Dark patterns have been used by subscription companies and in bait-and-switch campaigns for decades. As more chatbot companies push to keep users engaged at all costs, how do manipulative design choices show up in conversational AI built on large language models? Researchers at the Center for Democracy & Technology studied ...
Category: 404 Media
Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
Behind the Blog: Being New and Some NumbersBehind the Blog: Being New and Some Numbers
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 going deeper, Google’s search changes, and a rogue zine. SAM: Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the way a line of ...
Headway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting CareHeadway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting Care
Headway, a popular online therapy platform, says it will require clients and providers to undergo biometric scanning, and there’s no way to opt out other than leaving the platform. On April 3, Headway sent an email to clients informing them of the upcoming requirement: “To make sure Headway stays a ...
‘Cracked Oura’ Is an App For Using the Oura Ring Without the Monthly Subscription‘Cracked Oura’ Is an App For Using the Oura Ring Without the Monthly Subscription
Rather than pay a monthly subscription for an app that plenty of people think kinda sucks, a developer has created Cracked Oura, an open source app that lets Oura ring wearers query and analyze their health data without the monthly fee. On Thursday, Oura announced the new Ring 5, a ...
The Sun Is Undergoing a Mysterious Change and Nobody Knows WhyThe Sun Is Undergoing a Mysterious Change and Nobody Knows Why
The Sun is experiencing “striking” long-term shifts in its behavior that have gone undiscovered for more than a decade, according to a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Wednesday. The Sun passes through a cycle of high and low activity that lasts roughly 11 ...
Cities Are Covering Flock Cameras With Trash BagsCities Are Covering Flock Cameras With Trash Bags
The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move ...
‘Lobotomized’: Character.AI Is Showing What AI Enshittification Looks Like‘Lobotomized’: Character.AI Is Showing What AI Enshittification Looks Like
Users of the chatbot app Character.ai have been melting down on Reddit and begging the company to stop messing with the app after a series of changes that users say has completely ruined the app. The feedback is so negative that I have never seen a community or user base ...
Podcast: How Deepfakes Destroyed a High SchoolPodcast: How Deepfakes Destroyed a High School
We start this week with Sam’s deeply reported story on how deepfakes rocked a high school, and how those kids were failed at each step. After the break, Joseph tells us about BusPatrol, a company that plans to turn school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles. In the subscribers-only section, Jason ...
‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access
BusPatrol, a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has ...
Millions of People Are Installing Malware on Their Partners’ Phones (with Zack Whittaker)Millions of People Are Installing Malware on Their Partners’ Phones (with Zack Whittaker)
This week Joseph speaks to Zack Whittaker, an editor at TechCrunch. Zack has been leading coverage into the spouseware or stalkerware industry. This is malware sold to ordinary people, which they then often install on their girlfriend’s or someone else’s phone. Zack talks about the crazy scope of this problem. ...