The 404 Media Podcast
Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world. We bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL through investigative reporting, smart blogging, and breaking news. At 404 Media you’ll read, and hear, stories you can’t find anywhere else written by journalists who are leading experts on their beats. Subscribe to 404 Media at 404media.co to gain access to an ad-free version of this podcast, as well as a bonus podcast episodes. Subscribers are the bedrock of building a sustainable business for our journalism.
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Episodes (53)
AI Slop Is Drowning Out Human YouTubers
This week, we talk about how 'Boring History' AI slop is taking over YouTube and making it harder to discover content that humans spend months researching, filming, and editing. Then we talk about how...
404 Media Live: LA! [TEASER]
This is a recording of our live show in Los Angeles in July! In this show we spoke all about ICE's technology and our reporting on it. Facial recognition, Palantir, Flock, and more. And we take...
Trump Take LEGO
We start this week with our articles about Trump’s tariffs, and how they’re impacting everything from LEGO to cameras to sex toys. After the break, Emanuel explains how misfired DMCA complaints...
404 Media Live: NYC!
Here's the podcast recorded at our recent second anniversary party in New York! We answered a bunch of reader and listener questions. Thank you to everyone that came and thank you for listening to...
The Underground Trade of Car Hacking Tech
We start this week with Joseph’s investigation into people selling custom patches for the Flipper Zero, a piece of hacking tech that car thieves can now use to break into a wide range of vehicles....
The Inside Story of Tea
We start this week with Emanuel’s big investigation into the Tea app, and especially how it aggressively grew by raiding women safety groups. After the break, we talk about TikTok Shop selling GPS...
Why Are DHS Agents Wearing Meta Ray-Bans?
We start this week with Jason’s article about a CBP official wearing Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses to an immigration raid. A lot of stuff happened after we published that article too. After the break,...
Google Is Exposing Peoples’ ChatGPT Secrets
We start this week with Joseph’s story about nearly 100,000 ChatGPT conversations being indexed by Google. There’s some sensitive stuff in there. After the break, Emanuel tells us about Wikipedia’s...
The Tea Breach Just Keeps Getting Worse
We start this week with Emanuel’s and Joseph’s coverage of Tea, a women’s dating safety app that was breached multiple times. After the break, Sam and Emanuel talk about how a new UK law about age...
Spotify Is Publishing AI Tracks of Dead Artists
We start this week with Emanuel's wild story about Spotify publishing AI generated tracks that look like they come from artists' official accounts. One problem: those artists died a long time ago....
The AI Exodus Begins
We start this week with a series of articles from Emanuel about a crackdown in the AI industry. After the break, Sam tells us about the ‘Save Our Signs’ campaign which hopes to preserve the history of...
How to Fight Back Against AI Bot Scrapers
We’re back! We start this week with Emanuel’s article about Anubis, an open source piece of software that is saving the internet from AI bot scrapers. After the break, Joseph tells us about the new...
The Life Changing Power of Lifting (feat. Casey Johnston)
For this week’s podcast, I’m talking to our friend Casey Johnston, a tech journalist turned fitness journalist turned independent journalist. Casey studied physics, which led her to tech journalism;...
This Site Unmasks Cops With Facial Recognition
We start this week with Emanuel and Joseph’s coverage of ‘FuckLAPD.com’, a website that uses facial recognition to instantly reveal a LAPD officer’s name and salary. The creator has relaunched their...
Airlines Sold Your Flight Data to DHS—And Covered It Up
This week we start with Joseph’s article about the U.S’s major airlines selling customers’ flight information to Customs and Border Protection and then telling the agency to not reveal where the data...
Feds Flew Predator Drones Over The LA Protests
Much of this episode is about the ongoing anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. We start with Joseph explaining how he monitored surveillance aircraft flying over the protests, including what turned out...
