Group
This week, we discuss stances on AI, a conference about money laundering, and signs about slavery coming down.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Signs of the Times
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss stances on AI, a conference about money laundering, and signs about slavery coming down.EMANUEL: Last week we published my interview with the Wikimedia Foundation CTO Selena Deckelmann. I was happy to talk to her because she’s uniquely positioned to talk about generative AI’s impact on the internet both as the CTO of the website that creates some of the most valuable training data, and one of the sites that’s threatened by generative AI output the most.
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Why is the human penis so big? Scientists probed the evolution of penis size through sexual selection and mate competition in a first-of-its-kind study#TheAbstract
Scientists Got Men to Rate Penises by How Intimidating They Are. This Is What They Found.
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.When it comes to the evolution of the human penis, size matters.
Scientists have discovered that men with larger penises are not only more attractive to women, they are also deemed more threatening to men, which is “the first experimental evidence that males assess rivals’ fighting ability and attractiveness to females based partly on a rival’s penis size,” according to a study published in PLOS Biology on Thursday.
“In humans, height and body shape are well known to influence attractiveness, but penis size has rarely been tested alongside these traits in a controlled, experimental setup,” said Upama Aich, a behavioral and evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia who led the study, in an email to 404 Media.
“What motivated us was the evolutionary puzzle that the human penis is unusually large relative to other primates, which raises the question of whether it signals information beyond its primary reproductive role of sperm transfer,” she added.
Sexual selection, a form of natural selection, is a process in which certain traits that enhance reproductive success—from big antlers to colorful feathers—become amplified in a lineage over time. Male traits may persist both because they are selected by females, which is known as intersexual selection, or because those traits are associated with better success against male rivals, which is called intrasexual selection.
Previous research has presented evidence that bigger penises are more attractive to women, in tandem with characteristics like height and body shape, suggesting that intersexual selection may have played a role in the anomalously large human penis. Aich and her colleagues set out to confirm that result, while also testing out the role of intrasexual selection for the first time.
The researchers recruited more than 600 male and 200 female participants to rate computer-generated male figures with different heights, body shapes, and penis sizes (all shown in a flaccid state). Some participants attended an in-person display of life-size images while others rated the figures on an online platform. Men were asked to assess the figures as potential rivals, while women were asked to rate them as potential mates.
Participants also filled out a questionnaire about their physical characteristics (including height and weight) and sexuality. Given the focus on mates and rivals, the researchers only used responses from self-identified heterosexual males and females in the study.
The team designed the approach with nondescript figures devoid of any personality or identifiable background in part to sidestep the immense cultural weight of the human penis, an anatomical feature endowed with major significance across eras and societies.
“We were very conscious that penis size is culturally loaded and surrounded by myths, humour, and anxiety,” said Aich. “That’s one reason we used anatomically accurate, computer-generated figures: it allowed us to manipulate specific traits independently while controlling for personal identity, social narratives and contextual cues.”
“I do think this cultural baggage has discouraged careful scientific study in sensitive topics in the past, but from an evolutionary perspective, that makes it even more important to examine the question empirically rather than relying on assumptions,” she added.
To that end, the new study confirmed that women generally preferred figures with larger penises in addition to taller figures with more V-shaped bodies. It also revealed for the first time that men factored penis size into their assessment of male rivals, as they rated the figures with larger penises as more threatening rivals. Even more importantly, the men overwhelmingly guessed that the figures with larger penises would be more attractive to women.
According to the researchers, this hints that in our evolutionary past, males may have avoided confrontations with rivals based in part on their penis size in addition to height and body shape. As a consequence, males with larger penises may have secured more access to mates not only due to female preference, but also because they were not challenged by rivals as often. This aspect of male-male competition may have helped to enlarge the human penis over time through selection.
“Previous research had often focused on the effect of penis size on female preferences, so our results that men also use penis size when assessing rivals adds a new dimension to the story,” Aich said. “It suggests penis size is interpreted not only in a sexual context, but also in competitive rival cues.”
“However, the effect of penis size on attractiveness was four to seven times higher than its effect as a signal of fighting ability,” she continued. “This suggests that the enlarged penis in humans may have evolved more in response to its effect as a sexual ornament to attract females than as a badge of status for males, although it does both.”
Aich said her team was most surprised by the consistency of the participants’ responses across many manipulated variables. Similar patterns in the responses showed up regardless of whether the participants were viewing life-sized projections or scaled images online, whether they received payment for the experiment, and across both male and female participants.
“One obvious next step is to study how these visual cues interact with others that matter in real-world interactions, such as facial features, voice, or movement,” she said. “Another open question is how culturally variable these perceptions are, since standards of masculinity and attractiveness differ across societies. A cross-cultural study would be interesting.”
The new study adds to the evidence that both forms of sex selection influenced the size of the human penis, but many other factors also played a role in the development of the organ. For example, penis shape and size may have evolved to scoop the sperm of rival males out of the vaginal canal, or to raise the odds of female orgasm, both of which can contribute to reproductive success.
In other words, both the size of the ship and the motion of the ocean are a part of the complex story of human sexual evolution.
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Experimental evidence that penis size, height, and body shape influence assessment of male sexual attractiveness and fighting ability in humans
Why the human penis is unusually large compared to other primates is a long-standing evolutionary question.plos.io
“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media.#AIPorn #porn #manyvids
Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’
In posts on ManyVids, the porn platform’s official account holds imaginary conversations with aliens, alongside AI-generated videos of UFOs, fractal images, “angel numbers,” and a video of its founder and CEO Bella French in a space suit shooting lasers from her eyes.French launched the site in 2014 as a former cam model herself, and the platform has millions of members and tens of thousands of creators. Adult content creators use it to sell custom videos and subscriptions, and perform live on camera. French recently changed her personal website to state her new goal is to “transition one million people out of the adult industry and do everything we can to ensure no one new enters it.” The statement follows posts on X’s ManyVids account about new strategies to pivot the site toward safe-for-work, non-sexual content.
This sudden shift away from years of messaging about being a compatriot with sex workers, combined with bizarre AI-generated text and images about talking to aliens and numerology on social media, has made some creators worry for their livelihoods, and caused others to leave the site completely.
For years, the official ManyVids social media accounts made mostly normal posts that promoted the site and its creators. But in mid-2025, the posts from the ManyVids X account changed. Instead of promotions of top creators, announcements of contests, and tips for using the platform, the account shifted its focus to existential and metaphysical musings. Around August, it started posting cryptic quotes, phrases, and images, many seemingly generated by or about AI.
The account also started replying to engagement-farming posts from influencers, writing things like “Our purpose: to protect the feminine energy — so that balance may return,” and posting borderline-nonsensical bullet-point lists about “the boldness scale” and how ManyVids leadership is “all connected.”
“The impact strength of a positive leader ⚡ Effectiveness ⚡ Execution ⚡ Discipline ⚡ Accountability,” one post in August said. On August 20, @ManyVids posted an image on X of a flow chart alongside a screenshot of a ChatGPT conversation, seemingly illustrating how the platform would bring in users through a “safe-for-work” zone, then allow them to access NSFW content after verifying their identifications. “Our vision: Adult Industry 2.0 isn’t about more revenue. It’s about evolution,” the post said.
The replies to these posts show ManyVids creators expressing anger, concern, and bafflement. The account stopped posting on X in September. But on the ManyVids platform itself, which has a “news” feed that functions similarly to a microblogging platform but is just for official platform posts, the odd entries continue.💡
Do you know anything else about what's happening at ManyVids, or do you have a tip about porn platforms and online sex work generally? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.“Social API for the AI Age. Phase 1 — Pride Engine,” one post from January 16 says:
“The High Universal Income (HUI) Engine is the distribution hub of the new economy, built for a world where AI does the work humans never wanted to do. AI generates surplus wealth, but humans need surplus purpose. Human meaning becomes the rarest and most valuable resource on Earth. Instead of opaque taxes, AI companies fund a Social License through platforms like ManyVids, converting AI efficiency into merit-based bonuses for human contribution. For every dollar earned through passion, creation, care, or learning, HUI adds 10%. This is not charity. It is a Pride Engine. We shift the foundation of human value.”
The post ends with a six-second AI generated video that includes the phrase “the ultimate guide to rebuilding civilization.” Most posts in recent weeks are like this: clearly AI generated text alongside six-second AI generated clips showing angels, chakras, or spiritual phrases. “The Simulation of Integrity. If we don’t fully understand the ultimate nature of reality, what should guide how we live inside it?” one recent post says. “If the nature of the ‘game’ is unknown, then how you treat others — and yourself — becomes the most meaningful data point.”
And in a post right after the new year: “Hey everyone! Back-to-the-office Monday vibe. How were your holidays? Did you travel anywhere? I did... 🕳️Next time, I’ll bring sunglasses. I came back with a few new ideas and fresh thoughts ✨Let’s get to work. Let’s go, 2026! 🚀” Below the text: a video of French in a space suit, black hole in the background, shooting laser-lightning out of her eyes.
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1×Screengrab via ManyVids
A lot of people who rely on ManyVids for income have noticed this odd behavior and are disturbed by it.
“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media, on the condition of anonymity. “Their customers and their creators are not served in any way by these. When faced with backlash, MV removed the ability to comment on posts. To anyone looking at them they appear to be ramblings and images generated by a person in active psychosis.”
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1×Screengrab via ManyVids
Almost every ManyVids creator 404 Media spoke to for this story brought up “AI psychosis” unprompted, when asked if they’d seen the ManyVids posts.
“I have seen them and I find them really insulting,” Sydney Screams said. “The way I perceive the posts is that Bella and the MV team doesn't respect their creators enough to spend time making their own content, instead taking the easy way out and using bizarre AI that doesn't even relate. Why do we need Bella shooting laser beams out of her eyes to make an announcement? It's infuriating because it's like she doesn't take us seriously, doesn't take her own platform seriously, and we're supposed to just be grateful for the crumbs she's giving us. We deserve better,” she said. “We deserve to be treated with respect, talked to like we're adults, and listened to like our voices matter. Instead we get AI slop and posts that promise big things without any sort of follow through.”
Harlan Paramore, a ManyVids creator who also helps other creators onboard and manage their selling sites, said he’s noticed “bizarre posts about AI, angel numbers, christopaganism, cyberpaganism.”
“I don't have anything against any of those beliefs, but they seem wildly out of place for an official site blog. They are also heavily loaded with AI-like language and structure, and decorated with AI images,” Paramore said. “I'm also a professional artist, and as both an artist and sex worker I'm frustrated and confused. Some of it kind of sounds like AI psychosis, too, which has me concerned for whoever is running that blog.”
“I'm not a mental health professional, but whatever Bella is going through doesn't seem normal. It doesn't seem healthy,” Screams said. “From where I'm sitting, if I were close to Bella, I'd be reaching out to her other friends and family members to stage an intervention and try to get her serious mental health care.”
All of this is coinciding with an apparent massive change in French’s ideology toward sex work. On her personal website, French says the goal of ManyVids is changing to “transition one million people out of the adult industry.” She calls sex work “exploitative.” Her bio quotes her as saying: “I had two choices: surrender to an exploitative industry or dismantle it. I chose to build its replacement... ManyVids was the result—the most efficient revenue-distribution engine for the AI-displaced workforce. Guided by first principles and core value thinking, Bella is leading MV’s next evolution: a Fintech/Social-Impact hybrid that turns digital presence into economic creation. By utilizing AI-integrated workflows and layered access, ManyVids is migrating creators from adult content into a diversified creative economy,” her bio says. “Our goal is to transition one million people out of the adult industry and do everything we can to ensure no one new enters it. We are working to transform an industry we don’t believe should exist—but we recognize that simple elimination creates deeper shadows. The solution is elevation through meaningful alternatives.”
This is a recent addition to her website. According to archived versions of the site, the section about transitioning people out of the sex industry wasn’t there in November 2025.
“ManyVids is now becoming a regulated e-social ecosystem — a digital space that sensitizes, elevates, and restricts adult content through layered brackets of access,” French’s bio says now. “This ensures that sacred sexual expression is never free, never exploited, and never divorced from its core human depth.” The “layered brackets” seem to be a reference to the ChatGPT screenshots from August 20.
This is an extreme departure in tone from what French has said was her mission with ManyVids in the past. In 2019, I met French for an on-background hotel room meeting during the porn industry’s biggest award show and conference, AVN, where she told me she created ManyVids out of a passion to create a platform where other sex workers—having been an adult content creator herself—would be treated fairly and would be listened to by the platform’s owners. French is a former cam model herself, and has always been open publicly about wanting to create better platforms for other sex workers.
“Their customers and their creators are not served in any way by these."
“We try to offer sex workers the tools to be more successful as independent entrepreneurs without being judged,” French told the Daily Beast in 2019. “What was really important for me was to educate the world and make them realize that porn stars are not stupid.”Shortly after she and I met in 2019, French agreed to a written interview as part of a VICE story about authenticity in cam work. In that email, she called camming the “biggest gift” she’d ever received. “Being a camgirl not only has a huge influence on my approach to taking business decisions but has changed the way I view people and life in general,” French wrote at the time. “Every single decision we take at ManyVids must answer 1 simple question, ‘Will this help the content creators, our MV Stars?’ That’s it,” French wrote in 2019. “If the answer is yes then we proceed, regardless if there is any financial advantage or potential for profit, that is irrelevant.”
Platforms have long profited off of sex workers and pornography to establish popularity and rake in revenue before eventually doing a heel-turn on the creators who made them successful. We’ve seen it happen with mainstream social media platforms like Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter, and also on sites ostensibly made for sex workers, like OnlyFans, which nearly changed its policies to ban explicit material after making billions of dollars off their content.
I asked ManyVids and French if the platform is changing to reflect these social media posts and her statements on her bio, who is making the AI-generated posts mentioned above, how French plans to “transition one million people” out of sex work, and if any of this will affect creators and fans who use ManyVids. The ManyVids support team did not answer these questions specifically, but sent the following response (emphasis theirs):
"Hello, thanks for reaching out. Respect for Online Sex Workers. Sex work is real work. No more living in the shadows, no more being misunderstood.
