Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Eating the Internet
This week, we discuss just doing it, machines that eat the internet, and an eavesdropping watch.
XBAND
The Infamous ‘You Wouldn’t Steal a Car’ Anti-Piracy Font Was Pirated. But By Who?
You wouldn't download an illegal font ... unless you wanted to use it to sell a modem for the Sega Genesis?
News
‘TheTrillionDollarDinner.Gov’ Registered Around Time of Trump’s Pay-to-Play Memecoin Dinner Announcement
Other official government domains included DinnerForAmerica.gov and TheTrillion.Gov, and signal that there may have been plans to incorporate official government internet infrastructure with the meme coin investment dinner.
Podcast
Podcast: Meta's AI Chatbots Are a Disaster
Meta's wild AI chatbots; a wildly unethical piece of research on Reddit; and the age of realtime deepfake fraud is here.
News
Trump Demands Amazon Deny the Reality of What His Tariffs Are Doing to Prices
This morning the White House Press Secretary accused Amazon of conducting a 'hostile political action.'
chatbots
Instagram Is Blocking Minors from Accessing Chatbot Platform AI Studio
Following Wall Street Journal investigations into the user-generated chatbots, AI Studio is inaccessible for users under 18 years old.
chatbots
Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists
When pushed for credentials, Instagram's user-made AI Studio bots will make up license numbers, practices, and education to try to convince you it's qualified to help with your mental health.
AI
Reddit Issuing 'Formal Legal Demands' Against Researchers Who Conducted Secret AI Experiment on Users
Reddit called it an "improper and highly unethical experiment" and said it did not know it was happening.
News
This Is Palantir’s Justification for Building ICE’s Master Database
404 Media is now publishing the full internal wiki page in which Palantir explains its work with ICE building a system for finding the location of people to deport.
News
NFTs That Cost Millions Replaced With Error Message After Project Downgraded to Free Cloudflare Plan
For a few hours, 19,000 NFTS that Nike helped mint returned a Cloudflare error instead of the picture people promised would live forever online.
AI
Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users
The researchers' bots generated identities as a sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor, and a Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter.
News
Kickstarter Introduces ‘Tariff Manager Tool’ to Add Charges to Already Fully Funded Projects
Kickstarter projects have the option of asking backers for more money in order to manage the costs of Trump’s tariffs.
Features
The Age of Realtime Deepfake Fraud Is Here
Fraudsters are able to change their race, facial hair, voice, and more during live video calls with very little effort. Scammers are already fooling the elderly and verification systems.