404 Media

We start this week with Jason’s story about OpenAI and Microsoft’s big admissions from court records that they are destroying the internet in all sorts of ways, and stealing intellectual property on an unprecedented scale.

The beta for the hotly anticipated World of Warcraft: Forever has been marred by fans of the streamer Asmongold who have filled the game’s public spaces with spam and slurs.

Last month Fort Worth, Texas police arrested political activist EJ Carrion a week after he cursed at a city council meeting.

The catastrophic hack of at least thousands of FBI officials’ personal data, including their addresses, phone numbers, and even their spouses, includes members of the FBI’s secretive hacking team, potentially revealing who exactly is in that unit, 404 Med…

Scientists have discovered that the removal of Earth's magnetic field influences the lifespans of fruit flies in complex ways, a finding that sheds light on the aging process as well as the risks of future human space travel, according to a study published

Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri.

Most people in the world who use AI feel good about the technology and believe it will be a net positive for the future, according to a new study from Gallup.

A high profile hacking group claims it has breached multiple FBI-related services and stolen data “on all FBI employees and applicants.”

Last week, Meta executives announced that its much-hyped AI agent, Muse, had a new feature: It could call businesses for you to do things like make a restaurant reservation or a haircut appointment.

OpenAI has an army of contractors who read real ChatGPT users’ prompts and other data to help improve the chatbot’s responses.

When I first started writing about online cultures and subcultures almost 10 years ago, one of the first scholars I read on the subject of internet anthropology was Professor Sherry Turkle.

Cities around the country are ditching Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, and replacing them with equivalent cameras from law enforcement contracting giant Axon.

Welcome back to the Abstract!

In this collaboration with our friends at The Intercept, 404 Media's Jason Koebler and the Intercept's Sam Biddle and Akela Lacy discuss the ways AI is already used to empower private surveillance companies that filter data to the government, how AI is us…

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.

Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented

Flock created a fake police department called “Flock City PD” that it used to search a series of live automated license plate readers in several U.S. cities during demonstrations of its surveillance system’s capabilities, public records show.

Georgia State University has rescinded a job offer given to a high profile activist who is currently fighting a case in which he allegedly wiped a security-focused Android phone before Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could search it.

After Ed Sheeran dropped Macklemore from his tour over the singer’s support for Palestine, people flooded an online contest to open for Sheeran’s Mexico City show with fart videos, bouncing WWE butts, and troll posts from usernames like “EdSheeranSupports…

On September 10, the Brooklyn-based punk band Lathe of Heaven released a new single on its verified Spotify page called Riding High.

We start this week with Joseph’s story about the people who are reading real ChatGPT users’ prompts and conversations.

This article was produced in collaboration with WIRED.

Many years ago, in the early days after email was widely adopted, the technology faced an existential crisis: Spam.

In a move that should surprise zero people but is worth noting nonetheless, three felony charges against a man who destroyed a police officer’s “decoy” 3D-printed Flock camera have been reduced to misdemeanors after the police admitted the fake camera was…

A digital fly brain has been trading bitcoin, parallel parking, exploring bisexuality, cutting doner kebab, playing games—including Minecraft, Doom, and Beat Saber—and generally lighting up social media timelines since it was released earlier this month.

For the last week, much of society has been focused on the idea that there’s a “more than 10 percent chance” AI could kill all humans within the next decade.

The New York District Attorney announced on Monday that it has seized 12 websites hosting AI-generated non-consensual intimate imagery, primarily of celebrities and public figures.

Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department used Flock’s surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns.

This week we’re joined by Jennie Rose Halprein, executive director of Library Futures, a non-profit that advocates for a fair digital future for libraries and the communities they serve.

OpenAI is hiring hundreds of contractors who read a massive stream of real users’ ChatGPT prompts, with the prompts sometimes including sensitive personal information, 404 Media has learned.

Welcome back to the Abstract!

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.

Less than 48 hours after announcing he was forcibly placed on a leave of absence by the Automattic board on Wednesday, Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg posted in a company-wide Slack channel claiming that he’s back “in control” of the company. 💡 Have something…

Representatives from the University of Michigan faced tough questions and a lot of vitriol from the citizens of Ypsilanti Township Wednesday night.

On a company-wide Slack this morning, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced he has been put on a paid leave of absence.

Doctor Doom took the podium at a Public Safety Committee meeting on Tuesday to thank the council for covering the city in surveillance cameras.

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

Over the weekend, more than a dozen local TV news stations ran a video report called “Far-left network behind ‘No Kings’ protests targeting AI data centers, Flock cams.”

We start this week with Joseph’s story about the secretive predictive policing units inside DHS that are analyzing Americans’ financial data and having local cops pull them over.

The first man in the country to be convicted of violating the Take It Down Act was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday, after investigators found more than 3,000 real and AI-generated abuse images on his devices.

If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support.

For the last three years Jake Welch has been 3D scanning public restrooms and archiving their peculiarities on a website called The Restroom Archive.

Channel 5, the YouTube channel hosted by Andrew Callaghan, said it gave a list of its email subscribers to Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, who went on to promote his new memecoin, a move that a data privacy expert told 404 Media is likely illegal

Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government…

When we launched 404 Media in August 2023, it was a leap of faith.

Welcome back to the Abstract!

Flock taught cops how they could surveil the No Kings protests and “small parades” using a mix of Flock’s technology and law enforcement’s own databases in a webinar last year.

An island that appeared to suddenly materialize, then vanish, on Williston Lake in British Columbia over the summer was rediscovered on the massive reservoir on Monday.

Yesterday a16z published an article in which NYU Professor of Design, AI and Media Theory Ruby Thelot argued that “enshittification,” or the concept that technology platforms get worse after they lock in users, isn’t real.