Anti-Porn Laws' Real Target Is Free Speech
We start this week with Sam's dive into a looming piece of anti-porn legislation, prudish algorithms, and eggs. After the break, Matthew tells us about the open source software that powered Ukraine's...
ICE's Backdoor Into a Nationwide AI Surveillance Network
This week is a bumper episode all about Flock, the automatic license plate reading (ALPR) cameras across the U.S. First, Jason explains how we found that ICE essentially has backdoor access to the...
AI Slop Summer
We start this week with Jason's couple of stories about how the Chicago Sun-Times printed a summer guide that was basically all AI-generated. Jason spoke to the person behind it. After the break, a...
AI Avatar of Killed Man Testifies in Court
We start this week with Jason and Matthew's story about an AI avatar that testified in court. It might be a sign of things to come. After the break, well, well, well, Meta is developing facial...
The Trump Admin's Signal Clone Was Hacked
We start this week's episode with our massive story on TeleMessage, the Signal clone the Trump administration uses to archive messages which was hacked. We have more detail than anyone else on that...
Meta's AI Chatbots Are a Disaster
This week we start with Sam's very in-depth story on Meta's AI chatbots, and how they're essentially posing as licensed therapists. After the break, Jason breaks down the wildly unethical AI-powered...
Cops Are Using AI Bots to Surveil People
We start this week with Emanuel and Jason's big story on Massive Blue, a company that is selling AI-powered undercover bots posing as protesters and children to the cops. After the break, Sam tells us...
AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (Live at SXSW)
Jason, Sam, and Blood in the Machine's Brian Merchant discuss how AI slop has taken over the internet, how it is a brute-force attack against the algorithms that control what we see on social media,...
Inside the ICE Deportation Tool
This week we start with a couple of Jason and Joseph's stories about the tool ICE uses to lookup an incredible amount of information about people. After the break, Joseph explains how he tested an AI...
How a $2,000 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured
Earlier this week we wrote an article called “A US-Made iPhone Is Pure Fantasy." The long and short of it is that Trump’s dream of moving all high tech manufacturing to the US is extremely difficult...
The FBI Secretly Ran a Massive Money Laundering Ring
We start this week with Joseph's story revealing how the FBI secretly ran a massive money laundering ring to catch drug traffickers and hackers. After the break, we run through a bunch of tariff...
OpenAI's Studio Ghibli AI: 'An Insult to Life Itself'
Jason, Sam, and Emanuel talk about Miyazaki being turned into a meme, the guys suing OnlyFans after being surprised to learn they were not actually talking to models, and the depravity of "brainrot"...
The DNA of 15 Million People Is For Sale
This week we start with the bankruptcy of commercial DNA company 23andMe, and what it means for its users' genetic data. Probably not good things! After the break, Joseph and Jason explain what...
The Websites An ICE Contractor is Monitoring
We start this week with Joseph's story about the 200+ sites an ICE contractor called ShadowDragon is monitoring. A lot of surprising ones on there. After the break, Emanuel explains why NASA, Yale,...
We're Not Ready for Chinese AI Video Generators
We start this week with Emanuel's great investigation into Chinese AI video models, and how they have far fewer safeguards than their American counterparts. A content warning for that section due to...
The Tesla Protests Come for Cybertruck Owners
This week we start with Jason's article on how a Facebook group for Cybertruck owners is completely overrun with people flipping them off. Then Joseph explains how U.S. crypto traders are buying IDs...
The Rise of AI Book Ripoffs
We start this week's episode with Joseph finding out someone basically ripped off his book with a potentially AI-generated summary. Emanuel also updates us on some of the impact his reporting on AI in...
DOGE's Website, Hacked
This week we start with Jason's story about anyone being able to push updates to DOGE.gov website. Then we talk about other stories with the DEI.gov and Waste.gov sites. After the break, Sam tells us...
AI Is Breaking Our Brains
This week we discuss a new Microsoft study that finds using generative AI is "atrophying" people's cognition and critical thinking skills and the right's war on Wikipedia.
