News
Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War
“White House videos—AI or otherwise—are like group-chat in-jokes aimed at keeping cohesion.”
Olivia Rodrigo
Ticketmaster Crashes During Olivia Rodrigo Presale—Here's Why
Specialized web browsers for ticket brokers combined with overwhelming fan demand is overwhelming Ticketmaster's infrastructure.
Deepfakes
Ted Cruz Wants Platforms To Be Liable for Deepfakes
The bill, introduced this week, is called the “Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (TAKE IT DOWN) Act."
DJI
The DJI Drone Ban: A Uniquely American Clusterfuck
Lawmakers are trying to ban a Chinese company on "surveillance" grounds to benefit American competitors powering U.S. police surveillance.
Game Studio's Job Requirement: 'Non Negotiable' Nude Sauna Sessions
"It is not about getting naked. It’s about experiencing different kind of sauna," LinkedIn's new 'saunaman' wrote.
FOIA
Emails Reveal the Playbook Used Against Libraries Planning ‘Drag Story Time’ Events
Internal messages shared with 404 Media show how an official’s complaint about a drag queen story hour can spiral into bomb threats against the library hosting it.
Amazon
California Fines Amazon $6 Million for 59,017 Separate Warehouse Violations
The citations allege that Amazon did not provide workers with written performance quotas.
pornhub
‘You Will Lose Access To Pornhub:’ Kentucky and Indiana Face a Porn Countdown
With age verification laws looming, visitors to Pornhub and all sites under the Aylo umbrella now see a popup stating how many days are left before the site blocks itself from access in their states.
AI
TikTok Introduces AI Avatars for Ads as FTC Warns Companies Not to Do That
One week after the FTC said companies should not use AI to form personal attachments with consumers, TikTok says its AI avatars can help brands build “real and native connections.”
News
Users ‘Jailbreak’ AI Video Generator to Make Porn
Luma Labs’ Dream Machine, an AI video generator that’s on the market before OpenAI’s Sora, can be tricked to generate explicit videos.
Investing
You Probably Unwittingly Voted to Give Elon Musk a Huge Raise
The rise of passive investing in retirement has given firms like Vanguard a huge amount of power at companies like Tesla.
News
AI Images in Google Search Results Have Opened a Portal to Hell
Google image search results are turning up AI-generated images of celebrities and leading users to sites that host AI-generated nudes celebrities made to look like children.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Finding Meds and Hiding 'Likes'
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 getting people to talk to us, and collapsing civilizations on the internet.