No more being afraid, shadowbanned, or persecuted by systems and institutions. Not on our watch. We are not victims — and we are taking action now.This generation of online sex workers is about to change the game forever —and transform the oldest profession in the world in the right direction, for good. Respect the creators. Respect the work. Respect what you watch. We stand for safety, dignity, and opportunity for all creators."Screenshot of the emailed response from ManyVids support
I asked ManyVids to explain in specific terms what "we are taking action now" means. They replied: "A post will be published to our ManyVids News feed this Saturday, January 24th. It will provide additional clarification and go into a bit more detail on this," with a link to the feed.“It concerns me that access to my earnings, and more importantly my personal information, is in the hands of someone seemingly out of touch with reality.”
In the meantime, creators have been confused and worried for weeks. Nothing has changed about the way the site operates publicly or creators’ payouts as of writing, but this is a series of events that many adult content creators are concerned represents a potential threat to their livelihood.“If something were to happen to MV (or to my account there) due to what can only be described as AI psychosis, I would lose upwards of 14k per year—a not insignificant amount of income,” another adult creator on ManyVids told 404 Media. “It concerns me that access to my earnings, and more importantly my personal information, is in the hands of someone seemingly out of touch with reality.”
ManyVids takes a larger-than-most cut from creators' profits, depending on the type of content: For videos and contest earnings (which are similar to tips), the platform takes 40 percent. On tips and custom video sales, it takes 20 percent, which is more in line with other adult platforms. This has been a source of complaint from creators for a long time, combined with unpredictable algorithms that creators say change how they’re discovered on the platform and what content performs best, impacting their earnings. Users have expressed dissatisfaction with these aspects of the platform, and how French runs it, for years. But the recent turn to AI and French’s statements about the industry are making some wonder if it’s time to leave.
“I will still be using ManyVids for NSFW content for as long as they allow it,” adult content creator August told 404 Media. “But part of me thinks that they will try to do what OnlyFans did years ago and try to ban NSFW content which would be an absolute disaster for sex workers whose income depends on platforms like ManyVids.”
Luna Sapphire, a creator who has been using the platform since 2015, said she finds French’s statements on her website “harmful and insulting” to those who’ve helped popularize the site from the start. “Most of us are not looking for a path out of the adult industry; we simply want to do our jobs with as little interference and censorship as possible,” Sapphire said. “Bella used to be very pro-sex worker and it is disappointing to see her change her tune.”
Several adult platforms have embraced, or at least allowed, AI-generated content and “models” on their sites alongside human creators in the last few years. On OnlyFans, AI-generated is allowed, but must comply with the site’s terms of service and and “must be clearly and conspicuously captioned as AI Generated Content with a signifier such as #ai, or #AIGenerated,” Onlyfans says in its terms. Fansly, another adult platform for independent creators, forbids “photorealistic AI-generated content” but allows non-photorealistic “virtual entities” (like V-tubers) if they’re registered using the uploader’s real legal information for verification purposes. JustForFans requires that “consent, identity, and proof of age must be established if the AI images are based on a real person's likeness,” and allows deepfakes if consent has been established. “For example, you can use your own face to create images of yourself or a model who has granted consent to use their face,” the platform’s terms say. IWantClips, another site for selling custom content, also requires users making AI-generated models to verify their identities, but explicitly doesn’t allow deepfakes.
In 2024, IWantClips awarded an AI-generated model $1,000 as the winner of a Valentine’s Day-themed contest. “Adora” competed in the contest alongside human sex workers. On most of these sites, engagement and attention are currency, and on ManyVids, AI generated models sell content alongside humans. The platform prohibits “AI-generated or deepfake content that misrepresents real individuals without consent,” as part of its terms that forbid “content that violates any third party's intellectual property rights or another individual's privacy.”
“The AI/intense spirituality path has been so strange to witness, and I can’t imagine what it’s leaving the fans to think,” Elizabeth Fields, an adult content creator who’s used ManyVids for six years, told 404 Media. “I don’t understand what they are trying to do by taking this direction, nor do I understand how it’s fair of a sexwork built site to assume all of us don’t want to do NSFW content–and to try and funnel us into this box of ‘not enjoying the work we do. To an extent it feels degrading honestly—just because Bella’s experience in sex work was survival based and to make ends meet—a lot of us thoroughly enjoy our jobs, the path we took, and want to continue doing this.”
Many sex workers are disabled, neurodivergent, mentally ill, chronically ill, or “all of the above,” Fields noted, and rely on online sex work to pay the bills. “It feels absolutely unfair to feel like we could be pushed off of a site that became popular off OUR NSFW content—because they want to make it more SFW, and implement all these new AI features that will quite frankly just turn clients off.”
Despite all of this, Fields said she won’t be leaving the site. “To the point that as much as I'm extremely disappointed with many of the recent changes occurring, I won’t be deleting my account as to not lose that income and disappoint my ManyVids fans.”
Others are done. Sydney Screams said she’s no longer uploading to ManyVids and made the decision to slowly start removing content from her stores there. “Platforms that allow for online sex work should be working FOR us, not against us. Sex workers use platforms like MV to earn our own living, to enable ourselves to have better lives, to keep ourselves housed and fed, to pay for medical bills, etc. Many of us choose this life and choose to make this our career, though there are far too many who are survival sex workers,” Screams said. “We aren't looking for a pathway out of the adult industry, especially on a platform that is a porn platform!!! Unless MV is going to start funding the educations & trainings of those trying to leave the industry for work elsewhere, I do not see how a porn platform is going to create a path out of the industry.”
Emanuel Maiberg contributed reporting to this story.
AI-Generated Grandma Porn Is Flooding the Internet
Hundreds of AI GILF erotica are flooding Xvideos and Manyvids.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
We talk ELITE, the tool Palantir is working on; how AI influencers are defaming celebrities; and Comic-Con's ban of AI art.
We talk ELITE, the tool Palantir is working on; how AI influencers are defaming celebrities; and Comic-Conx27;s ban of AI art.#Podcast
Podcast: 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.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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- ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid
- Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals
- Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback
The 404 Media Podcast
Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …Apple Podcasts
"My local community is being systematically liquidated in what I can only describe as a targeted intellectual genocide."
Amateur Radio Operators in Belarus Arrested, Face the Death Penalty
The Belarusian government is threatening three ham radio operators with the death penalty, detained at least seven people, and has accused them of “intercepting state secrets,” according to Belarusian state media, independent media outside of Belarus, and the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna. The arrests are an extreme attack on what is most often a wholesome hobby that has a history of being vilified by authoritarian governments in part because the technology is quite censorship resistant.The detentions were announced last week on Belarusian state TV, which claimed the men were part of a network of more than 50 people participating in the amateur radio hobby and have been accused of both “espionage” and “treason.” Authorities there said they seized more than 500 pieces of radio equipment. The men were accused on state TV of using radio to spy on the movement of government planes, though no actual evidence of this has been produced.
State TV claimed they were associated with the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR), a long-running amateur radio club and nonprofit that holds amateur radio competitions, meetups, trainings, and forums. WhatsApp and email requests to the BFRR from 404 Media were not returned.
On Reddit, Siarhei Besarab, a Belarusian amateur radio operator, posted a plea for support from others in the hobby: “MAYDAY from Belarus: Licensed operators facing death penalty.”
“I am writing this because my local community is being systematically liquidated in what I can only describe as a targeted intellectual genocide,” Besarab wrote. “They have detained over 50 licensed people, including callsigns EW1ABT, EW1AEH, and EW1ACE. These men were paraded on state television like war criminals and were coerced to publicly repent for the "crime" of technical curiosity. Propagandists presented the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR) as a front for a ‘massive spy network.’”
“State propaganda unironically claims these men were ‘pumping state secrets out of the air’ using nothing more than basic $25 Baofeng handhelds and consumer-grade SDR dongles,” he added. “Any operator knows that hardware like this is physically incapable of cracking the modern AES-256 digital encryption used by government security forces. It is a technical fraud, yet they are being charged with High Treason and Espionage. The punishment in Belarus for these charges is life in prison or the death penalty.”
The Belarusian human rights group Viasna and its associated Telegram channel confirmed the detention and said that it spoke to a cellmate of Andrei Repetsi, who said that Repetsi was unable to talk about his case in jail: “The case is secret, so Andrei never told the essence of the case in the cell. He joked that his personal file was marked ‘Top secret. Burn before reading,’” Viasna wrote.
Most hams operate amateur radios for fun, as part of competitions, or to keep in touch with other hams around the world. But the hobby has a long history of being attacked by governments in part because it is resistant to censorship. Amateur radio often works even if a natural disaster or political action takes down internet, cell, and phone services, so it is popular among people interested in search and rescue and doomsday prepping. Amateur radio has been used to share information out of Cuba, for example, and in 2021 the Cuban government jammed ham radio frequencies during anti-government protests there.
Cuba Is Jamming HAM Radio Frequencies, Operators Say
Amateur radio operators regularly communicate between Florida and Cuba. Last week, mysterious signals originating from Havana jammed the most popular frequencies.Jason Koebler (VICE)
The famed convention's organizers have banned AI from the art show.
The famed conventionx27;s organizers have banned AI from the art show.#News
Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback
San Diego Comic-Con changed an AI art friendly policy following an artist-led backlash last week. It was a small victory for working artists in an industry where jobs are slipping away as movie and video game studios adopt generative AI tools to save time and money.Every year, tens of thousands of people descend on San Diego for Comic-Con, the world’s premier comic book convention that over the years has also become a major pan-media event where every major media company announces new movies, TV shows, and video games. For the past few years, Comic-Con has allowed some forms of AI-generated art at this art show at the convention. According to archived rules for the show, artists could display AI-generated material so long as it wasn’t for sale, was marked as AI-produced, and credited the original artist whose style was used.
“Material produced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be placed in the show, but only as Not-for-Sale (NFS). It must be clearly marked as AI-produced, not simply listed as a print. If one of the parameters in its creation was something similar to ‘Done in the style of,’ that information must be added to the description. If there are questions, the Art Show Coordinator will be the sole judge of acceptability,” Comic-Con’s art show rules said until recently.
These rules have been in place since at least 2024, but anti-AI sentiment is growing in the artistic community and an artist-led backlash against Comic-Con’s AI-friendly language led to the convention quietly changing the rules. Twenty-four hours after artists called foul the AI-friendly policy, Comic-Con updated the language on its site. “Material created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show,” it now says. AI is now banned at the art show.
Comic and concept artist Tiana Oreglia told 404 Media Comic-Con’s friendly attitude towards AI was a slippery slope towards normalization. “I think we should be standing firm especially with institutions like Comic-Con which are quite literally built off the backs of artists and the creative community,” she said. Oreglia was one of the first artists to notice the AI-friendly policy. In addition to alerting her circle of friends, she also wrote a letter to Comic-Con itself.
Artist Karla Ortiz told 404 Media she learned about the AI-friendly policy after some fellow artists shared it with her. Ortiz is a major artist who has worked with some of the major studios who exhibit work at Comic-Con. She’s also got a large following on social media, a following she used to call out Comic-Con’s organizers.
“Comic-con deciding to allow GenAi imagery in the art show—giving valuable space to GenAi users to show slop right NEXT to actual artists who worked their asses off to be there—is a disgrace!” Ortiz said in a post on Bluesky. “A tone deaf decision that rewards and normalizes exploitative GenAi against artists in their own spaces!”
According to Ortiz, the convention is a sacred place she didn’t want to see desecrated by AI. “Comic-Con is the big mecca for comic artists, illustrators, and writers,” she said. “I organize and speak with a lot of different artists on the generative AI issue. It’s something that impacts us and impacts our lives. A lot of us have decided: ‘No, we’re not going to sit by the sidelines.’”
Oritz explained that generative AI was already impacting the livelihood of working artists. She said that, in the past, artists could sustain themselves on long projects for companies that included storyboarding and design. “Suddenly the duration of projects are cut,” she said. “They got generative AI to generate a bunch of references, a bunch of boards. ‘We already did the initial ideation, so just paint this. Paint what generative AI has generated for us.’”
Ortiz pointed to two high profile examples: Marvel using AI to make the title sequence for Secret Invasion and Coca-Cola using AI to make Christmas commercials. “You have this encroaching exploitative technology impacting almost every single level of the entertainment industry, whether you’re a writer, or a voice actor, or a musician, a painter, a concept artist, an illustrator. It doesn’t matter…and then to have Comic-Con, that place that’s supposed to be a gathering and a celebration of said creatives and their work, suddenly put on a pedestal the exploitative technology that only functions because of its training on our works? It’s upsetting beyond belief.”
“What is Comic-Con trying to tell the industry?” She said, “It’s telling artists: ‘Hey you, you’re exploitable and you’re replaceable.’”
Ortiz was heartened that Comic-Con changed its policy. “It was such a relief,” she said. “Generative AI is still going to creep its nasty way in some way or another, but at least it’s not something we have to take lying down. It’s something we can actively speak out against.”
Comic-Con did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment, but Oreglia said she did hear back from art show organizer Glen Wooten. “He basically told me that they put those AI stipulations in when AI was just starting to come around and that the inability to sell AI-generated works was meant to curtail people from submitting genAI works,” she said. “He seems to be very against genAI but wasn't really able to change the current policy until artists voiced their opinions loudly which pressured the office into banning AI completely.”
Despite changing policies and broad anti-AI sentiment among the artistic community, Oreglia has still seen an uptick of AI art at conventions. “Although there are many cons that ban it outright and if you get caught selling it you basically will get banned.” This happened to a vendor at Dragon Con last September. Organizers called police to escort the vendor off the premises.
“And I was tabling at Fanexpo SF and definitely saw genAI in the dealers hall, none in the artists alley as far as I could see though but I mostly stuck to my table,” she said. “I was also at Emerald City Comic Con last year and they also have a no-ai policy but fanexpo doesn't seem to have those same policies as far as I know.”
AI image generators are trained on original artwork so whatever output a tool like Midjourney creates is based on an artist’s work, often without compensation or credit. Oreglia also said she feels that AI is an artistic dead end. “Everything interesting, uplifting, and empowering I find about art gets stripped away and turned into vapid facsimiles based on vibes and trendy aesthetics,” she said.
