The 404 Media Podcast

This week we start with Joseph's investigation into OnlyFake, an underground website that lets anyone generate convincing photos of fake IDs at the click of a mouse. Joseph successfully used one of these to bypass the identity verification process at a cryptocurrency exchange. This really will have massive implications for crime and cybersecurity more generally. After the break, we have a double f...

(I went in and fixed the audio issue! Please make sure your podcast client has the latest version downloaded. Okay, back to working on an investigation now, thank you for bearing with us) This week's episode is a banger. First, we go long with Sam and Emanuel, the two journalists who have followed deepfakes and generative AI more closely than anyone. Their latest piece talks about what is going to...

We're doing something a little different this episode. For the whole free section of the podcast, we're talking all about the degradation of Google. That includes AI-generated articles making their way onto Google News, and how researchers found that, yes, Google search really is getting worse. This is a long, rich, and fun discussion. Then in the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down his l...

Well, that was a pleasant surprise: Google has formally endorsed right to repair! Jason not only broke this news but then had a long conversation with Google about why it made the change (spoiler: it was the concerted effort of consumers, activists, and journalists). Jason explains why this change matters in the first part of the show. After the break, Sam takes us through a pretty unusual court c...

Jason decided to publish our first story minutes before recording, so here is some hot off the presses material. That piece was about scam ads on YouTube involving deepfaked celebrities. After the break, Sam discussed a very bizarre FOIA response from Texas. Then in the subscribers-only section, Jason tells the long and very entertaining saga of the Polish hackers who fixed a bunch of trains, and...

We are back for 2024! We hit the ground running this week with a story about charges against a man for allegedly orchestrating a massive, nationwide Airbnb scam. Then Sam speaks about how Pornhub is blocking access to visitors in North Carolina and Montana, who are now (predictably) using VPNs as a workaround. Then in the subscribers-only section we talk about the life and death of the encrypted a...

In this week's show, we start with a couple of articles about how companies might *actually* be listening to conversations through smart device microphones to target ads. Plenty of questions remain, but we discuss everything we know so far. After the break, Sam explains a new Stanford study which has resulted in one of AI's most important datasets being taken offline (check the article itself for...

A really bizarre mystery this week. We broke the news that a man somehow flew into LAX without a ticket or passport and DHS is totally stumped. Who knows how he got there? No one, apparently. Then Sam breaks down the latest Patreon ban hammer against a misunderstood community. In the subscriber's only section, Joseph explains a massive mistake by Verizon potentially put a person's physical safety...

A content warning for the free section of this episode. Emanuel explains a massive investigation of his into how Civitai, the a16z funded AI platform, generated images that “could be categorized as child pornography,” according to internal Slack chats and more. This is a difficult, complicated, but important story. I'll leave it at that. Then in the subscriber's only section, we talk about Jason's...

So much drama this episode but with an important message behind it all. For the first half, Sam and Jason break down their stories about Eduards Sizovs, a tech conference founder who listed a fake, "auto-generated" woman as a conference speaker. Sizovs is also behind a highly popular woman-in-tech account. There are layers here.  After the break, Jason explains how Plex is leaking users' viewing h...

Well that was a lot of drama in the world of OpenAI. Fear not, we have a unique angle on how the person in the running to be OpenAI's new CEO was a character in a Harry Potter fanfic that was written deliberately as a recruiting tool to the effective altruist movement. That's definitely a sentence. After the break Sam talks about how Twitter is pushing sex workers into a black hole, then in the su...

We recorded this immediately after publishing some breaking news: we discovered that venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is funding Civitai, an AI marketplace we've repeatedly shown is an engine for nonconsensual AI porn. Just this week Emanuel reported Civitai had introduced a "bounty" system, that financially rewards people for making AI-models of specific targets. We talk about both...

This week goes in all sorts of directions. First, Joseph runs through his in-depth article on Fusus, a surveillance company that took over one small American town with AI-powered cameras. Now, they're everywhere, both in the U.S. and increasingly abroad. After the break, Sam tells us how attendees of an NFT conference got more than they bargained for, and ended up getting (temporarily) blinded (li...

We're shaking things up with a new format! As well as the two stories available to all listeners, we have a third discussion at the end which is only for paying subscribers. We explain why at the top of the show. As for this week's articles, first Emanuel explains how YouTube is making money off a livestream of an open air drug market. After the break, Jason and Emanuel discuss their two stories a...

For the first half of the show, we talk about a couple of stories around the Israel-Palestine conflict. First, Instagram "sincerely apologizes" to Sam for its auto-translations which added the word "terrorist" to sentences containing the word "Palestinian." Then, Joseph and Emanuel talk about their article about how verified Twitter accounts have taken the term "OSINT" and used it to spread their...

Content warning for the first half of the episode because it touches on violent themes. Emanuel takes us through how so-called AI detectors are, instead of clearing up the fog of misinformation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, may actually be making everything much worse. A crucial story for these ongoing events. Then after the break, we change gears and Jason explains a trademark dispute in...

This episode is a fun one. First, Sam takes us through her story about generating images of SpongeBob and 9/11 with Bing's AI. Why? Because a bunch of people found a way to create similar images even though they shouldn't be possible under Microsoft's own policies. After the break, we turn into an economics podcast. Jason breaks down what exactly happened when a bunch of credit card maxers (people...

This week we start with a super interesting set of stories about how a small community has found a glitch in YouTube. It lets the group upload basically anything it wants to the platform with little fear of the clip being deleted. That includes explicit videos which were on YouTube for weeks at a time. Emanuel spoke to those responsible. After the break, Jason explains how he got emails showing th...

Holy moly that's a big ol' episode. Jason is back and tells us how ticket scalping actually works on a technical level, and how Ticketmaster benefits from scalping. Sam then explains how AI chatbots with no limits are letting people explore their sexuality safely (please note a content warning for that one for discussions on sexual themes and violence).  After the break, Joseph talks about a TikTo...

On this week's episode you won't hear Jason because he is out on location reporting from a right to repair conference in New Orleans! Before that, he was in Las Vegas reporting on the ongoing ransomware crisis impacting MGM casinos. But you will hear Joseph, Sam, and Emanuel discuss a tool that ICE has purchased which gives it access to data from a pregnancy tracking website. Then after the break,...

On this week's episode Joseph, Jason, Emanuel and Sam first talk about something that sounds like a Harry Styles story, but it's actually an artificial intelligence one. We also play a few rounds of “Is That Audio Snippet an AI Generated Version of Harry Styles or Is It a Real Section of a Leaked Harry Styles Song?” After the break, Joseph runs us through a massive secret he revealed: the so-calle...

On this week's episode Joseph, Jason, Emanuel and Sam first talk about how Amazon is selling mushroom foraging books that appear to be AI-generated. Not great when foraging can be a matter of life or death. After the break, Joseph explains how he tracked someone through the New York subway using a privacy-leaking feature on an MTA website. ‘Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are...

On this week's episode Joseph, Jason, Emanuel and Sam first talk about how Instagram is profiting from a vast network of adverts for crime. Instagram even throttled our reach on the platform while continuing to rake in cash from these ads! After the break, we move onto two AI-related stories from Emanuel and Sam. Stuff gets weird. There is a content warning at the top of the show, but we're repeat...

Welcome to 404 Media! On this special introductory episode, 404 Media co-founders Joseph Cox, Sam Cole, Emanuel Maiberg, and Jason Koebler explain what's in store for this new, journalist-founded media outlet.  After the break, Joseph and Jason break down how violent criminals have managed to gain access to a supply chain of data that lets them dox nearly anyone in America. Most of the country lik...