This week, we discuss wishes made for better privacy, god complexes, and the point of it all.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Using Your Brain
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 wishes made, god complexes, and the point of it all.SAM: This week I wrote about Amazon’s changing policy for wishlists. It’s allowing gifters to choose third-party sellers for items, which could expose recipients’ delivery addresses to the gifter. The notice Amazon sent wishlist holders is a basic example of CYA messaging: Amazon can’t guarantee what a third party seller will do with your address once they have it, including giving it to a gifter for tracking purposes.
Sex workers first flagged this change on social media because many use wishlists as an easy way to accept gifts, tributes, tips, etc instead of or in addition to actual funds. This is important because payment processors are wildly hostile and actively discriminatory toward the adult industry, and having alternative ways to get paid is crucial if you’re debanked or banned from the usual payment processors. I think most use it in a supplementary fashion, though.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss parenting blogs, Pinterest sawing its own legs off, and legal guardrails.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Nothing to Hide Here
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 parenting blogs, Pinterest sawing its own legs off, and legal guardrails.EMANUEL: I felt a great relief this week getting out this story about Alpha School, an AI-powered private school where—shockingly—the AI is not working as promised. I’ve been working on it intensely for a few weeks and it always feels good getting a big investigation off your plate, especially when people seem to appreciate it, which I’m glad they did in this case.
When my wife was pregnant, Sam, Jason, Joe and I joked about how we were about to get a lot of baby and parenting related content on the site. Historically, a lot of our reporting was influenced by subjects we were interested in in our personal lives. Being a parent is an all-consuming life change, so we all assumed I’d be writing about baby monitor hacking or something like this. I’ve definitely done a little bit of that (please check out this podcast I did with Patrick Klepek about screen time and kids), but not as much as I expected.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss support and saying RIP to FPDS.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Unglamorous Work
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 support and saying RIP to FPDS.JOSEPH: I think I might make this into a more full article in a couple weeks when it actually happens, but yesterday I realized that FPDS.gov is shutting down. That is the Federal Procurement Data System, a website that includes decades of records showing what the U.S. government bought, from what company, and when. I check it essentially every day, and it has been the basis of countless of my articles at this point. Whether it’s finding an initial lead, or a story in itself, FPDS is behind so many of them.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss AI bubble hysteria, "just go independent," and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: The Neverending Cybersecurity Story
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 bubble hysteria, "just go independent," and more.JOSEPH: This week we reported how the FBI has been unable to get into a Washington Post reporter’s iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode. Side note, I wonder how the insane cuts at The Post are going to impact its digital or physical protection of journalists, if at all. This court record was very, very interesting in that it’s a quite rare admission of why exactly authorities were unable to access a device.
I don’t think there’s an area of cybersecurity, which we have a lot of reporting on, that is constantly in flux as mobile forensics. Nothing stays still, even for what feels like five minutes. There are constant tech developments, both on the side of Apple and Google, then on companies trying to break into those phones, like Cellebrite and Grayshift, the creator of Graykey.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss a trip to Kenya, reconstructing images, and lying developers.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Own Goals and Lying Devs
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 trip to Kenya, reconstructing images, and lying developers.JASON: Last week, I was in Kenya, a trip that turned out so overwhelmingly positive and left me in such a good mood that I am still somehow a week still carrying with me. I was invited to give a presentation at a conference about how AI is changing journalism, and how journalists can navigate an age of disinformation, slop, and general chaos.
It was a very small conference, with about 30 people, and everyone was incredibly interesting and cool; it was a mix of people who run independent newsrooms across Africa, Europe, and Asia, as well as human rights and nonprofit researcher types. At the conference itself, I met a lot of people who I hope we’ll be able to partner with in some way in the future.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss history repeating itself, a phone wipe scandal, Meta's relationship with links and more.
This week, we discuss history repeating itself, a phone wipe scandal, Metax27;s relationship with links and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: We Have Recommendations For You
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 recommendations for the year.SAM: Whenever we shout out a podcast, book, TV show, or other media or consumable product on our own podcast or in a Behind the Blog, you guys seem to enjoy it and want more. To be totally real with you, I get a ton of great recommendations from you, the readers and listeners, all year long and am always learning a lot from the things you throw in the comments around the site and on social media. The 404 Media community has good taste.