'Secret Invasion' AI Opening Cost No Artists Their Jobs
Method Studios clarifies reports that sparked a social media backlash, stating AI tools "complemented and assisted our creative teams."Carolyn Giardina (The Hollywood Reporter)
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.#Podcast #Wikipedia #AI
How Wikipedia Will Survive in the Age of AI (With Wikipedia’s CTO Selena Deckelmann)
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-generated slop over the last couple of years, Wikipedia’s governance model, editing process, and dedication to citing reliable sources has emerged as one of the most reliable and resilient models we have.
And yet, as successful as the model is, it’s almost never replicated.
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This week on the podcast we’re joined by Selena Deckelmann, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia. That means Selena oversees the technical infrastructure and product strategy for one of the most visited sites in the world, and one the most comprehensive repositories of human knowledge ever assembled. Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, so I wanted to talk to Selena about how Wikipedia works and how it plans to continue to work in the age of generative AI.Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
- Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI
- The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
- Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
- Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
- Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'
youtube.com/embed/39LR9ouJR3c?…Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
On the same day he allegedly robbed a mail carrier, Jordan McCorvey posted photos of himself flipping through stacks of letters still in the USPS tray.#Instagram #CourtWatch
Alleged Mail Thief Arrested After Bragging About Crimes On Instagram Stories
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. To subscribe to Court Watch, click here.A serial mail thief’s alleged robbery spree ended after he posted photos of stolen credit cards and bins of mail to his Instagram Stories on the same day he robbed a carrier at knifepoint.
Jordan McCorvey, a 32-year-old man in Ohio, allegedly robbed a USPS letter carrier’s truck while they were on their delivery route on November 28. The carrier told investigators two men approached their truck with a knife and demanded access to the truck, according to the affidavit, and when the carrier unlocked the truck and gave them access, they took a tray of mail.
The description of one of the suspects matched a man who investigators already knew as “a known mail thief with criminal history related to possession of stolen mail and bank fraud,” the complaint says. The same day as the theft, McCorvey’s Instagram accounts—with the usernames "2corkmoney," "Icorkmoneybaby," and "cork2saucy”—posted photos of him flipping through stacks of mail still in the USPS tray, showing the same zip code on the letters as the carrier’s stolen deliveries.
For the next few days, more evidence appeared on McCorvey’s Instagram Stories, where he uploaded photos and videos “involving banking transactions and other various posts connected to financial institutions,” according to the complaint. “These posts included solicitations for individuals with bank accounts or other related financial information.”
In one photo, a man—it’s not clear from the complaint whether it’s McCorvey— celebrates in front of a Wells Fargo ATM, holding a card in the air, with a Wells Fargo branch tagged as a location sticker on the photo.
This isn’t the first time an alleged criminal outed himself by bragging on social media and in public. Idriss Qibaa, the man who ran an extortion scheme called Unlocked4Life.com that promised to unlock clients’ social media accounts, admitted on the popular No Jumper podcast that he was the one locking people’s accounts to extort them out of thousands of dollars, which helped the FBI charge him.
McCorvey was arrested on January 9 in Columbus. Mail theft is a federal crime and McCorvey could face fines and up to five years in prison.
Scammer Allegedly Makes $600,000 a Month Holding Instagram Accounts Hostage
The case of Unlocked4Life, who outed himself on Adam-22's No Jumper podcast, shows how Instagram account scammers have escalated to violence and intimidation too.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
The FAA has altered a no fly zone designation that was originally created for US military bases to apply to DHS units.#DHS #ICE
Feds Create Drone No Fly Zone That Would Stop People Filming ICE
The Federal Aviation Administration put a drone no fly zone within 3,000 feet of “Department of Homeland Security facilities and mobile assets,” according to a notice to airmen posted by the government. The no fly zone is the same type that the U.S. uses to restrict consumer drones over military bases and Department of Energy (DOE) research centers and facilities. The order appears to attempt to criminalize the use of drones to film Immigration and Customs Enforcement and DHS employees who are detaining people all over the country.The order is particularly notable because it does not apply just to static locations like DHS offices, but also to “vessels and ground vehicle convoys and their associated escorts.” The notice classifies areas within 3,000 feet horizontally and up to 1,000 feet of altitude as no fly zones and as “national defense airspace,” meaning the skies up to a half mile from ICE vehicles in Minneapolis, for example, could fall under this new jurisdiction. The notice states that people who violate the restrictions can be charged criminally, could face civil penalties, and may lose their authority to fly drones in the future.
“In addition, [drone] operators who are deemed to pose a credible safety or security threat to protected personnel, fac [facilities], or assets may be mitigated,” it adds, noting that “mitigation may result in the interference interception, seizure, damaging, or destruction of unmanned aircraft deemed to pose a credible safety or security threat to protected personnel, facilities, or assets.”
The order replaces a previous no fly zone that applied only to military bases and DOE sites. Military bases and DOE sites are static locations that don’t move. The new no fly zone, called a temporary flight restriction (TFR), applies to DHS employees and vehicles wherever they may be. ICE is notoriously performing raids all over the country with no notice.
With the rise of cheap consumer drones, some activists and protesters have used them to film law enforcement and to document police abuse. This no fly zone criminalizes that activity, further cracking down on the tactics protesters can use to keep people safe or film ICE brutality. It is unclear whether any specific incident led DHS to push for the no fly zone. DHS and the FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DHS itself has used its own drones to surveil protesters, including in Minneapolis. In 2020, a Customs and Border Patrol Predator drone surveilled people protesting the police killing of George Floyd, and last year DHS flew Predator drones over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Those aircraft were detected using open source flight records and air traffic control audio. On Monday, videos of aircraft circling over Minneapolis were widely shared on social media, with many people saying the aircraft appeared to be drones. 404 Media has not yet been able to confirm what the aircraft are.
DHS Flew Predator Drones Over LA Protests, Audio Shows
Air traffic control (ATC) audio unearthed by an aviation tracking enthusiast then reviewed by 404 Media shows two Predator drones leaving, and heading towards, Los Angeles.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a “definitive” determination of someone's immigration status.#ICE
ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice
When authorities used Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) facial recognition app on a detained woman in an attempt to learn her identity and immigration status, it returned two different and incorrect names, raising serious questions about the accuracy of the app ICE is using to determine who should be removed from the United States, according to testimony from a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official obtained by 404 Media.ICE has told lawmakers the app, called Mobile Fortify, provides a “definitive” determination of someone’s immigration status, and should be trusted over a birth certificate. The incident, which happened last year in Oregon, casts doubt on that claim.
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Do you know anything else about this app? Do you work at ICE or CBP? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.This post is for subscribers only
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Subscribe nowICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
Scientists sequenced the genome of an extinct woolly rhinoceros that was found in a wolf belly that lived 14,400 years ago.#TheAbstract
Scientists Make Stunning Find Inside Prehistoric Wolf’s Stomach
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that entered the belly of the beast, craved human blood, exposed primate bonds, and pranked birdsFirst, a prehistoric chew toy for a puppy opens a window into a doomed lineage. Then: why saving species could save your own skin, the dazzling diversity of same-sex behavior in primates, and the exploits of asexual yams.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
I’m so hungry, I could eat a woolly rhinoceros
Record scratch, freeze frame: Yep, that's me, an Ice Age woolly rhinoceros in a mummified wolf stomach. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation. Well, the good news is that it was not because I am inbred, according to a new study.
That’s my pitch for a movie based on the true story of some half-digested woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) remains that were wolfed down by a permafrost-preserved pupsicle from 14,400 years ago.
Incredibly, scientists were able to sequence the genome of the rhino, which revealed that this individual still had a high level of genetic diversity in its lineage, and no signs of inbreeding. Considering that woolly rhinos vanished from the fossil record around 14,000 years ago, this study suggests that they may have experienced a very sudden population collapse, rather than a gradual demise.
The piece of woolly rhino tissue found inside the stomach of the Tumat-1 puppy. Image: Love Dalén/Stockholm University.
“While Late Pleistocene remains of woolly rhinoceros are numerous, very few remains exist from around the estimated time of extinction,” said researchers led by Sólveig M. Guðjónsdóttir of Stockholm University. At 14,400 years old, the mummified tissue found in the wolf is “one of the youngest known woolly rhinoceros remains.”“Given our results, we suggest that any change at the genomic level associated with the species extinction must have taken place during the last few hundred years of the species' existence,” the team added. “We conclude that their decline toward extinction likely occurred rapidly after ∼14,400 years ago, most likely driven by rapid changes in environmental conditions.”
In other words, the last supper of a wolf that died when giant ice sheets still covered much of the Northern Hemisphere has opened a window into the rich heritage of this rhinoceros—and the sudden downfall that awaited its relatives.
And for anyone interested in cryptids, the authors note that the “last appearance dates in the fossil record do not exclude the possibility that the species persisted for longer.” Does this mean that woolly rhinos live on in some untrammeled wilderness to this day? Definitely not, they are dunzo. But it does raise the tantalizing question of when and where the last woolly rhino took its final steps, ending a long and storied line.
In other news…
Save wildlife, stay off the menu
Here’s one way to get people to care about biodiversity loss: tell them that the mosquitos are out for their blood.
In a new study, scientists captured and studied 145 engorged mosquitoes from a deforested area in Brazil, which revealed a growing reliance on human blood. The results suggest that mosquitoes are more likely to seek out human blood in areas experiencing biodiversity loss.
“In the present study, human blood meals were detected in nine species” including mosquitoes that “spread dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and chikungunya,” said researchers led by Dálete Cássia Vieira Alves of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. “The results revealed a clear tendency for the captured mosquito species to feed predominantly on humans.”
“Deforestation reduces local biodiversity, causing mosquitoes, including vectors of pathogenic agents, to disperse and seek alternative food sources…such as humans,” the team said.
In other words, a future of biodiversity collapse is going to be buzzy, and itchy, and deadly, given that mosquitoes are notoriously the most dangerous animals to humans—killing roughly a million people per year—due to their capacity to spread pathogens. It would be great if we could all conserve wildlife for solely altruistic reasons, but a little nightmare fuel is useful in small doses.
Same-sex sexual behavior plays many roles in primates
Same-sex sexual behavior (SSB) is common in nature—documented in more than 1,500 animals—especially among socially complex species like primates. Now, scientists have presented a comprehensive review of these sexual bonds in dozens of non-human primates, which revealed that the interactions are context-dependent and may serve a variety of evolutionary functions.
“In baboons, for example, females form affiliative networks, through grooming and possibly SSB, to manage group tension, especially during unstable periods such as hierarchical shifts,” said researchers led by Chloë Coxshall of Imperial College London. “Male rhesus macaques use SSB to navigate aggression and shifting dominance by forming coalitions. Those engaging in SSB are more likely to ally and support each other in competition.”
While the study focused on non-human primates, the team also speculated about the possible evolutionary links between SSB in humans and non-human primates, but warned that the study “does not address human sexual orientation, identity or lived experience.”
“While acknowledging that cultural biases have historically shaped how SSB is reported in animals, we hope this study encourages further research into its evolutionary and social roles in primates at large,” the team concluded.
Don’t be deceived by the asexual yams
Even in all of its diverse configurations, sex is simply not everyone’s bag. Lots of species have opted to eschew it entirely in favor of asexually cloning themselves, such as the Asian yam Dioscorea melanophyma.
This yam has evolved a clever technique to disperse its version of “bulbils,” the asexual version of seeds, by dressing them up like berries so that birds will eat them, reports a new study. This helps the plant spread its clones far and wide without the need for sexual reproduction.
“We show that the yam Dioscorea melanophyma—which has lost sexual reproduction—evolved black, glossy bulbils that mimic co-occurring black berries and entice frugivorous birds to ingest and disperse them,” said researchers co-led by Zhi Chen of the Kunming Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Science and Guillaume Chomicki of Durham University.
The false berry “bulbils” of the yam. Image: Gao Chen
The team found that birds preferred real berries “yet they significantly consumed bulbils too” and “could not visually discriminate bulbils from berries.” In this way, the yams use “mimicry to deceive birds and achieve longer dispersal distance,” the study concludes.It’s amazing how many adaptive strategies boil down to pranking one’s fellow Earthlings. So if you’re a bird, beware the sham yam yums. And if you are looking to name a band, the Asexual Yams is officially out there as an option.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
Aspects of the blood meal of mosquitoes (Diptera: culicidae) during the crepuscular period in Atlantic Forest remnants of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Identifying their food sources provides insights into mosquito foraging behaviors and directly impacts the epidemiology of mosquito-borne pathogens such as d...Dálete Cássia Vieira Alves (Frontiers)
This week, we discuss the staying power of surveillance coverage, the jigsaw of reporting, and eyestrain.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Putting the Puzzle Together
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss the staying power of surveillance coverage, the jigsaw of reporting, and eyestrain.JASON: I’ve started this year in the same way I spent a lot of last year: Writing about the automated license plate reader company Flock. In my career it’s been sort of weird for me to focus on one company or one thing so much for so long. I tend to get a little restless about the topics I cover, and there can sometimes be a very real fatigue with specific types of stories. After a while, people “get it,” and so the bar for a new story on a topic keeps going up. I wish this weren’t the case, and we try to cover things we feel are important, but if you’re writing about a topic and no one is reading it, then the audience might be telling you they don’t find that thing interesting anymore.
This has not yet been the case with Flock, somewhat to my surprise. I’ve been writing about surveillance technologies for a long time, and it’s rare for a specific company or specific type of technology to hold people’s interest and attention for too long.
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Frowned upon in video games, loot boxes are back in real life–and one’s in the Pentagon.#News
There’s a Lootbox With Rare Pokémon Cards Sitting in the Pentagon Food Court
It’s possible to win a gem mint Surging Sparks Pikachu EX Pokémon card worth as much as $840 from a vending machine in the Pentagon food court. Thanks to a company called Lucky Box Vending, anyone passing through the center of American military power can pay to win a piece of randomized memorabilia from a machine dispensing collectibles.On Christmas Eve, a company called Lucky Box announced it had installed one of its vending machines at the Pentagon in a now-deleted post on Threads. “A place built on legacy, leadership, and history—now experiencing the thrill of Lucky Box firsthand,” the post said. “This is a milestone moment for Lucky Box and we’re excited for this opportunity. Nostalgia. Pure Excitement.”
