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 eyebrow-raising apps, more media mess, and lovingly gazing at AI slop. JASON: I was planning on BTBing about the Reddit AI experiment, but today is my birthday…

Mike Waltz, who was until Thursday U.S. National Security Advisor, has inadvertently revealed he is using an obscure and unofficial version of Signal that is designed to archive messages, raising questions about what classification of information officials are discussing on the app and how that data is being secured, 404 Media has found. On Thursday…

A new memo from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is calling on defense contractors to grant the Army the right-to-repair. The Wednesday memo is a document about “Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform” that is largely vague but highlights the very real problems with IP constraints that have made it harder for the military to repair…

Polygon, Vox Media’s video games website, has been acquired by Valnet, a company founded and helmed by Hassan Youssef, a former pornography mogul and the co-founder of the popular adult entertainment site Brazzers.  The news, which broke first on social media via various Polygon writers and editors saying that they suddenly don’t have a job,…

In a newly-released podcast, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says society just hasn’t found the “value” in AI girlfriends and therapists yet, apparently clueless that his own company hosts deceptive and harmful AI companions on its own platform.  For a little over an hour, podcaster Dwarkesh Patel sets Zuckerberg up to say whatever he wants sans-pushback,…

I live close to the famous Venice Beach boardwalk in Los Angeles, one of the most popular tourist spots in California and, by extension, the United States. The Venice Beach boardwalk is so famous, in fact, that it is one of just a few stops on Sandra & Dennis’s German-language bus tours. Every summer, I…

The most popular method for measuring what are the best chatbots in the world is flawed and frequently manipulated by powerful companies like OpenAI and Google in order to make their products seem better than they actually are, according to a new paper from researchers at the AI company Cohere, as well as Stanford, MIT,…

“You Wouldn’t Steal a Car,” one of the most infamous anti-piracy campaigns of all time, used a pirated font to spell out its slogan. The creator of the real font, called FF Confidential, told 404 Media “the irony is extremely funny indeed.”  “Piracy. It’s a Crime” was a series of PSAs that in 2024 was…

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 research that took place on Reddit. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains how the age of realtime deepfake fraud is here after he got…