We talked through some of our top recommendations of the year in this week’s podcast episode, but here’s a more complete list of what each of us has enjoyed this year, and thinks you might also find worth digging into.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe nowBehind the Blog: We Have Recommendations For You
This week, we discuss history repeating itself, a phone wipe scandal, Meta's relationship with links and more.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss history repeating itself, a phone wipe scandal, Meta's relationship with links and more.
This week, we discuss history repeating itself, a phone wipe scandal, Metax27;s relationship with links and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Resisting Demoralization
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 history repeating itself and Meta's relationship with links.JOSEPH: I wanted to add a little bit from behind the scenes of this piece: Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It. As I said on the podcast this week, there are and continue to be many questions around the case. Especially why CBP stopped Samuel Tunick in the first place.
In the piece I did not focus on Tunick’s activism because frankly we don’t know yet how big a role it played in CBP stopping him. I mentioned it but didn’t focus on it. I think regardless, someone being charged for allegedly wiping a phone is interesting essentially no matter who they are.
Yes, it absolutely may turn out that he was stopped specifically because of his activism. Maybe lots of people think it’s very likely that’s the reason. But I can’t frame a story because it feels like that’s maybe the case. I have to go on what actual evidence I have at the moment.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe nowBehind the Blog: Resisting Demoralization
This week, we discuss history repeating itself, a phone wipe scandal, Meta's relationship with links and more.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
This week, we discuss conversational AI, a behind the scenes of the zine, and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Is This Headline 'Clickbait'?
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 conversational AI, a behind the scenes of the zine, and more.EMANUEL: I made the terrible mistake of looking at some Hacker News comments this week for my story about a developer whose Google accounts were banned after he uploaded training data to Google Drive. Unbeknownst to him, the training data contained CSAM.
As we’ve explained in previous stories, CSAM is a subject we dread covering not only because it’s one of the most awful things one could think about, but because it’s extremely difficult and legally risky. For understandable reasons, the laws around viewing, let alone possessing CSAM, are strict and punishing, which makes verification for reporting reasons challenging. For similar reasons, it’s something we need to write about very carefully, making sure we don’t wrongfully associate or whitewash someone when it comes to such horrible behavior.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss PC woes, voice deepfakes, and mutual aid.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Hearing AI Voices and 'Undervolting'
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 PC woes, voice deepfakes, and mutual aid.JOSEPH: Today I’m speaking at the Digital Vulnerabilities in the Age of AI Summit (DIVAS) (good name) on a panel about the financial risks of AI. The way I see it, that applies to the scams and are being powered by AI.
As soon as a new technology is launched, I typically think of ways it might be abused. Sometimes I cover this, sometimes not, but the thought always crosses my mind. One example that did lead to coverage was back at Motherboard in 2023 with an article called How I Broke Into a Bank Account With an AI-Generated Voice.
At the time, ElevenLabs had just launched. This company focuses on audio and AI and cloning voices. Basically you upload audio (originally that could be of anyone before ElevenLabs introduced some guardrails) and the company then lets you ‘say’ anything as that voice. I spoke to voice actors at the time who were obviously very concerned.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
This week, we discuss how data is accessed, AI in games, and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: A Risograph Journey and Data Musings
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 how data is accessed, AI in games, and more.JOSEPH: This was a pretty big week for impact at 404 Media. Sam’s piece on an exposed AI porn platform ended up with the company closing off those exposed images. Our months-long reporting and pressure from lawmakers led to the closure of the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP), in which a company owned by the U.S.’s major airlines sold flyers data to the government for warrantless surveillance.
For the quick bit of context I have typed many, many times this year: that company is Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), and is owned by United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada. ARC gets data, including a traveler’s name, credit card used, where they’re flying to and from, whenever someone books a flight with one of more than 10,000 travel agencies. Think Expedia, especially. ARC then sells access to that data to a slew of government agencies, including ICE, the FBI, the SEC, the State Department, ATF, and more.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.”
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
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.
This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe now
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.
Upgrade to continue reading
Become a paid member to get access to all premium content
Upgrade
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
djpanini likes this.
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)