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A Lucky Box is a kind of gacha machine or lootbox, a vending machine that dispenses random prizes for cash. A person puts in money and the machine spits out a random collectible. Customers pick a “type” of collectible they want—typically either a rare Pokémon card, sports card, or sports jersey—insert money and get a random item. The cost of a spin on the Lucky Box varies from location to location, but it’s typically somewhere around $100 to $200. Pictures and advertisements of the Pentagon Lucky Box don’t tell us how much a box cost in the nation’s capitol and the company did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.Most of the cards and jerseys inside a Lucky Box vending machine are only worth a few dollars, but the company promises that every machine has a few of what it calls “holy grail” items. The Pentagon Lucky Box had a picture of a gem mint 1st edition Charizard Pokémon card on the side of it, a card worth more than $100,000. The company’s social media feed is full of people opening items like a CGC graded perfect 10 1st edition Venusaur shadowless holo Pokémon card (worth around $14,000) or a 2023 Mookie Betts rookie card. Most people, however, don’t win the big prizes.
Lucky Box vending machines are scattered across the country and mostly installed in malls. According to the store locator on its website, more than 20 of the machines are in Las Vegas. Which makes sense, because Lucky Boxes are a kind of gambling. These types of gacha machines are wildly popular in Japan and other countries in Southeast Asia. They’ve seen an uptick in popularity in the US in the past few years, driven by loosening restrictions on gambling and pop culture crazes such as Labubu.
Task & Purpose first reported that the Lucky Box had been in place since December 23, 2025. Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told 404 Media that, as of this writing, the Lucky Box vending machine was still installed in the Pentagon’s main food court.
Someone took pictures of the thing and posted them to the r/army on Monday. From there, the pictures made it onto most of the major military subreddits and various Instagram accounts like USArmyWTF. After Task & Purpose reported on the presence of the Lucky Box at the Pentagon, Lucky Box deleted any mention of the location from its social media and the Pentagon location is not currently listed on the company’s store locator. But it is, according to Gough, still there.
In gaming, the virtual versions of these loot boxes are frowned upon. Seven years ago, games like Star Wars: Battlefront II were at the center of a controversy around similar mechanics. At the time, it was common for video games to sell loot boxes to users for a few bucks. This culminated in an FTC investigation. A year ago, the developers of Genshin Impact agreed to pay a $20 million fine for selling loot boxes to teens under 16 without parental consent.The practice never went away in video games, but most major publishers backed off the practice in non-sports titles.
Now, almost a decade later, the lootboxes have spread into real life and one of them is in the Pentagon.
What is a Lucky Box and why is there one at the Pentagon?
The company that makes the machines announced on Christmas Eve that a Lucky Box is now inside the PentagonJeff Schogol (Task & Purpose)
Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground.#ICE
‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid
Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.The findings, based on internal ICE material obtained by 404 Media, public procurement records, and recent sworn testimony from an ICE official, show the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground. The tool receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) among a range of other sources, according to the material.
The news comes after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head Kristi Noem said the agency is sending hundreds more federal agents to Minneapolis amid widespread protests against the agency. Last week ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37 year old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good. During Operation Metro Surge, which DHS calls the “largest immigration operation ever,” immigration agents have surrounded rideshare drivers and used pepper spray on high school students.
“Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics,” a user guide for ELITE obtained by 404 Media says. The tool aims to be nearly all encompassing when it comes to finding ICE targets, from identifying subjects in the first place, to building a list of people, to supervisors approving selections for officers to ultimately go into the field and apprehend.
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Do you know anything else about this tool? Do you work at ICE, CBP, or Palantir? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.One feature of ELITE is the “Geospatial Lead Sourcing Tab,” according to the user guide. This lets ICE see people it may potentially want to detain on a map interface, based on various criteria such as “Bios & IDs,” “Location,” “Operations,” and “Criminality.” An ICE officer can then select people one by one, or draw a shape on the map to see people in that selected area.
ELITE has already been used by ICE to target specific areas, according to sworn testimony from an ICE official in Oregon. In October, immigration officers waited in three unmarked SUVs outside an apartment complex in Woodburn. They went on to bust a driver’s window and pull a 45-year-old woman from a van, used ICE’s facial recognition app Mobile Fortify on her, and agents had the goal of making eight arrests per team per day, Oregon Live reported. Lawyers representing the woman say authorities arrested her and more than 30 other people in a “dragnet.”
“One of our apps, it’s called ELITE. And so it tells you how many people are living in this area and what’s the likelihood of them actually being there,” a deportation officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit, identified in court records as JB, testified about the raid in early December. 404 Media purchased a transcript of JB’s testimony from the court. “It’s basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps.”
“It pulls from all kinds of sources,” JB continued. “It’s a newer app that was actually given to us in ICE.” JB said ELITE is what ICE sometimes uses to track the apparent density of people at a particular location to target. “You’re going to go to a more dense population rather than [...] like, if there’s one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent [...] you’re not going to go there.” For that raid in Woodburn, JB suggested the immigration officers used ELITE to generate leads. Additionally, in a text thread of immigration officers, someone described the area as “target rich,” which JB explained meant the officials had run multiple license plates in that area and found vehicles registered to people “who had either a criminal or immigration nexus.”
Screenshots of the ICE official's testimony. Image: 404 Media.
JB and other officials were testifying in the case of MJMA, the woman pulled from the van during the Woodburn raid. She is being represented by attorneys from Innovation Law Lab.
Once a person is selected on the map interface, ELITE then shows a dossier on that particular person, according to the user guide. That includes their name, a photo, their Alien Number (the unique code given by the U.S. government to each immigrant), their date of birth, and their full address. ELITE notes the source of the address (such as the government agency that supplied it), and gives an “address confidence score.” One address confidence score example in the guide is 98.95 out of 100; another is 77.25 out of 100. This score is based on both the source of the address and how recent the data is, the user guide says. (ICE is paying skip tracers, private investigators, and bounty hunters to help verify peoples’ addresses.)
Those sources can include HHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and “CLEAR.” The guide does not provide any more specifics on what CLEAR might be, but ICE has repeatedly contracted with Thomson Reuters which sells a data product called CLEAR. Thomson Reuters did not respond to a request for comment. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
The documents don’t say if those are the only entities providing data for ELITE. The user guide says ELITE is “integrating new data sources” to reduce officer workload.
ICE can also use ELITE to look up people based on an unique identifier, such as their Alien Number, name, or date of birth. ELITE also lets ICE do this in bulk, selecting up to 50 people at once, according to the guide.
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ICE can filter the map by what the guide calls Special Operations. These are “groups of pre-defined aliens specifically targeted by Leadership for action.” ICE officers are told to consult ICE leadership or “broadcasts” on when to use these operation filters. DHS’s surge in Minneapolis is focused at least in part on the city’s Somali community after renewed focus on a COVID-19 fraud case. The overwhelming majority of Somalis who live in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area are U.S. citizens, PBS reported.“These records give us behind-the-scenes insight into the kind of mass surveillance machine ICE is building with help from powerful tech companies like Palantir,” Laura Rivera, senior staff attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media. “When combined with what we know from ICE testimony and other public information, it gives us a blueprint into how ICE is going into communities and identifying people for arrest in real-time.”
Senator Ron Wyden, who represents Oregon where ELITE was discussed, told 404 Media in a statement, “The fact ICE is using this app proves the completely indiscriminate nature of the agency's aggressive and violent incursions into our communities. This app allows ICE to find the closest person to arrest and disappear, using government and commercial data, with the help of Palantir and Trump's Big Brother databases. It makes a mockery of the idea that ICE is trying to make our country safer. Rather, agents are reportedly picking people to deport from our country the same way you'd choose a nearby coffee shop.”
Screenshot of the Palantir contract, via highergov.com.
The ELITE user guide does not say who developed the system. But the tool’s distinctive title—Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement—exactly matches one included in an addendum to a Palantir contract from last year. It says Palantir should “continue configuration and engineering services” for ELITE and some other ICE tools. That supplemental agreement for $29.9 million started in September and is planned to go on for at least a year.Palantir has worked with ICE for years and was focused on criminal investigations, supporting Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. That changed in the second Trump administration, with Palantir now working on ICE’s deportation efforts.
After participating in a three-week coding sprint, ICE updated an ongoing Palantir contract related to “Enforcement Prioritization and Targeting,” to “support the development of an accurate picture of actionable leads based on existing law enforcement datasets to allow law enforcement to prioritize enforcement actions,” according to an internal Palantir wiki previously obtained by 404 Media. The goal was to find the physical location of people marked for deportation, and Palantir said it believes its work with ICE is “intended to promote government efficiency, transparency, and accountability.”
The leaked material described Palantir’s deportation-focused work as “concentrated on delivering prototype capabilities” and lasting around six months. It left open the room for more work with ICE, and said “Palantir has developed into a more mature partner for ICE.” Documents ICE published described Palantir’s work as building a tool called ImmigrationOS.
More than eight months have passed since Palantir discussed the issue internally. Neither Palantir nor DHS responded to multiple requests for comment.
In their testimony, JB said, “it’s a tool that we use that gives you a probability. But there’s never [...] there’s no such thing as 100 percent.” The user guide adds, “As always, make sure you do your due diligence on each target to confirm removability prior to action.”
How ICE raids in Minnesota connect to a years-old fraud scandal
The Trump administration is using a years-old scandal first prosecuted under the Biden administration to justify its immigration crackdown in Minnesota.David Ingram (NBC News)
The proposed law would force DHS only use the app, called Mobile Fortify, at ports of entry; delete all photos of U.S. citizens taken by the app; and effectively kill the local law enforcement of the app.#Impact #ICE
New Legislation Would Rein In ICE’s Facial Recognition App
A group of six Democratic lawmakers is proposing legislation that would dramatically rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) facial recognition app, according to a copy of the draft bill shared with 404 Media. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been scanning peoples’ faces with the app, called Mobile Fortify, across the country, using it to verify their citizenship and claiming that a result in the app should be trusted over a birth certificate.The move signals the first potential legislative move against the app after 404 Media first revealed Mobile Fortify’s existence in June based on leaked ICE emails. Since then, 404 Media has covered its continued use against U.S. citizens, the 200 million images it uses, and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plan to roll out a version of the app to local law enforcement.
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Do you know anything else about this app? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.“When ICE claims that an image it snaps and runs through an unproven app can be enough evidence to detain people for possible deportation, no one is safe,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, and who authored the legislation, said. “ICE’s use of Mobile Fortify to determine a person’s legal status is an outrageous affront to the civil rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike. DHS should not be conducting surveillance by experimenting with Americans’ faces and fingerprints in the field—especially with unproven and biased technology. It is time to put an end to its widespread use. We can secure the Homeland and respect the rights and privacy of Americans at the same time.”
The bill is being cosponsored by by Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Border Security & Enforcement; Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations & Accountability; Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. It follows some of the lawmakers demanding answers from DHS about the app in September.
The proposed law, called the Realigning Mobile Phone Biometrics for American Privacy Protection Act, aims to curtail both Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify, the local law enforcement version, in a few ways. First, it would ban use of the apps except for identification at ports of entry. As 404 Media showed, Mobile Fortify uses CBP systems that are usually reserved for identifying and taking photos of people as they enter the U.S. Mobile Fortify turned that capability inwards to American streets.
The law would also require all photos and fingerprints of U.S. citizens captured before the practices introduced by the bill be deleted, and require that all photographs or fingerprints of U.S. citizens be destroyed within 12 hours of being taken. The law would also prohibit DHS from sharing the apps with non-DHS law enforcement agencies, effectively killing the local law enforcement version. (404 Media reported the app became unavailable on the Google Play Store in early-December.)
When an immigration officer scans someone’s face with Mobile Fortify, the app runs their face against a bank of 200 million images held by DHS, according to the app’s user manual previously obtained by 404 Media. If the app finds what it believes is a matching face, it returns a name, their nationality, age and date of birth, unique identifiers such as their “alien registration,” and a field titled “Immig. Judge Decision,” the manual says. This appears to refer to whether an immigration judge has ruled on this person’s case, and may include a result that says “remove.”
404 Media previously obtained an internal DHS document through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which showed ICE does not let people decline to be scanned by the app. 404 Media has found likely cases of the app being used in Chicago. In a partnership with Reveal, 404 Media reported the app has been used on U.S. citizens.
One video posted to social media this week showed an officer using the app to take a photo of an identification document in what the video said was Minnesota. 404 Media compared the app shown in the video to the user interface in the leaked Mobile Fortify user manual and they matched.
“The Trump Administration has weaponized federal agencies against the American people. This latest effort to use facial recognition to further target immigrant families is reckless and dangerous,” said Rep. Espaillat in a statement. “I’m proud to stand with Ranking Member Thompson to introduce legislation to combat ICE and DHS, prohibiting the use of facial recognition as yet another ruthless tactic to further this administration’s mass deportation agenda.”
“The abuse of this type of technology by DHS agents is not only invasive, it is likely unconstitutional and certainly un-American,” Rep. Meng added. “Immigration enforcement should not be conducted by an app and DHS should not conduct dragnet operations that terrorize communities and violate people's constitutional rights. I am proud to have worked with Ranking Member Thompson and my colleagues to introduce this commonsense legislation.”
A DHS spokesperson told 404 Media in a statement, “Claims that Mobile Fortify violates the Fourth Amendment or compromises privacy are false. The application does not access open-source material, scrape social media, or rely on publicly available data. Its use is governed by established legal authorities and formal privacy oversight, which set strict limits on data access, use, and retention.”
“Mobile Fortify is a lawful law-enforcement tool developed under the Trump Administration to support accurate identity and immigration-status verification during enforcement operations. It operates with a deliberately high matching threshold and queries only limited CBP immigration datasets. Mobile Fortify has not been blocked, restricted, or curtailed by the courts or by legal guidance. It is lawfully used nationwide in accordance with all applicable legal authorities,” the statement continued.
Update: this piece has been updated to include a statement from DHS.
Inside ICE’s Supercharged Facial Recognition App of 200 Million Images
404 Media has seen user manuals for Mobile Fortify, ICE’s new facial recognition app which allows officers to instantly look up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases by just pointing a phone at someone’s face.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
Scientists have debated the origin of the dots for years. Now, researchers say they’re “cocoons” for the youngest black holes we’ve ever seen.
