404 Media

News

'It Ain't Right:' Texas Said It Would Halt Data Center Permits. The State is Pushing Ahead Anyway

AI

‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the New Wild West of AI

Podcast

Podcast: ‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the Next Wave of AI Slop

The Abstract

An Ancient Virus Explains Why the Human Brain Is Special

Behind The Blog

Behind the Blog: Brute Forces

ICE

ICE Plans to Spend Millions on Boston Dynamics Dog Robots

FOIA

How Schools and Universities Try to Censor Student Journalists

Privacy

DHS Said They Searched Man Who Wiped GrapheneOS Phone for Child Abuse Material. They Lied

Flock

Cops Warned to Look for ‘Suspicious Behavior’ From People Opposing Flock at City Council Meetings

Features

AI Made Cloning Games Easier Than Ever

Hacking

Cops Can Bypass iPhone’s Automatic Reboot to Get Into Locked Phones, Leaked Video Claims

Meta

Meta Tests Muse AI Agent Calls That Are Actually Made By Humans in a Call Center

Impact

Portal Texas Used to ‘Rubber Stamp’ Data Centers Down After 404 Media Reporting

Facebook

'Careless People' Is the Book About Facebook I've Wanted for a Decade

OpenAI

How ChatGPT Targets Ads To You Based On Your Prompts, Phone Number, and Email

Google

Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort

AI Slop

Disney's Sora Disaster Shows AI Will Not Revolutionize Hollywood

Surveillance

This 'Digital Camouflage' Shirt Confuses AI-Powered Surveillance Cameras

repair

John Deere Must Face FTC Lawsuit Over Its Tractor Repair Monopoly, Judge Rules

Right to Repair

Farmers Finally Get a John Deere Right to Repair Agreement That Doesn’t Screw Them Over

age verification

The SCREEN Act is a Christian Nationalist Nightmare

Deepfakes

Internet Infrastructure Services Empower Deepfake Abuse, New Study Finds

Amazon

'Knockoff' Browser Extension Hides Sketchy Brands on Amazon

porn

Porn Platform Gives Sex Workers Stake in the Company's Profits

TikTok

The Creator of ‘Smutstep’ Wants You to ‘Let Your Freak Flag Fly’

chatbots

Chatbots Keep Telling Stories About Lighthouse Keeper 'Elias Thorne'. We Might Know Why

Donald Trump

AI Video of Trump Sucking Musk's Toes Blasted on Government Office TVs

podcasts

How AI Chatbots Are 'Deskilling' Human Empathy

ChatGPT

'Tell Everyone:' A Man Died by Suicide After Talking to ChatGPT. His Former Partner Wants to Warn the World About AI

Instagram

I Almost Lost My Mind in the Bridal Algorithm

Newsletters

This Woman's Living a CashApp Scam Nightmare

Elon Musk

Masterful Gambit: Musk Attempts to Monetize Grok's Wave of Sexual Abuse Imagery

Apple

Apple's ‘Private Relay’ Is Exposing Users’ Real IP Addresses

Reddit

It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests

Announcements

We Bought 404media.com

science

Paper-Crumpling Study About the Nature of Anger Is the Best Thing I've Read in a Long Time

FOIA Forum

Our New FOIA Forum! 7/30, 1PM ET

Artificial Intelligence

Asking ChatGPT to Repeat Words ‘Forever’ Is Now a Terms of Service Violation

Twitter

Afghanistan Resistance Account Says ‘Tour of Booty’ Porn Scene Is The Taliban

DOGE

Judge Allows DOGE Deposition Videos Back Online

girls do porn

Woman Who Helped Coerce Victims into GirlsDoPorn Sex Trafficking Ring Sentenced to Prison

Data centers

The Chestnut Grove Caught in the Middle of A Years-Long Data Center Fight

pornhub

Pornhub Will Pay $5 Million Over Allegations of Hosting Child Sexual Abuse Material

YouTube

Unionized YouTube Workers Learn Google Laid Them All Off During City Council Meeting

DHS

A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

wordpress

Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg Claims He’s Back 'In Control'

Spanish

We're Publishing Our ICE Reporting In Spanish

CBP

Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It

Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster Used Revolving Barcodes to Control Ticket Resale Market and Surveil Customers, DOJ Alleges

Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'

Generative AI

AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality

lawsuits

Woman Sues Sex Toy Retailer Adam and Eve, Claims It Shared Data About Her Dildos

wall

archiving

Constitution Sections on Due Process and Foreign Gifts Just Vanished from Congress' Website

iPhone

A 'US-Made iPhone' Is Pure Fantasy

Microsoft

Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts — And They're Horrified

grok

Grok Exposed a Porn Performer’s Legal Name and Birthdate—Without Even Being Asked

nuclear

Immigration

Government Shutdown Causes Even More Confusion for U.S. Visa Applicants

wired

Chinese Livestreaming 'Virtual Human' Salespeople Are Outselling Their Human Counterparts

Security

Do Spencer’s Vibrators Have Malware on Them? An Investigation

Tesla

'Honk If You Hate Elon:' Two Days of Protest at the Tesla Diner

Court Watch

How a Network of Volunteers Is Liberating Critical Court Records for Everyone

war

Tariffs

$2,000 Shipping: International Sellers Charge Absurd Prices to Avoid Dealing With American Tariffs

Books

archives

Visualize All 23 Years of BYTE Magazine in All Its Glory, All at Once

sex

Analysis of 34 Hours of Orgasm Recordings Finds People Cum Quietly

law

Lawyer Caught Using AI While Explaining to Court Why He Used AI

advertising

Google Just Removed Seven Years of Political Advertising History from 27 Countries

ALPR

'I Saw a Shiny Thing': Cop Explains Why He Used License Plate Reader to Stalk Woman

X

Labor

CEO Attempted to Navigate Anti-LGBT Hate Incident By Telling Employees His Mentor Was a KKK Member

platforms

Massive Creator Platform Fansly Bans Furries

Music

Why I Quit Streaming And Got Back Into Cassettes

Anthropic

Anthropic’s Text Watermarking Proves AI Companies Do Not Care at All About Writing

AI Porn

Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’

fbi

FBI Hackers Say They Won’t Publish Massive Trove of FBI Employee Data

1201

The Astronomer CEO's Coldplay Concert Fiasco Is Emblematic of Our Social Media Surveillance Dystopia

palantir

Here is the Contract for Palantir’s Super API for the IRS

Ticket Scalping

libraries

Libraries Not Doing Pride Displays Say They ‘Shouldn’t Be Judged’

automattic

A WordPress ‘Firehose’ Allows AI Companies to Buy Access to a Million Posts a Day

Sora

People Are Farming and Selling Sora 2 Invite Codes on eBay

Video Games

13-Year-Old Becomes First Person to Ever Beat Tetris

Jeffrey Epstein

The DOJ Redacted a Photo of the Mona Lisa in the Epstein Files

waymo

Cops Say Waymo Snitched on Teens for Allegedly Drinking and Shooting a Toy Gun

Adblock

YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

Car Repair

It Is Now Legal to Hack McFlurry Machines (and Medical Devices) to Fix Them

open source

Here's a PDF Version of the CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism

Tractors

Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season

Crime

Someone Opened a CashApp In Her Name. She Faces Years in Prison

Cameras

USPS To Put Cameras in Trucks That Scan Roads for ‘Community Safety’

Journalism

Content Moderation

Former Moderator Sues Chaturbate for 'Psychological Trauma'

Cybersecurity

Tons of Peoples’ Claude Chats and Creations are Exposed on Google

Games

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Trump administration

Ticket Brokers