This week, we discuss archiving to get around paywalls, hating on smart glasses, and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Paywall Jumping and Smart Glasses
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 archiving to get around paywalls, hating on smart glasses, and more.JASON: I was going to try to twist myself into knots attempting to explain the throughline between my articles this week, and about how I’ve been thinking about the news and our coverage more broadly. This was going to be something about trying to promote analog media and distinctly human ways of communicating (like film photography), while highlighting the very bad economic and political incentives pushing us toward fundamentally dehumanizing, anti-human methods of communicating. Like fully automated, highly customized and targeted AI ads, automated library software, and I guess whatever Nancy Pelosi has been doing with her stock portfolio. But then I remembered that I blogged about the FBI’s subpoena against archive.is, a website I feel very ambivalent about and one that is the subject of perhaps my most cringe blog of all time.
So let’s revisit that cringe blog, which was called “Dear GamerGate: Please Stop Stealing Our Shit.” I wrote this article in 2014, which was fully 11 years ago, which is alarming to me. First things first: They were not stealing from me they were stealing from VICE, a company that I did not actually experience financial gains from related to people reading articles; it was good if people read my articles and traffic was very important, and getting traffic over time led to me getting raises and promotions and stuff, but the company made very, very clear that we did not “own” the articles and therefore they were not “mine” in the way that they are now. With that out of the way, the reporting and general reason for the article was I think good but the tone of it is kind of wildly off, and, as I mentioned, over the course of many years I have now come to regard archive.is as sort of an integral archiving tool. If you are unfamiliar with archive.is, it’s a site that takes snapshots of any URL and creates a new link for them which, notably, does not go to the original website. Archive.is is extremely well known for bypassing the paywalls on many sites, 404 Media sometimes but not usually among them.
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This week, we discuss keeping FOIA reporting in front of a paywall, Ray-Bans, and what pregnate Schoolhouse Rock bills say about our current AI-driven hellscape.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Ray-Bans Are No Longer Cool or Timeless
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 keeping FOIA reporting in front of a paywall, Ray-Bans, and what pregnate Schoolhouse Rock bills say about our current AI-driven hellscape.JOSEPH: Yesterday I did a livestreamed event with Freedom of the Press Foundation and WIRED. It was called Unpaywalled: The case for making public records-based reporting free and you can check it out here.
As you might know, we made a decision very early on with 404 Media, I think in the first week maybe, to not paywall our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reporting. There are a few reasons, but the main one simply is that with public records, we think people should be able to see those records without paying. It’s like a government agency publishing certain databases, or census data, or whatever. These are public records and should be published or re-published as such.
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This week, we discuss Pavlovian Chartbeat response, when to say "cum," and the wave of making things for humans, by humans.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Making Things for Humans
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 Pavlovian Chartbeat response, when to say "cum," and the wave of making things for humans, by humans.JOSEPH: Right now I’m in the midst of upgrading a bunch of my podcasting and related gear. I’m using the same kinda cheap to midrange web cam I got when we first launched 404 Media. My mic is fine but now that a fair number of people listen to the pod, and we want to grow it, it’s time to invest in some new tech. Jason has already done this, I’m more following his lead. I used to be very into cameras, tech, gadgets, mics, but it’s been a few years.
Because the four of us are spread all over, we can’t do the popular aesthetic of everyone sitting on a chair or sofa chatting in a podcast studio. That stuff obviously performs better on video/YouTube, which is where podcast discovery often happens now. But we can try to make our remotely recorded podcast look as good as we can. Give people something to actually look at.
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This week, we discuss crowdsourced resistance and a big government data dump.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Engaging the Public
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 crowdsourced resistance and a big government data dump.SAM: I don’t want to say it’s rare that we publish positive stories. We post more of those than people probably even realize, because the gnarly stories are the ones that go viral, or are talked about by your friends or aggregated by other news outlets. A “scoop” is almost never a happy story because often they’re predicated on information someone in a position of power didn’t want the world to know. But it’s definitely less common for us to report on things that makes you feel good or hopeful than things that make you go “oh shit” or “Jesus fucking Christ,” I will admit.
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This week, we discuss a ransomware gang, book bans, and infrastructure.
This week, we discuss a ransomware gang, book bans, and infrastructure.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Sinkholes and Site Seizures
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 a ransomware gang, book bans, and infrastructure.JOSEPH: I thought I’d give you something from the digital underground that happened last night. So recently a group that goes by the name Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters (I know, it’s a mouthful) has been threatening to dump data from customers of Salesforce. The group’s name is an amalgamation of a bunch of other English-speaking loosely connected hacking groups: Scattered Spider, LAPSUS$, Shiny Hunters, etc. This latest iteration is trying to get Salesforce to pay a ransom; Salesforce says it won’t. The group says it has data from all sorts of companies, including Disney/Hulu, FedEx, Toyota, UPS, and many more.