Scientists have debated the origin of the dots for years. Now, researchers say they’re “cocoons” for the youngest black holes we’ve ever seen.#TheAbstract
Strange ‘Little Red Dots’ in Space Have a Mind-Boggling Explanation, Scientists Discover
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Astronomers think they have solved the puzzle of so-called “little red dots” in space, a population of bizarre objects at the very edge of the observable universe, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature.
The new research suggests that these dots are likely the youngest black holes we have ever glimpsed, which are “cocooned” in dense gas, a never-before-seen phenomenon that sheds light on the early evolution of the universe.
“LRDs were first spotted in 2023 in the first images made with the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Vadim Rusakov, an astronomer at the University of Manchester, in an email to 404 Media. “People have very actively studied these objects since then.”
“They are tiny, bright and red objects seen when the universe was only about 5-15 percent of its current age,” he continued. “They have puzzled astronomers: on one hand, they are too compact and massive for normal galaxies, on the other, they do not look like typical supermassive black holes, because we do not detect their usual signals, such as X-rays. And they are not just a few odd apples—almost every tenth galaxy in the early universe is an LRD.”
These baffling properties have sparked spirited debate about the nature of LRDs. Some studies have suggested they might be exotic star-studded galaxies, or weirdly overmassive black holes.
Hoping to resolve the mystery, Rusakov and his colleagues analyzed JWST observations of more than a dozen of the little red dots across longer timescales. The team confirmed that the dots are likely black holes that are enshrouded by a “cocoon” of energetic gas that can explain their novel properties.
“Our simple solution is: we think that they are massive black holes wrapped in a thick cocoon of dense gas, which makes them appear red and hides the black hole,” Rusakov said. “This idea of the cocoon was inspired by another work that predicted the presence of thick gas. We could check this idea by studying the hydrogen emission from LRDs. This showed us that the cocoon is partly ionised—meaning it has lots of free electrons. This was a surprising discovery, because by scattering light, these electrons hid most useful black hole signals from our sight and also made it appear more evolved than it actually is.”
“By looking inside, we found that these are some of the youngest black holes ever seen,” he added. “This makes them unique laboratories for understanding how black holes got started in the early universe.”
An image of little red dots from JADES 1 The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (Eisenstein et al. 2023). Image: The CEERS Survey/The JADES Survey/PRIMER Survey/Dawn JWST Archive
In other words, it’s not that these objects aren’t radiating in X-rays, it’s just that those wavelengths are largely blotted out by the gassy cocoons. Moreover, the cocoons warp light from the black holes, making them seem much more massive than they actually are, like some kind of cosmic funhouse mirror. Rusakov and his colleagues calculated that the black holes are probably a few million times as massive as the Sun, more than a hundred times smaller than expected by their appearance.The findings are part of a wave of discoveries about the early universe primarily fueled by the unparalleled precision and sensitivity of JWST’s infrared vision.
“The first JWST observations caused several debates about how galaxies formed in the early universe, such as whether galaxies grow quicker than we thought,” Rusakov explained. “In fact, some of those initially problematic galaxies turned out to be Little Red Dots. As our study shows, they were misinterpreted as purely stellar galaxies and they are supermassive black holes instead.”
As JWST continues to expose strange new frontiers of the universe, astronomers can determine which anomalies point to novel entities and which, like the little red dots, turn out to be familiar objects going through an unfamiliar phase.
Either way, each breakthrough raises new questions. Rusakov and his colleagues may have identified the origin of the little red dots, but it remains unclear whether these young black holes grow faster than the galaxies associated with them, and what that might mean for our understanding of galactic evolution.
“LRDs show us what the black holes looked like a long time ago, and if we are lucky, they may show us how these massive black holes got started,” Rusakov said. “Just to be clear, even though they are likely the youngest black holes we ever found, they already have masses of a few million Suns.”
“This opens up the next big questions: can we find even smaller black holes with the James Webb Space Telescope? Do black holes start tiny and grow or are they born already quite big?” he added. “These exciting questions will definitely keep us busy for some time.”
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons - Nature
The highest-quality JWST spectra reveal that little red dots are young supermassive black holes shrouded in dense cocoons of ionized gas, where electron scattering, not Doppler motions, broadens their spectral lines.Nature
‘We have to make sure people are watching. We have to make sure we’re keeping track of our community members.’#News
How One Guy Crowdsourced More Than 500 Dashcams for Minneapolis to Film ICE
When self-employed software engineer Nick Benson put out the call for dashcams online, he thought he’d get maybe 10 people to donate. More than 500 have shown up on his front porch in suburban Minneapolis. “The state apparatus, of course, has cameras everywhere,” Benson told 404 Media. “The citizens will also benefit from having the same cameras around to document what's going on and making sure that everything is on the up and up.”In early January, the Trump administration sent 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area. DHS has said hundreds more are on the way. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump threatened Minnesota with a “DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION” in a Truth Social post.
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On January 7, two days after Benson put out his call for dashcams, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot legal observer Renee Good in the face. In the wake of that killing, multiple people have filmed agents threatening the lives of other observers.Benson feels like he has to do something, so he gets dashcams into the hands of people who want them. “We need more documentation showing what these people are doing. Because I don't know—other than a compelling visual documentation of what's going on—I don't know what other tools we have until the legislative branch of our government can stand up and do its job and provide a check to all of this, because our state government can't,” he said. “So all we can do is collect evidence that this is happening and let people know about it.
Benson made it easy to buy the cameras. He set up an Amazon wishlist that has the dashcams and a 256gb memory card to go in them. People buy the equipment on Amazon and it shows up at Benson’s house. From there, he reaches out to local community organizers and gets them into the hands of people who want them. “I think more than 350 of those cameras have gone out and are already deployed in the community now,” he said. “So we got them out fast, because we all understand exactly why we need those cameras, and we appreciate that support very much.”
Benson got the idea for the dashcam wishlist when ICE told local police that one of his friends was ramming their cars. “That was completely fabricated,” Benson told me. But there was no way to prove it. It was the word of the federal government against Benson’s friend. “Dashcams are the only way we can prevent that from happening.”
As ICE spreads across cities in the US and continues to disappear and kill people, citizens have taken to the streets to put themselves between the masked agents and their targets. These community observers use a variety of tactics, including blowing whistles to let people know ICE is in the area and recording everything and posting it online.
Benson runs the website JetTip, a flight alert service for aviation enthusiasts and it was through this work he first noticed how America was changing during Trump’s second term. “I got interested in all of the ICE things by tracking the flights that were coming in to take deportees away,” he said. “In addition to keeping track of those flights that are coming and going from the airport, I've been getting looped in with the community observation part of it.”
Benson lives in Burnsville, a Minneapolis suburb with a population of 60,000. He said that even here, ICE is a constant and terrifying presence. “There's more federal agents here now than there are local police,” he said. “And we know that they're not operating with respect to the rule of law. They're conducting warrantless door to door operations right now.”
The day after Ross shot Good, Benson was dropping his kids off at school when he noticed a man running down the road. At first he thought the man was jogging. “And then half a block down the way, there was the ICE agent who was running after him,” he said. “They were just right there when I'm driving my kids to school. And it was so frustrating and violating.”
Benson put the call for cameras on January 5, but saw an uptick in donations after the Good shooting. “It was immediately clear that ICE was lying about it, and people were looking for a way to reach out and make a difference from wherever they were in their community, and that Amazon wish list was a very low friction, easy way for people to make a constructive and tangible difference,” he said. “It was more than $75,000 worth of Dash cams that have been delivered to my house here now in Burnsville.”
From there, Benson plugged into local community organizations and got the cameras into the hands of his neighbors watching ICE. “We have to teach history or someone else will teach their version of it,” Jean, one of Benson’s dashcam recipients who spoke to 404 Media on the condition of pseudonymity for her safety, said. She said that one big plus of the dashcams is that it keeps observers hands on the wheel when they’re in their car. “This was safer. A lot of people were trying to record [on their phones] while driving.”
Jean started observing and recording ICE, and organizing others to do the same, after she witnessed a raid in December. She said that ICE brought more than two dozen cars, a tactical vehicle, and dozens of armed agents. “We have to make sure people are watching,” she said. “We have to make sure we’re keeping track of our community members.”
Letty, another ICE watcher in the area, learned about the community organizations in her area after the Renee Good shooting. After getting plugged in, they told her a man named Nick was giving out dashcams. “I think they’re a great tool and beneficial to anyone who is out patrolling and observing,” she said. “Hell, I think if you’re a person of color and vulnerable to being kidnapped, I strongly believe you should have one in one in your car even if you’re not in any [observation] groups.”
Letty, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said the camera gives her a small amount of peace of mind. “But deep down I also know agents don’t care about whether you have one or not, “ she said. “I’ll never get rid of my dashcam now though. I feel like it adds another layer of safety.”
Benson isn’t done giving out cameras. “We need all of those cameras we can get to help the people who have the opportunity to stand up for what's right here and make sure that we're protected as best we can be from the federal government right now,” he said.
Benson said that the mood has changed in the neighborhood since ICE killed Renee Good. “My family were all immediately a lot more concerned about what I was doing, of course. It's hard when you see those videos of someone who was just out driving and ICE comes up to them and said, ‘Didn't you learn your lesson from the other day,” he said. "They're weaponizing this killing to prevent people from just existing in their neighborhood. Like, you can't even be near ICE while they're operating, because that means you didn't learn your lesson of them murdering someone who was there.”
Some ICE agents are reportedly using Good’s shooting as a threat: Videos captured by bystanders in the Minneapolis area this week shows agents asking if people have “learned from what just happened” while threatening them.
“It's upsetting, and it's just the next step in getting kicked in the guts by these guys,” Benson said. “I don't want to get in a situation where I've got a bunch of idiots yelling at me from outside of my car, possibly with guns drawn, and possibly giving me conflicting directions where they already have the outcome predetermined and my actions won't make any difference. That's the sort of thing that makes me really nervous: that they've already decided they need to make examples out of people.”
But Benson said he won’t give up. “We can't give up, and we can't stop doing everything we can to protect our neighbors, because we can't let them win.”
And so Benson hands out dashcams. “We’re in a situation right now where the only people that are helping are just good people, normal people, standing up and helping out the best way they can. That’s all they’ve got…what a stupid situation that we allowed this to get this far.”
Hundreds more federal agents being sent to Minneapolis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says
Noem said that more agents will arrive in the Twin Cities metro Sunday and Monday to help officers already there continue to do their work "safely."Riley Moser (CBS Minnesota)
Cop Used Flock to Wrongfully Accuse a Woman Then Refused to Look at Evidence That Exonerated Her, Body Camera Shows#Flock
Cop Used Flock to Wrongfully Accuse a Woman Then Refused to Look at Evidence That Exonerated Her, Body Camera Shows
A police officer in Colorado used evidence from Flock cameras to wrongfully accuse an innocent woman for package theft, then yelled at her on the phone when she told him she had evidence that exonerated her, according to body camera footage obtained by 404 Media.The nightmare situation happened in September in Columbine Valley, Colorado and was first reported by The Colorado Sun, which obtained Ring camera footage from the woman, Chrisanna Elser, that showed an initial interaction with Sergeant Jamie Milliman at her home. 404 Media has obtained body camera footage of that interaction as well as footage from a phone call Milliman made to Elser after he gave her a court summons.
The incident highlights not only the extreme extent to which America’s cities and towns are surveilled, but also the fact that police believe this surveillance evidence, which in this case was used to wrongfully summons Elser to court, is infallible and bulletproof. It also shows that anyone can be caught in America’s surveillance dragnet; there is no safety in the idea that you have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide.
“You know we have cameras in that town. You can’t get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing,” Milliman told Elser and her husband at her home, referring to Flock automated license plate reader cameras in the nearby town of Bow Mar. He then told her the town’s Flock cameras had recorded her vehicle entering and leaving the town 20 times in the last month, including on Tuesday, September 22 “from 11:52 until 12:09, exactly,” he said. “Like I said, nothing gets in or out of the town without us knowing about it … I have you on camera walking up, ringing the doorbell, taking the package, and literally running away. I have you on camera doing this … I get that this is a shock to you, but I am telling you, this is a lock, 100 percent no doubt she did this.”
But Elser didn’t do it. Elser was visiting her tailor’s home for a dress fitting, and didn’t steal the package. She had her Ring camera footage from her tailor’s house and footage from her Rivian vehicle to show that she didn’t steal the package, which she told Milliman on a phone call obtained by 404 Media.
“Why don’t you come on down and look at the video?” Elser said. Milliman refused to look at the video, and said “The next person you can tell is the judge or your lawyer. This is how this works. The judge or your lawyer.”
Elser asked to speak to his supervisor.
“I am the supervisor. That is it. There is no one else to talk to,” he said. “It is on camera many times. You’ve been served a summons … I will bring all of my evidence, the many, many, many, many videos, and you can bring yours. And if a judge says you didn’t do it then you didn’t do it.”
“What are going to be the repercussions when this is proven incorrectly and you’re wasting my fucking time?” Elser’s husband told Milliman on the call.
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Elser and her husband also asked Milliman to show them the evidence he had, or to answer basic questions such as what the woman on the Flock cameras was wearing in the department’s video footage. “You’ll have to go to court for this information,” he said. “I can tell you. I am not going to tell you. I can tell you, but I am not going to tell you.”“I’m going to go to the local police department,” Elser said.
“This is the local police department. I am the jurisdiction,” he responded.
“I want to talk to somebody today,” Elser said.
“Well, that is not going to happen. It’s not going to happen,” Milliman said.
“Yes, it can happen,” Elser said.
“I didn’t say it couldn’t happen. I said it’s not going to happen,” he said.
“No, no, it can happen,” Elser said.
“I agree it can, but it’s not going to,” he said. “You’re not talking to anybody else.”
Elser continues to explain that she has footage from her vehicle showing where she was, and that she was at her tailor’s house, not stealing a package.
“By the way, if your truck has GPS, I will simply request records from Rivian and do a court order to have those sent to me. I don’t care where your truck was. I care where you were. Your truck didn’t take the package, you did. Do you understand that? Your truck did not ring the doorbell. Your truck did not walk away with the package. You did. It doesn’t matter where the truck was. It matters where you were.”
“But you’re showing me a picture of my truck,” Elser said. “You didn’t show me a picture of me.”