Articles...
Articles...
Inside Musk’s Government Takeover
We dedicate the whole free section of this episode to Musk’s takeover of the federal government. We got audio from a meeting in which a Musk ally laid out their plans for AI across the government, and...
The Truth Behind DeepSeek
We start this week with Emanuel's rundown on the DeepSeek situation, the Chinese-made AI that has rocked stock markets and the wider AI industry. After the break, Sam explains how metadata in U.S....
Pornhub Exec Discusses Pulling Out of the South, Trad Wives, and Feet Pics
On this special guest episode of the 404 Media Podcast, Sam talks to Alexzandra Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Pornhub. Kekesi started in her current role in August 2023, after working for...
TikTok and the Tech Oligarchy
We start this week with the TikTok ban: how we got here, what happened, and, most importantly, why it means we need more decentralized services. Jason runs us through it. After the break, Joseph...
Total Chaos at Meta
We've got much more on what is happening inside Meta with the company's recent speech policy changes. Jason runs us through it. After the break, Joseph explains how thousands of apps have been...
Meta Goes Mask Off
We're back! And holy moly what a start to the year. We just published a bunch of stories. First, Jason talks about blowback inside Meta to its new board member, and Meta's subsequent censoring of...
The 404 Media Year in Review
Here's a special year in review episode! We riff on the last year in AI, media, journalism, and more. We'll be back with a normal news show in the new year!
YouTube version:...
YouTube version:...
Why We Cover AI the Way We Do
This is a re-upload that was previously only for paying subscribers! It gives a lot more context on the how and why we cover AI they way we do. Subscribe at 404media.co for more bonus content like...
The New Jersey Drone Panic
This week Jason, as both a drones and aliens reporter, tells us what is most likely happening with the mysterious drones flying over New Jersey. After the break, Joseph explains how cops in Serbia are...
3D Printed Guns and UnitedHealthcare
This week we start with Joseph's story about how the weapon found on the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO murderer was a particular 3D printed design. Then Jason tells us what he found about the alleged...
Your Bluesky Posts Are Probably Training AI
We start this week with Sam's stories about multiple people building big datasets of Bluesky users' posts. People are not happy! After the break, Jason talks all about reverse-engineering Redbox...
Pokémon Go to The Military Industrial Complex
This week we start with Emanuel's couple of stories about Niantic, the company that makes Pokémon Go, and its plan to build an AI model based on data collected by its users. After the break, Jason and...
Buzzfeed's AI Ads Are a Disaster
We start this week with Emanuel's story on how AI-powered ads on Buzzfeed are recommending people buy things like a hat worn by a person who died by suicide. After the break, Joseph talks about an...
How AI Is Being Used by Hackers and Criminals (Sponsored)
This episode is sponsored by DeleteMe. Friend of 404 Media Matthew Gault talks to Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, about the ways scammers and criminals are using AI, and how it's changing...
How Apple is Locking Out Cops
This week Joseph starts with his scoop on how Apple quietly introduced code that reboots iPhones, locking out cops. After the break, we all talk about the big Blue Sky migration. In the...
The Plan to Use AI to Purge Voter Rolls
On Election Day in the U.S. Jason tells us about EagleAI, a piece of software that could be used to purge voter rolls in the country. After the break, Sam breaks down Microsoft's mistake around...
An Elon Musk-Funded PAC Is Running a Democrat Impersonation Campaign
An Elon Musk-funded super PAC has expanded an advertising campaign in which it is impersonating Democrats and targeting registered Republicans with policies unpopular with conservatives they say...
How Politician Turned Advocate Susanna Gibson Battles Non-Consensual Imagery
In this special interview episode of the 404 Media podcast, I talked to Susanna Gibson, a nurse practitioner who ran for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2023 and is now a victim advocate...
About this Podcast
Copyright
404 Media
Language
en
Categories
News, Tech News, Technology