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This week, we discuss characters in open source, that Saudi comedy festival, and asking ourselves if we're haters.
This week, we discuss characters in open source, that Saudi comedy festival, and asking ourselves if wex27;re haters.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Open-Source Drama and Saudi-Approved Humor
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 characters in open source, that Saudi comedy festival, and asking ourselves if we're haters.EMANUEL: I swear I try my best not to use Behind the Blogs to pat myself on the back, but I’m very happy with how my piece about the recent Ruby Drama turned out. I got a lot of interesting responses to the the article, some of which I hope will result in new articles soon, but mostly I was happy that it appears I didn’t fuck up any of the details in what was a highly complicated, technical, and controversial story for people who care about this stuff.
That is not to say that I didn’t get any constructive criticism, some of which I’d like to address here. One piece of feedback I got from multiple people in the camp that is angry with Ruby Central’s ousting of contributors is their view that the article underplays the role David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) played in this saga, and the political views he’s expressed on social media over the years.
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Subscribe nowBehind the Blog: Open-Source Drama and Saudi-Approved Humor
This week, we discuss characters in open source, that Saudi comedy festival, and asking ourselves if we're haters.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss being journalism dorks, our new lawsuit against ICE, and working on bullshit.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Behind 404 Media's ICE Lawsuit
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 being journalism dorks, our new lawsuit against ICE, and working on bullshit.JASON: I’m writing this from sunny Athens, Greece, where I’ve been invited to talk about 404 Media at the IMEDD International Journalism Forum, an annual conference. Over the years, I haven’t been to too many conferences, because honestly it was always too disruptive to the day-to-day journalism and work of managing a team to be able to get away. We’re more than two years into this, but one of the nice things about having this company is that I can mostly get my work done whenever makes sense for me, whether that’s late at night in Los Angeles or early in the morning in Greece.
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This week, we discuss "free speech," keeping stupid thoughts in one's own head, and cancel culture.
This week, we discuss "free speech," keeping stupid thoughts in onex27;s own head, and cancel culture.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: 'Free Speech' and Open Dialogue
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 "free speech," keeping stupid thoughts in one's own head, and cancel culture.JASON: In August 2014, I spoke to Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark.com, a timeless, seminal internet website, about a decision he had just made. Curtis banned misogyny from his website, partially in the name of facilitating free speech.
“We don't want to be the He Man Woman Hater's Club. This represents enough of a departure from pretty much how every other large internet community operates that I figure an announcement is necessary,” Curtis wrote when he announced the rule. “Adam Savage once described to me the problem this way: if the Internet was a dude, we'd all agree that dude has a serious problem with women.”
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Subscribe nowBehind the Blog: 'Free Speech' and Open Dialogue
This week, we discuss "free speech," keeping stupid thoughts in one's own head, and cancel culture.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss slop in history, five-alarm fires, and AI art (not) at Dragon Con.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Sleeping With Slop
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 slop in history, five-alarm fires, and AI art (not) at Dragon Con.EMANUEL: We published about a dozen stories this week and I only wrote one of them. I’ve already talked about it at length on this week’s podcast so I suggest you read the article and then listen to that if you’re interested in OnlyFans piracy, bad DMCA takedown request processes, and our continued overreliance on Google search for navigating the internet.
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This week, we discuss our top games, “dense street imagery," and first-person experiences with apps.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Dogfooding and Datasets
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 our top games, “dense street imagery," and first-person experiences with apps.JOSEPH: This week we published Flock Wants to Partner With Consumer Dashcam Company That Takes ‘Trillions of Images’ a Month. This story, naturally, started with a tip that Flock was going to partner with this dashcam company. We then verified it with another source, and Flock confirmed it was exploring a relationship with Nexar. Pretty straightforward all in all. There are still many, many questions about what the integration will look like exactly, but my understanding is that it is what it looks like: Flock wants to use images taken from Nexar dashcams, and Nexar sells those cameras for use in their private vehicles.
There’s another element that made its way into a couple of paragraphs but which should be really stressed. Nexar publishes a livemap that anyone can access and explore. It shows photos ripped from its users’ dashcams (with license plates, people, and car interiors blurred). Nexar has then applied AI or machine learning to these which identify roadside hazards, signs, etc. The idea is to give agencies, companies, researchers, etc a free sample of their data which they might want to obtain later.
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This week, we have some party pics and musical selections from last night.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Our Second Anniversary Party!