Later in the conversation, Milliman says “I have been doing this for 27 years. I have probable cause because I saw you. You can laugh and giggle all you want, but I have video of you. This is going nowhere because you’re not being truthful with me. If you want to be truthful with me, you know how to get a hold of me. Other than that, you have a good rest of your day.” He then hangs up the phone.
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Milliman was disciplined with “extra training” after the incident, according to The Colorado Sun. A reprimand letter given to Milliman and obtained by The Colorado Sun noted that he exhibited “rude behavior,” and that his actions were “unprofessional and inconsistent with the standards expected of a sworn officer.” Milliman and the Columbine Valley police department did not respond to a request for comment.Elser shared an additional voicemail with 404 Media that Milliman left her a day after the call in which he refused to look at her evidence. In this follow-up call, Milliman completely changed his tone and said he would be willing to look at her evidence: “Yesterday when we had talked, you had mentioned that you had some exonerating video and I mentioned you had my email. I would love to see it,” the voicemail says. “In the interest of justice and to make things right, I would love to go above and beyond and see anything that could possibly take away my probable cause for issuing the summons.”
Two weeks later, she sent an email to police chief Bret Cottrell containing evidence from her Rivian's cameras, her tailor's Ring camera, and a detailed timeline of events. Cottrell responded and said that they would be dropping the case: “After reviewing the evidence you have provided (nicely done btw), we have voided the summons that was issued," he wrote. "We have double checks with Jefferson County courts and the case was not yet entered into the system, therefore, there is no record on file. Thank you for getting back to us with the evidence you said you would be able to provide.”
In a phone interview, Elser told 404 Media that it feels like “they’ll talk to convicted murderers and rapists in a nicer way than they’ll talk to me about a $25 package and me saying ‘I have evidence I can show you and we can end this.’”
She said that she eventually saw video of the person taking the package.
“From a distance, I’m like, ‘kind of it was like my outfit I was wearing at the time,’ but my truck isn’t there at all, she had a shaved head, she’s much younger, had earrings on and all that,” she said. Elser said that before this experience, she was “very big on surveillance, and knowing we have cameras in our house because if something happens, I wanna know how it happens. Maybe not even a crime against me, but maybe my animals knocked something over and I wanted to know who.” She said that she has dash cams because she’d been involved in multiple hit-and-run car accidents.
“Honestly, I was one of those people that believed, ‘well, if you’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the big deal?’ But here’s a situation where I was doing absolutely nothing wrong, and I almost lost my entire career over this,” she said. “I’ve lost trust for law enforcement … I mean I love the Flock stories where they help out with saving a kid, and I look at them and go ‘yeah, you did that, but you’re not using the technology right.’”
“The overreach of this technology is the biggest concern. Just having it out there is scary, it’s too much,” she added. “It’s changed my mind immensely.”
Colorado officer who used AI cameras to falsely accuse woman of theft disciplined with extra training
Columbine Valley’s police chief said the sergeant’s demeanor was “inconsistent with the standards expected of a sworn officer"Olivia Prentzel (The Colorado Sun)
We talk all about Webloc, ICE's tool for monitoring phone locations; the continuing Grok abuse wave; and how police unwittingly revealed millions of Flock surveillance targets.
We talk all about Webloc, ICEx27;s tool for monitoring phone locations; the continuing Grok abuse wave; and how police unwittingly revealed millions of Flock surveillance targets.#Podcast
Podcast: 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.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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Timestamps:0:00 - Intro
2:50 - First Story
23:00 - Second Story
- Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods
- DHS Is Lying To You
- Inside the Telegram Channel Jailbreaking Grok Over and Over Again
- Masterful Gambit: Musk Attempts to Monetize Grok's Wave of Sexual Abuse Imagery
- Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error
The 404 Media Podcast
Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …Apple Podcasts
Fake images of LeBron James, iShowSpeed, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and even Nicolás Maduro show them in bed with AI-generated influencers.#News #Meta #Instagram #AI
Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals
AI generated influencers are sharing fake images on Instagram that appear to show them having sex with celebrities like LeBron James, iShowSpeed, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. One AI influencer even shared an image of her in bed with Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro. The images are AI generated but are not disclosed as such, and funnel users to an adult content site where the AI generated influencers sell nude images.This recent trend is the latest strategy from the growing business of monetizing AI generated porn by harvesting attention on Instagram with shocking or salacious content. As with previous schemes we’ve covered, the Instagram posts that pretend to show attractive young women in bed with celebrities are created without the celebrities’ consent and are not disclosed as being AI generated, violating two of Instagram’s policies and showing once again that Meta is unable or unwilling to reign in AI generated content on its platform.
Most of the Reels in this genre that I have seen follow a highly specific formula and started to appear around December 2025. First, we see a still image of an AI-generated influencer next to a celebrity, often in the form of a selfie with both of them looking at the camera. The text on the screen says “How it started.” Then, the video briefly cuts to another still image or videos of the AI generated influencer and the celebrity post coitus, sweaty, with tussled hair and sometimes smeared makeup. Many of these posts use the same handful of audio clips. Since Instagram allows users to browse Reels that use the same audio, clicking on one of these will reveal dozens of examples of similar Reels.
LeBron James and adult film star Johnny Sins are frequent targets of these posts, but I’ve also seen similar Reels with the likeness of Twitch streamer iShowSpeed, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, MMA fighters Jon Jones and Connor McGregor, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, and many others, far too many to name them all. The AI influencer accounts obviously don’t care whether it's believable that these fake women are actually sleeping with celebrities and will include any known person who is likely to earn engagement. Amazingly, one AI influencer applied the same formula to Venezuela’s president Maduro shortly after he was captured by the United States.
These Instagram Reels frequently have hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of views. A post from one of these AI influencers that shows her in bed with Jon Jones has has 7.7 million views. A video showing another AI influencer in a bed with iShowSpeed has 14.5 million views.Users who stumble upon one of these videos might be inclined to click on the AI-influencer's username to check her bio and see if she has an OnlyFans account, as is the case with many adult content creators who promote their work on Instagram. What these users will find is an account bio that doesn’t disclose its AI generated, and a link to Fanvue, an OnlyFans competitor with more permissive policies around AI generated content. On Fanvue, these accounts do disclose that they are “AI-generated or enhanced,” and sell access to nude images and videos.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment, but removed some of the Reels I flagged.
Posting provocative AI generated media in order to funnel eyeballs to adult content platforms where AI generated porn can be monetized is now an established business. Sometimes, these AI influencers steal directly from real adult content creators by faceswapping themselves into their existing videos. Once in a while a new “meta” strategy for AI influencers will emerge and dominate the algorithm. For example, last year I wrote about people using AI to create influencers with down syndrome who sell nudes.
Some other video formats I’ve seen from AI influencers recently follow the formula I describe in this article, but rather than suggesting the influencer slept with a celebrity, it shows them sleeping with entire sports teams, African tribal chiefs, Walmart managers, and sharing a man with their mom.
Notably, celebrities are better equipped than adult content creators to take on AI accounts that are using their likeness without consent, and last year LeBron James, a frequent target of this latest meta, sent a cease-and-desist notice to a company that was making AI videos of him and sharing them on Instagram.
LeBron James' Lawyers Send Cease-and-Desist to AI Company Making Pregnant Videos of Him
Viral Instagram accounts making LeBron 'brainrot' videos have also been banned.Jason Koebler (404 Media)
Flock is going after a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com that has collated public records files released by police.#Flock
Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error
A handful of police departments that use Flock have unwittingly leaked details of millions of surveillance targets and a large number of active police investigations around the country because they have failed to redact license plates information in public records releases. Flock responded to this revelation by threatening a site that exposed it and by limiting the information the public can get via public records requests.Completely unredacted Flock audit logs have been released to the public by numerous police departments and in some cases include details on millions Flock license plate searches made by thousands of police departments from around the country. The data has been turned into a searchable tool on a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com, which says it has data on more than 2.3 million license plates and tens of millions of Flock searches.
The situation highlights one of the problems with taking a commercial surveillance product and turning it into a searchable, connected database of people’s movements and of the police activity of thousands of departments nationwide. It also highlights the risks associated with relying on each and every law enforcement customer to properly and fully redact identifiable information any time someone requests public records; in this case, single mistakes by individual police departments have exposed potentially sensitive information about surveillance targets and police investigations by other departments around the country.
Flock is aware of the exposure enabled by its own product design and has tried to do damage control with its law enforcement customers by blaming “increased public records act/FOIA activity seeking by the public,” according to an email Flock sent to police obtained via public record request. Flock has threatened Cris van Pelt, the creator of HaveIBeenFlocked, by going after his web hosts and claiming that he has violated their intellectual property rights and is posting information that “poses an immediate threat to public safety and exposes law enforcement officers to danger.” In recent weeks Flock severely limited the amount of information available on its audit logs, which are designed to be a transparency tool, raising questions about how much information journalists, regulators, and government agencies will be able to get about police use of Flock cameras in the future.
“I set up HaveIBeenFlocked to show how pervasive and prevalent this monitoring is, and to show just how many searches are getting done. That information, by itself, is shocking,” van Pelt told 404 Media. “To me, as a private citizen, that’s shocking, and I think that’s kind of what Flock is trying to hide or bury.” van Pelt added that he is committed to keeping the website online.
As 404 Media has reported before, Flock’s automated license plate reader cameras are connected to local, state, and/or national “networks” of cameras. When a police officer runs a search seeking the locations of a specific license plate, they are usually not just searching cameras owned by their own jurisdiction, they are usually searching all Flock cameras in that state or in the country. Each individual search creates a record of that search on as many as 80,000 different cameras around the country.
As a compliance and transparency measure, these search records can be obtained through a “search audit,” which are essentially huge spreadsheets of specific Flock searches that contain not just the searches of local police but of all police who have ever searched that camera. Using this data, we have previously been able to report that local police are regularly giving Immigrations and Customs Enforcement side-door access to Flock cameras, and we also reported that Texas searched tens of thousands of cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion. Flock search audits have also been used to catch police who have allegedly illegally stalked people or otherwise abused the system.
An example of what search audits look like. License plate redaction done by 404 Media
Because these search audits are important tools for police transparency and accountability, they have become a popular type of public record to request for journalists, concerned citizens, privacy experts, city councils, and government regulators. In the vast majority of cases, the police departments releasing the search audit files redact the surveillance target’s license plate number. But in recent months, at least four police departments have released full Flock search audits without redacting anything at all, revealing information about a mix of more than a million individual surveillance targets, suspects, and crime victims. This means that any individual Flock customer could accidentally leak the specific search targets for millions of Flock searches nationwide; any single failure point anywhere in the country could dox the police activity and surveillance targets of other police departments elsewhere.With the license plate information, you can determine not just what police are using Flock for, but who they are using it against. An unredacted search log file obtained by 404 Media shows more than 700,000 individual searches from June 2025 alone, performed by hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide, including hundreds of searches performed by US Border Patrol agents. They show the specific date and time of a search, the name of the officer who did the search, sometimes show the specific case number of a search, the police-stated “reason” of a search, as well as the number of Flock cameras searched. Crucially, they also show the license plate, allowing someone to connect a specific license plate and therefore person to reasons like “drug trafficking,” “fugitive,” “narc,” immigration enforcement, “homicide,” “oil and gas theft,” etc. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation found, they also expose the victims of a host of biased policing tactics and dubious searches, including hundreds of searches of “No Kings” protesters, audit log reasons that included “possible gypsy,” and the search for a woman who had a self-administered abortion.
“EFF has had this [unredacted] information but we’ve chosen not to publish it or share it because of concerns about doxing people—our policy is not to release data of surveillance victims,” Cara Gagliano, a senior staff attorney at the EFF, told me.
404 Media has also had unredacted versions of some of these files for months but has not published any of them. At first, just one or two police departments failed to do redactions. In recent weeks, however, it has become clear that many police departments are not redacting license plates; this led van Pelt to create HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website that collates many of these search audit logs and allows people to search individual license plates to determine if they have been run through the Flock system, and if so, where and when. The number of police departments who have now released fully unredacted logs has become so numerous that it can no longer be ignored, and the releases have caused Flock to drastically reduce the amount of information that can be obtained from a search audit.Rather than simply making sure that search audits exported for public records requests do not include license plates or are redacted by default, Flock has totally overhauled how the search logs work; in a December email to police customers obtained by 404 Media, Flock said that “to protect officer safety and active investigations, Network Audit Logs will no longer include: officer names, specific plates searched, vehicle fingerprint information.”
To be clear, Flock is not turning on license plate redaction by default: It is fully withholding officer names and license plate information from the police departments themselves.
“Flock is doing their best to have it both ways where they have no responsibility and also no accountability to the communities where their cameras are placed,” Chris Gilliard, privacy expert and author of the forthcoming Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media. “Shoddy data hygiene by law enforcement is not seen as a threat or danger but accountability and transparency are.”
The letter from Cyble
In recent weeks, Flock, via a third party company called Cyble, has threatened van Pelt by filing bogus intellectual property takedown requests with Cloudflare and Hetzner, two of his web hosts. Takedown requests filed by Cyble state the site “presents a significant security risk to our client and its users. The website poses an immediate threat to public safety and exposes law enforcement officers to danger, in clear violation of our client’s users’ rights and its intellectual property rights. The website publicly and deliberately discloses extensive, sensitive information obtained from Flock and its automated license plate reader systems with the apparent intent to undermine law enforcement operations. It hosts three searchable databases that expose critical operational intelligence. Such disclosure of sensitive data substantially heightens the risk to officers and the public and necessitates urgent remedial action.”“Please be informed that our client is a renowned company in the US and directly works with government agencies,” it continues. “In view of the above, kindly suspend the services and stop the hosting of the website at the earliest convenience.”
The EFF’s Gagliano told 404 Media that, though the EFF hasn’t published license plate information, “these takedowns are bogus. They’re blatantly misrepresenting saying this data is obtained from Flock—no, it’s data obtained from public records. There are issues around deciding whether you should make it all widely available, but it was received from public government agencies and Flock really doesn’t have much standing to be taken down.”
Cloudflare refused to take action on HaveIBeenFlocked, saying that it “found insufficient evidence of a violation,” according to an appeal email van Pelt shared with 404 Media.
