Category: 404 Media

This week, I’m thrilled to be joined by Imani Thompson. Imani is a digital security trainer and host of a series of events called Cache Me Outside, where she and partner orgs help people understand their personal security, divest from big tech platforms, and learn how to stay safe online. ...

A tiny snippet of user-generated text as short as 13 words long is often enough to manipulate the AI agents that power tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search, new research shows. The study suggests that it is trivially easy for brands to inject promotional content on sites like Reddit, ...

A federal judge has rejected Meta’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit from Strike 3 Holdings, the company that owns popular sites like Blacked, Vixen, and Tushy, for scraping its porn videos.  The decision shows Meta’s nonsensical justification for scraping massive amounts of copyrighted material from the internet in order to ...

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that died in the deep, let nature call, tossed a galactic salad, and became interstellar voyeurs. First, there’s a whale necropolis under the sea that is packed with ancient carcasses and teeming with new species. Then: a bygone world ...

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 Trump fucking up the World Cup, some thoughts on ICE coverage, and movies. JASON: I have been meaning for weeks to write ...

A County Commissioner in North Carolina refused to let dozens of residents speak opposing Flock surveillance at a public meeting this week, instead forcing the group to designate one single spokesperson. “How many people are here for public comment dealing with license plate readers AKA Flock?,” Michael Garrison, the chairman ...

A software update to some Amazon delivery vehicles is automatically turning off the air conditioning after a few seconds if the driver is not in their seat, according to multiple Amazon delivery drivers who are complaining about the update online.  According to Amazon delivery drivers, the new update is for ...

Depending on which chatbot you ask, Elias Thorne might be a clockmaker, a lighthouse keeper, or a librarian. But if you ask ChatGPT or any of the other popular large language models to tell you a story, there’s a good chance he’ll appear, unbidden. And Elias’s stories are flooding the ...

Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company Flock exposed the reasons cops conducted searches, and sometimes the specific searched license plates, in common search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing, according to tests by privacy advocates and 404 Media and a statement from the company. The news marks an unusual data breach, ...

The AI industry has been pushing a narrative that the technology is a “black box” whose inner workings are so complex that they remain unknown even to the people making it. But another black box of AI is the underlying cost of the technology, and, specifically, what the AI boom ...