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 have a slightly shorter than usual entry from the gang, with some party pics and musical selections from the night.SAM: We’re all still recovering, processing, and floating on the overwhelming support and encouragement we felt from everyone who came to the second anniversary party last night. Thank you again to our sponsor for the evening, DeleteMe (get 20% off with them here as a thank-you to our community with code 404media) and farm.one for being awesome hosts, and especially thank you to everyone who came, cheered us on from afar, and made the last two years possible.
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This week, we discuss OSINT for chat groups, Russell Crowe films, and storage problems.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Exercises in OSINT and Storage Pains
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 OSINT for chat groups, Russell Crowe films, and storage problems.JOSEPH: On Wednesday we recorded a subscribers podcast about the second anniversary of 404 Media. That should hit your feeds next week or so. Towards the end of recording, I went silent for a bit. I said on air sorry about that, a source just sent me an insane tip, or something like that.
That tip led to ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat, Exposes Details of Manhunt in Real-Time. Definitely read the piece if you haven’t already. It presented an interesting verification challenge. Essentially I was given these screenshots which included phone numbers but I didn’t know exactly who was behind each one. I didn’t know their names, nor their agencies. It sure looked like a conversation involving ICE though, because it included a “Field Operations Worksheet” covered in ICE branding. But I needed to know who was involved. I didn’t think DHS or ICE would help because they are taking multiple days to reply to media requests if they do at all at the moment. So I had to do something else.
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This week, we discuss Wikipedia's ethos and zooming in on a lot of pictures of cops' glasses.
This week, we discuss Wikipediax27;s ethos and zooming in on a lot of pictures of copsx27; glasses.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Speculation, Distraction, and Smart Glasses
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 Wikipedia's ethos and zooming in on a lot of pictures of cops' glasses.EMANUEL: I’m going to keep it very short this week because I’m crunching on a feature, but I wanted to quickly discuss Wikipedia.
This week I wrote a story about a pretty in-the-weeds policy change Wikipedia’s community of volunteer editors adopted which will allow them to more quickly and easily delete articles that are obviously AI generated. One thought I’ve had in mind that didn’t make it into the last few stories I’ve written about Wikipedia, and one that several people shared on social media in response to this one, is that it’s funny how many of us remember teachers in school telling us that Wikipedia was not a good source of information.
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UpgradeBehind the Blog: Speculation, Distraction, and Smart Glasses
This week, we discuss Wikipedia's ethos and zooming in on a lot of pictures of cops' glasses.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
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This week, we discuss an exciting revamp of The Abstract, tech betrayals, and the "it's for cops" defense.
This week, we discuss an exciting revamp of The Abstract, tech betrayals, and the "itx27;s for cops" defense.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Lighting Money on Fire and the Meaning of Vetting
This week, we discuss an exciting revamp of The Abstract, tech betrayals, and the "it's for cops" defense.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
This week, we discuss Star Wars' weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views.
This week, we discuss Star Warsx27; weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: The Art of the 'Catharticle'
This week, we discuss Star Wars' weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss getting fooled, the 'one big story' of the week, and Ghibli.
This week, we discuss getting fooled, the x27;one big storyx27; of the week, and Ghibli.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Foolishness and Breaking Through
This week, we discuss getting fooled, the 'one big story' of the week, and Ghibli.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss doxed Teslas, the concept of "amplification," and how we'd much rather be looking at cooking videos than all this mess.
This week, we discuss doxed Teslas, the concept of "amplification," and how wex27;d much rather be looking at cooking videos than all this mess.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Vile Media and Fine Sciences
This week, we discuss doxed Teslas, the concept of "amplification," and how we'd much rather be looking at cooking videos than all this mess.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss companies' responses to being monitored by an ICE contractor, caring about the little things, weight loss drug ads, and how our SXSW shindig went.
This week, we discuss companiesx27; responses to being monitored by an ICE contractor, caring about the little things, weight loss drug ads, and how our SXSW shindig went.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Company Comments and a Party Recap
This week, we discuss companies' responses to being monitored by an ICE contractor, caring about the little things, weight loss drug ads, and how our SXSW shindig went.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss Apple's iCloud, Wikipedia as a miracle of humankind, and good soup.
This week, we discuss Applex27;s iCloud, Wikipedia as a miracle of humankind, and good soup.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Backdoors and the Miracle of Wikipedia
This week, we discuss Apple's iCloud, Wikipedia as a miracle of humankind, and good soup.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
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 AI's boom or bust, trying Github's Copilot, and making time for good ideas.
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 AIx27;s boom or bust, trying Githubx27;s Copilot, and making time for good ideas.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Boom, Bust, and Big Ideas
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 AI's boom or bust, trying Github's Copilot, and making time for good ideas.Samantha Cole (404 Media)