Flock told 404 Media in an email “That website that is doxxing cops during active investigations. Today, we're busy working with journalists to cover the fact that our technology was pivotal in cracking open the case that found the Brown university / MIT serial killer in New England. If you'd like to report the news that matters, we'd be happy to speak to you about bringing justice to victims instead of activists trying to let murderers go free.” Cyble did not respond to a request for comment.
In a December email to police customers titled “What you Need to Know About Recent Online Disclosures,” a Flock executive said “We are aware that agencies across the country, particularly in states with broad public-records laws, are seeing increased PRA/FOIA activity seeking, among other things, LPR search logs. Recently, a third-party website began aggregating search information that has been released through these public-records processes.
We recognize that seeing investigative search activity displayed publicly can raise understandable concerns about officer safety, investigative integrity, community perception, and compliance with state law.”
The email added “To be clear: Flock has not been breached or compromised. We are CJIS compliant. Regardless, we are continuing to make changes to our Product to better protect you and your officers.”
That much is true, because in this case the sensitive material released was taxpayer-funded public records willingly released by police departments around the country.
On the HaveIBeenFlocked website, van Pelt defends his decision to run the site: “This website aggregates and reformats already-public information. This information represents a fraction of what's being shared with Flock and its government, commercial, and private partners on a daily basis,” he wrote. “Policies exist to prevent the release of this information—they are not adhered to. Laws and regulations exist to enforce the policies—they go unenforced. Police, Flock, and politicians have been ignoring these problems for years while your private movements continue to be collected, catalogued, sold and traded.”
“This website exposes the problem because, as the old saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Law enforcement and legislation are needed to address the cause of the problem, and we highly encourage you to bring this site to the attention of your legislators,” he added. “We believe mass surveillance has no place in a free society, and this data should not be collected to begin with. If it is collected, warrants should be used, lookups should be rare, and police and private parties, like Flock and HaveIBeenFlocked.com, should not be permitted to act without functional restraints or oversight.”
A police accountability advocate who has seen the unredacted search audits but asked to remain anonymous because Flock has suggested such people are attacking the company and the police told 404 Media that the situation highlights broader problems with Flock.
"It could lead one to the conclusion that if that is an unacceptable outcome for customers, maybe they shouldn't be participating in a nationwide surveillance system," they said. "The platform is designed to collect as much data as possible. They want to make that as widely accessible and searchable as possible. They need the network effect so they can continue collecting data for their AI models. So, I struggle with the company’s framing of what’s happened. That framing is an attempt to dodge accountability for what their platform is doing which is collecting data without people's (and often informed elected officials') consent."
Flock going after HaveIBeenFlocked on dubious intellectual property grounds is similar to its strategy against DeFlock, a website that hosts an open source map of ALPR locations.
In a separate December email to Jim Williams, the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed that public records were being weaponized against the company. Langley claimed the company and police are under “coordinated attack” by activists “trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us.”
“Flock is building tools to help you fight the real crime affecting communities across the country. Many activists don't like that. Let's call this what it is: Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack. The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines,” Langley wrote. “They're also trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us. Make no mistake, we're fighting this fight for you, and, I hope, with you. I remain committed to building world-class technology to help you keep your communities safe. And doing so in a transparent, secure, and privacy centric way.”
Williams responded to Langley:
“As far as your assertion that we are currently under attack, I do not believe that this is so. I have dedicated the last 41 years of my life to serving the citizens of the City of Staunton as a police officer, the last 22 as the police chief,” he wrote. “What we are seeing here is a group of local citizens who are raising concerns that we could be potentially surveilling private citizens, residents and visitors and using the data for nefarious purposes. These citizens have been exercising their rights to receive answers from me, my staff, and city officials, to include our elected leaders. ln short, it is democracy in action.”
In a press release, the Staunton called Langley’s email “unsolicited” and said “The City of Staunton wants to make it clear that the Flock Safety CEO’s narrative does not reflect the city’s values.” Staunton canceled its Flock contract days later.
Flock Threatens Open Source Developer Mapping Its Surveillance Cameras
The surveillance camera company Flock sent DeFlock a cease-and-desist. DeFlock is fighting back.Jason Koebler (404 Media)
How Benn Jordan Discovered Flock's Cameras Were Left Streaming to the Internet#podcasts
How Benn Jordan Discovered Flock's Cameras Were Left Streaming to the Internet
On the podcast this week, I talked 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.
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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 of Flock’s Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet. In this episode, we discuss how he discovered the issue and what happened next.
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Articles and videos discussed:
Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves
Flock left at least 60 of its people-tracking Condor PTZ cameras live streaming and exposed to the open internet.404 MediaJason Koebler
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"Sex is human, sex is animal, sex is social," porn historian Noelle Perdue writes in her analysis of AI-powered erotic chatbots.#AI #ChatGPT
'Shame Thrives in Seclusion:' How AI Porn Chatbots Isolate Us All
Noelle Perdue recently joined us on the 404 Media podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about AI porn, censorship, age verification legislation, and a lot more. One part of our conversation really resonated with listeners – the idea that erotic chatbots are increasing the isolation so many people already feel – so we asked her to expand on that thought in written form.Today’s incognito window, a pseudo friend to perverts and ad-evaders alike, is nearly useless. It doesn’t protect against malware and your data is still tracked. Its main purpose is, ostensibly, to prevent browsing history from being saved locally on your computer.
But the concept of privatizing your browsing history feels old-fashioned, vestigial from a time when computers were such a production that they had their own room in the house. Back then, the wholesome desktop computer was shared between every person of clicking-age in a household. It had to be navigated with some amount of hygiene, lest the other members learn about your affinity for Jerk Off Instruction.
Even before desktop computers, pornography was unavoidably communal whether or not you were into that kind of thing. Part of the difficulty in getting ahold of porn was the embarrassment of having to interact with others along the way; whether it was the movie store clerk showing you the back of the store or the gas station cashier reaching for a dirty magazine, it was nearly impossible to access explicit material without interacting with someone else, somewhere along the line. Porn theaters were hotbeds for queer cruising, with (usually men) gathering to watch porn, jerk off and engage in mostly-anonymous sexual encounters. Even a lack of interaction was communal, like the old tradition of leaving Playboys or Hustlers in the woods for other curious porn aficionados to find.
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With the internet came access, yes, but also privacy. Suddenly, credit card processing put beaded curtain security guards out of business, and forums had more centrefolds than every issue of Playboy combined. Porn theaters shut down—partially due to stricter zoning ordinances and 80’s sex-panic pressure from their neighbors, but also because the rise of streaming pay-per-view and the internet meant people had more options to stay in the comfort of their homes with access to virtually whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it.Today, with computers in our pockets and slung against our shoulders, even browsing history has become private by circumstance. Computers are now “personal devices,” rather than communal machines—what we do with them is our business. We have no corporate privacy, of course; our data is being harvested at record volumes. Instead, in exchange for shipping off all our most sensitive information, we have tremendous, historically unheard-of interpersonal privacy. At least, Gen Z are likely the last generation to have embarrassing “my parents looked at my browsing history” anecdotes. We’ve left that information to be seen and sorted by Palantir interns.
Most recently in technology’s ongoing love-hate affair with porn, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced he was going to allow ChatGPT to generate erotica, joining hundreds of AI-powered porn platforms offering highly tailored generated content at the push of a button.
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Now, from the user’s perspective, there are no humans at any point in this interaction. The consumer is in their room, requesting a machine, and the machine spits out a product. You are entirely alone at every step of this process.As a porn historian, I think alarm bells should be going off here. Sexual dysfunction thrives in shame, and shame thrives in seclusion. Often, people who talk to me about their issues with sex and pornography worry that what they want isn’t “normal.” One thing that pornography teaches is that there is no normal—chances are, if you like something, someone else does, too. Finding pornography of something you’re into is proof that you are not alone in your desires, that someone else liked it enough to make it, and others liked it enough to buy it. You aren’t a freak—or maybe you are, but at least you’re in good company.
Grok’s AI Sexual Abuse Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere
With xAI’s Grok generating endless semi-nude images of women and girls without their consent, it follows a years-long legacy of rampant abuse on the platform.404 MediaSamantha Cole
Other people can also provide a useful temperature check- I’m all for nonnormative sexuality and fantasy, but it’s good to get a tone read every once in a while on where the hungry animal has taken you. Strange things happen in isolation, and the dehumanization of sexual imagery by literally removing the human allows people to disconnect personhood from desire, a practice it serves us well to avoid. Compartmentalization of inner sexuality so far as to have it be completely disconnected from what another person can offer you (or what you can offer another person) can lead to sexual frustration at best and genuine harm at worst. This isn’t hypothetical; We know that chatbots have the power to lure vulnerable people, especially the elderly and young, away from reality and into situations where they’re hurt or taken advantage of in real life. And while real, human sex workers endure decades of censorship and marginalization online from industry giants that make it harder and harder to earn a living online, the AI chatbot platforms of the world push ahead, even exposing minors to explicit content or creating child sexual abuse imagery with seemingly zero consequence.I don’t think anyone needs to project their porn use on the side of their house. Sexual boundaries exist for a reason, and everyone is entitled to their own internal world. But I do think in a period of increasing sexual shame, open communication is a valuable tool. Sex is human, sex is animal, sex is social. Even in periods of celibacy or self-pleasure, sexual desire connects us, person-to-person—even if in practice you happen to be connecting with your right hand.
Noelle is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian whose works has been published in Wired, TheWashington Post, Slate, and more. You can find her on Substack here.
How private is your browser’s Private mode? Research into porn suggests “not very”
Data brokers like Facebook, Google, and Oracle might know more than you think.Jim Salter (Ars Technica)
Scientists discovered that some dogs, known as Gifted Word Learners, can passively pick up language and may possess toddler-level cognitive skills.#TheAbstract
‘Gifted’ Dogs Learn Human Language, Study Finds
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that lurked in the dark, pulsated with light, wagged a tail, and called it a night.First, scientists have yet again spotted a bizarre object in space that has never been seen before—the universe just keeps serving them up. Then: news from the biggest star in the sky, a tale of eavesdropping dogs, and a jellyfish sleepover.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliensor subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
You don’t want to be on this Cloud-9
Astronomers have glimpsed a new type of cosmic object—a starless clump of dark matter that never quite worked up the oomph to become a galaxy. Known as Cloud-9, the entity is located about 14 million light years away and likely provides the first look at an ancient dark matter halo.
Dark matter, as you may have heard, is weird stuff that has never been directly detected or identified, but nonetheless accounts for almost all matter in the universe. In the early universe, clumps of dark matter formed halos that attracted gas, sparked star formation, and evolved into the first galaxies. But while all galaxies appear to have dark matter halos, not all dark matter halos turned into galaxies.
Scientists have long speculated that some halos may have never accumulated the right amount of mass to make a star-studded galaxy. For years, astronomers have searched for the gravitational signatures of these dark starless “failed galaxies,” which are known as Reionization-Limited H I Clouds (RELHICs).
Now, a team reports that the first clear RELHIC candidate ever discovered, providing support for the standard model of cosmology, also known as the Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model, which is the current working framework of the universe.
Digitized Sky Survey image covering a 10′ × 10′ region around Cloud-9. Image: Anand, Gagandeep S. et al.
“The abundance of halos far exceeds that of known galaxies, implying that not all halos are able to host luminous galaxies,” said researchers led by Gagandeep S. Anand of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “This has been interpreted to mean that galaxies only form in halos that exceed a ‘critical’ mass.’”“Our results make Cloud-9 the leading RELHIC candidate,” the team continued. “This provides strong support for a cornerstone prediction of the Lambda cold dark matter model, namely the existence of gas-filled starless dark matter halos on subgalactic mass scales, and constrains the present-day threshold halo mass for galaxy formation.”
Cloud-9 might one day accumulate enough mass to pass the threshold for star formation, allowing it to eventually graduate into a galaxy. But for now, it is a galaxy school flunkie.
In other news…
Big star go boom soon
WOH G64, one of the largest stars in the sky, is nearing its death. At about 2,000 times the size of the Sun, this supergiant would extend beyond Saturn if it were placed in our solar system.
Scientists have speculated that the recent dimming of the senescent star might signal a transition from a red supergiant to a yellow hypergiant, making it one step closer to supernova. But a new study reveals evidence that WOH G64 “is currently a red supergiant” and its changing light may be influenced by a companion star in orbit around it, making this a binary system.
Concept art of WOH G64. image: ESO/L. Calçada
“For a long time, WOH G64 was known as the most extreme red supergiant outside our Galaxy,” said researchers led by Jacco Th. van Loon of Keele University. “However, in a matter of years it has faded” and “its pulsations have become suppressed.”“We have presented evidence that the remarkable changes witnessed in the 21st-century in the optical brightness and spectrum of the most extreme known extragalactic red supergiant, WOH G64 may be due to binary interaction,” the team continued, noting that “we may be witnessing the birth of a…supernova progenitor.”
Fortunately, this time bomb is located 160,000 light years away, so we are well beyond the blast radius. Whenever WOH G64 does explode, the supernova could be bright enough to see with the naked eye from Earth, despite its location far outside the Milky Way.
Learn with doggo-lingo
It’s not your imagination: Your dog might actually be a really good listener. While it’s well-known that dogs respond to a variety of commands, researchers have now demonstrated that some pooches, known as Gifted Word Learners, can pick up new words just by passively overhearing their owners’ conversations.
Over a series of experiments, researchers gave dogs fun toys to play with, which their owners then named in conversations that were not directed at the dogs. The pets were then able to identify the toys by the labels at a rate significantly above what would be expected by chance, even though they had never been directly taught the words.
A dog that participated in the study, enjoying the toys. Image: Don Harvey
The findings suggest that some dogs may have sociocognitive skills parallel to young toddlers, and further confirms that a variety of animals can demonstrate various degrees of language comprehension. But the best part is the following detail about how the effervescent joy of dogs was accounted for in the experimental design.“Because dogs are neophilic and often get excited by new toys, we gave them ample opportunities to interact with the toys without hearing their labels,” said researchers led by Shany Dror of University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.
Science completed? Check. Dogs got loads of playtime? Check. Win-win.
Jellyfish naps > cat naps
We’ll close by yawning and going back to bed—a waterbed in this case, because this is a story about the sleep cycles of marine animals. To probe the broader evolutionary purpose of sleep, scientists monitored periods of slumber and wakefulness in the upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea andromeda and the anemone Nematostella vectensis.
The results revealed that these animals had remarkably similar sleeping habits to people. “Like humans, both species require a total of approximately 8 hours of sleep per day,” said researchers led by Raphaël Aguillon, who conducted the work at Bar-Ilan University, and is now at IBPC Paris-Sorbonne University.
“Notably, similar to findings in primates and flies, a midday nap was also observed in C. andromeda,” the team added.
Talk about sleeping with the fishes! The upshot of the study is that sleep has evolved across all animals with a nervous system to help repair damaged DNA, a benefit that is apparently worth the vulnerability of a resting state. But for our weekend purposes, my takeaway is that even jellyfish enjoy a midday nap, so go ahead and take that siesta.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
NASA’s Hubble Examines Cloud-9, First of New Type of Object
A team using Hubble uncovered a new type of astronomical object — a starless, gas-rich, dark-matter cloud, a remnant of early galaxy formation.NASA Hubble Mission Team (NASA Science)
This week, we discuss viewing terrible images online and giving out zines at a benefit show.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: The 'View From Nowhere'
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss viewing terrible images online and giving out zines at a benefit show.EMANUEL: I’ve seen a lot of terrible videos in my years online but by far the most upsetting type of video shows police using excessive force and especially videos of police killing people. There are more graphic videos from battlefields and other dark corners of the internet but what happened to Renee Nicole Good this week could happen to anyone living in America, and when I imagine the tragedy that has been visited on her loved ones I can’t help but imagine how easily I or anyone I care about can find ourselves in the same situation.
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In an attempt to push more people toward a paying subscription, Grok now refuses to generate images in replies. The paywall is pretty leaky, though.#ElonMusk #xcom #ncii #abuseimagery
Masterful Gambit: Musk Attempts to Monetize Grok's Wave of Sexual Abuse Imagery
Elon Musk, owner of the former social media network turned deepfake porn site X, is pushing people to pay for its nonconsensual intimate image generator Grok, meaning some of the app’s tens of millions of users are being hit with a paywall when they try to create nude images of random women doing sexually explicit things within seconds.Some users trying to generate images on X using Grok receive a reply from the chatbot pushing them toward subscriptions: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.”
Users who fork over $8 a month can still reply to random images of random women and girls directly on X and tag in Grok with things like “make her wear clear tapes with tiny black censor bar covering her private part protecting her privacy and make her chest and hips grow largee[sic] as she squatting with leg open widely facing back, while head turn back looking to camera.” These images are still visible in everyone’s X feed, subscribers or not.On the Grok app, a subscription to SuperGrok ($29.99/month) or SuperGrok Heavy ($299.99/month) allow users to generate images even faster. On Thursday, I received messages in the Grok app several times warning me that usage rates for the app were higher than normal and that I could pay to skip the wait.
As the Verge reported this morning, this paywall is very leaky. It’s still possible to generate images using Grok in a variety of ways, but replying directly to someone’s post by tagging @[url=https://bird.makeup/users/grok]Grok[/url] returns the “limited to subscribers” message.
Grok’s AI Sexual Abuse Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere
With xAI’s Grok generating endless semi-nude images of women and girls without their consent, it follows a years-long legacy of rampant abuse on the platform.404 MediaSamantha Cole
As many legacy news outlets have already reported, Musk improved the subscription revenue funnel on his money-burning app following an outcry against these extremely popular uses of the app. “X Limits Grok Image Tool To Subscribers After Deepfake Outcry,” Deadline reported. “Grok turns off image generator for most users after outcry over sexualised AI imagery,” wrote the Guardian. “Elon Musk restricts Grok’s image tools following a wave of non-consensual deepfakes of women and children,” Fortune wrote.Based on these headlines, you may be thinking, This is an uncharacteristic show of accountability and perhaps even self reflection from the billionaire technocrat white supremacist sympathizer who owns X.com, wow! But as with all things Musk does, this is a business move to monetize the long-established harassment factory he’s owned for three years and has yet to figure out how to make profitable. After years of attempting to push users toward a subscription model by placing meaningless status signifiers behind a paywall and making the site so toxic it bleeds users by the millions, he might have found a way to do it: by monetizing abuse at the source. Several other AI industry giants have already figured out that sexual content is where the money’s at, and Musk appears to be catching up. Putting the nonconsensual sexual images behind a paywall is also what every “nudify” and “undress” app and image generator platform on the market already does.
On Thursday, in the middle of Grok’s CSAM shitstorm, Bloomberg reported that xAI is looking at “a net loss of $1.46 billion for the September quarter, up from $1 billion in the first quarter,” according to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg. “In the first nine months of the year, it spent $7.8 billion in cash.” It’s too early to speculate, but making the people who are tagging @[url=https://bird.makeup/users/grok]Grok[/url] under the posts of women they don’t know and writing prompts like “make her bend over on all fours doggy style” multiple times a second pay for the privilege could be a play to get the company back in the black.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
In addition to using Grok on X.com on desktop, It’s also still easy to generate images and videos in the Grok app without a subscription, which is still available on the Apple and Google app stores, despite blatantly breaking their rules against non-consensual material and pornography. The app and underground Telegram groups are where the really bad stuff is, anyway. Apple and Google have not replied to my request for comment about why the app is still available.Signing up for X Premium or SuperGrok requires handing over your payment information, name associated with your credit card, and phone number. It also comes with the risk of having all of that hacked, stolen, and released to the dark web in the next big data breach of the platform.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated how many years ago Musk bought Twitter.
Massive breach of Elon Musk's X allegedly leaks over 200 million users' email addresses
Billions of X accounts could be affected overallMatt Binder (Mashable)
With xAI's Grok generating endless semi-nude images of women and girls without their consent, it follows a years-long legacy of rampant abuse on the platform.
With xAIx27;s Grok generating endless semi-nude images of women and girls without their contest, it follows a years-long legacy of rampant abuse on the platform.#grok #ElonMusk #AI #csam
Grok's AI Sexual Abuse Didn't Come Out of Nowhere
The biggest AI story of the first week of 2026 involves Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot turning the social media platform into an AI child sexual imagery factory, seemingly overnight.I’ve said several times on the 404 Media podcast and elsewhere that we could devote an entire beat to “loser shit.” What’s happening this week with Grok—designed to be the horny edgelord AI companion counterpart to the more vanilla ChatGPT or Claude—definitely falls into that category. People are endlessly prompting Grok to make nude and semi-nude images of women and girls, without their consent, directly on their X feeds and in their replies.
Sometimes I feel like I’ve said absolutely everything there is to say about this topic. I’ve been writing about nonconsensual synthetic imagery before we had half a dozen different acronyms for it, before people called it “deepfakes” and way before “cheapfakes” and “shallowfakes” were coined, too. Almost nothing about the way society views this material has changed in the seven years since it’s come about, because fundamentally—once it’s left the camera and made its way to millions of people’s screens—the behavior behind sharing it is not very different from images made with a camera or stolen from someone’s Google Drive or private OnlyFans account. We all agreed in 2017 that making nonconsensual nudes of people is gross and weird, and today, occasionally, someone goes to jail for it, but otherwise the industry is bigger than ever. What’s happening on X right now is an escalation of the way it’s always been, and almost everywhere on the internet.
💡
Do you know anything else about what's going on inside X? Or are you someone who's been targeted by abusive AI imagery? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.The internet has an incredibly short memory. It would be easy to imagine Twitter Before Elon as a harmonious and quaint microblogging platform, considering the four years After Elon have, comparatively, been a rolling outhouse fire. But even before it was renamed X, Twitter was one of the places for this content. It used to be (and for some, still is) an essential platform for getting discovered and going viral for independent content creators, and as such, it’s also where people are massively harassed. A few years ago, it was where people making sexually explicit AI images went to harass female cosplayers. Before that, it was (and still is) host to real-life sexual abuse material, where employers could search your name and find videos of the worst day of your life alongside news outlets and memes. Before that, it was how Gamergate made the jump from 4chan to the mainstream. The things that happen in Telegram chats and private Discord channels make the leap to Twitter and end up on the news.
What makes the situation this week with Grok different is that it’s all happening directly on X. Now, you don’t need to use Stable Diffusion or Nano Banana or Civitai to generate nonconsensual imagery and then take it over to Twitter to do some damage. X has become the Everything App that Elon always wanted, if “everything” means all the tools you need to fuck up someone’s life, in one place.
Inside the Telegram Channel Jailbreaking Grok Over and Over Again
Putting people in bikinis is just the tip of the iceberg. On Telegram, users are finding ways to make Grok do far worse.404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg
This is the culmination of years and years of rampant abuse on the platform. Reporting from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the organization platforms report to when they find instances of child sexual abuse material which then reports to the relevant authorities, shows that Twitter, and eventually X, has been one of the leading hosts of CSAM every year for the last seven years. In 2019, the platform reported 45,726 instances of abuse to NCMEC’s Cyber Tipline. In 2020, it was 65,062. In 2024, it was 686,176. These numbers should be considered with the caveat that platforms voluntarily report to NCMEC, and more reports can also mean stronger moderation systems that catch more CSAM when it appears. But the scale of the problem is still apparent. Jack Dorsey’s Twitter was a moderation clown show much of the time. But moderation on Elon Musk’s X, especially against abusive imagery, is a total failure.In 2023, the BBC reported that insiders believed the company was “no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation” following Musk’s takeover in 2022 and subsequent sacking of thousands of workers on moderation teams. This is all within the context that one of Musk’s go-to insults for years was “pedophile,” to the point that the harassment he stoked drove a former Twitter employee into hiding and went to federal court because he couldn't stop calling someone a “pedo.” Invoking pedophelia is a common thread across many conspiracy networks, including QAnon—something he’s dabbled in—but Musk is enabling actual child sexual abuse on the platform he owns.
Generative AI is making all of this worse. In 2024, NCMEC saw 6,835 reports of generative artificial intelligence related to child sexual exploitation (across the internet, not just X). By September 2025, the year-to-date reports had hit 440,419. Again, these are just the reports identified by NCMEC, not every instance online, and as such is likely a conservative estimate.
When I spoke to online child sexual exploitation experts in December 2023, following our investigation into child abuse imagery found in LAION-5B, they told me that this kind of material isn’t victimless just because the images don’t depict “real” children or sex acts. AI image generators like Grok and many others are used by offenders to groom and blackmail children, and muddy the waters for investigators to discern actual photographs from fake ones.
Grok’s AI CSAM Shitshow
We are experiencing world events like the kidnapping of Maduro through the lens of the most depraved AI you can imagine.404 MediaJason Koebler
“Rather than coercing sexual content, offenders are increasingly using GAI tools to create explicit images using the child’s face from public social media or school or community postings, then blackmail them,” NCMEC wrote in September. “This technology can be used to create or alter images, provide guidelines for how to groom or abuse children or even simulate the experience of an explicit chat with a child. It’s also being used to create nude images, not just sexually explicit ones, that are sometimes referred to as ‘deepfakes.’ Often done as a prank in high schools, these images are having a devastating impact on the lives and futures of mostly female students when they are shared online.”The only reason any of this is being discussed now, and the only reason it’s ever discussed in general—going back to Gamergate and beyond—is because many normies, casuals, “the mainstream,” and cable news viewers have just this week learned about the problem and can’t believe how it came out of nowhere. In reality, deepfakes came from a longstanding hobby community dedicated to putting women’s faces on porn in Photoshop, and before that with literal paste and scissors in pinup magazines. And as Emanuel wrote this week, not even Grok’s AI CSAM problem popped up out of nowhere; it’s the result of weeks of quiet, obsessive work by a group of people operating just under the radar.
And this is where we are now: Today, several days into Grok’s latest scandal, people are using an AI image generator made by a man who regularly boosts white supremacist thought to create images of a woman slaughtered by an ICE agent in front of the whole world less than 24 hours ago to “put her in a bikini.
As journalist Katie Notopoulos pointed out, a quick search of terms like “make her” shows people prompting Grok with images of random women, saying things like “Make her wear clear tapes with tiny black censor bar covering her private part protecting her privacy and make her chest and hips grow largee[sic] as she squatting with leg open widely facing back, while head turn back looking to camera” at a rate of several times a minute, every minute, for days.
A good way to get a sense of just how fast the AI undressed/nudify requests to Grok are coming in is to look at the requests for it t.co/ISMpp2PdFU
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) January 7, 2026
In 2018, less than a year after reporting that first story on deepfakes, I wrote about how it’s a serious mistake to ignore the fact that nonconsensual imagery, synthetic or not, is a societal sickness and not something companies can guardrail against into infinity. “Users feed off one another to create a sense that they are the kings of the universe, that they answer to no one. This logic is how you get incels and pickup artists, and it’s how you get deepfakes: a group of men who see no harm in treating women as mere images, and view making and spreading algorithmically weaponized revenge porn as a hobby as innocent and timeless as trading baseball cards,” I wrote at the time. “That is what’s at the root of deepfakes. And the consequences of forgetting that are more dire than we can predict.”A little over two years ago, when AI-generated sexual images of Taylor Swift flooding X were the thing everyone was demanding action and answers for, we wrote a prediction: “Every time we publish a story about abuse that’s happening with AI tools, the same crowd of ‘techno-optimists’ shows up to call us prudes and luddites. They are absolutely going to hate the heavy-handed policing of content AI companies are going to force us all into because of how irresponsible they’re being right now, and we’re probably all going to hate what it does to the internet.”
It’s possible we’re still in a very weird fuck-around-and-find-out period before that hammer falls. It’s also possible the hammer is here, in the form of recently-enacted federal laws like the Take It Down Act and more than two dozen piecemeal age verification bills in the U.S. and more abroad that make using the internet an M. C. Escher nightmare, where the rules around adult content shift so much we’re all jerking it to egg yolks and blurring our feet in vacation photos. What matters most, in this bizarre and frequently disturbing era, is that the shareholders are happy.
Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion from investors including Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity
Elon Musk's AI said it raised $20 billion in new funding after CNBC reported in November that a financing round would value the company at about $230 billion.Lora Kolodny (CNBC)
