📄 This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here. This article was produced with support from WIRED….

Michael James Pratt, the ringleader for Girls Do Porn, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sex trafficking last week. Pratt initially pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges in March 2024, after being extradited to the U.S. from Spain last year. He fled the U.S. in the middle of a 2019 civil trial where 22…

Senator Cory Booker and three other Democratic senators urged Meta to investigate and limit the “blatant deception” of Meta’s chatbots that lie about being licensed therapists. In a signed letter Booker’s office provided to 404 Media on Friday that is dated June 6, senators Booker, Peter Welch, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla wrote that they…

Waymo told 404 Media that it is still operating in Los Angeles after several of its driverless cars were lit on fire during anti-ICE protests over the weekend, but that it has temporarily disabled the cars’ ability to drive into downtown Los Angeles, where the protests are happening.  A company spokesperson said it is working…

This article was produced with support from WIRED. A cybersecurity researcher was able to figure out the phone number linked to any Google account, information that is usually not public and is often sensitive, according to the researcher, Google, and 404 Media’s own tests. The issue has since been fixed but at the time presented a privacy…

Over the weekend in Los Angeles, as National Guard troops deployed into the city, cops shot a journalist with less-lethal rounds, and Waymo cars burned, the skies were bustling with activity. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) flew Black Hawk helicopters; multiple aircraft from a nearby military air base circled repeatedly overhead; and one aircraft…

Welcome back to the Abstract!  Sad news: the marriage between the Milky Way and Andromeda may be off, so don’t save the date (five billion years from now) just yet.  Then: the air you breathe might narc on you, hitchhiking worm towers, a long-lost ancient culture, Assyrian eyeliner, and the youngest old fish of the…

Over the weekend, Elon Musk shared Grok altered photographs of people walking through the interior of instruments and implied that his AI system had created the beautiful and surreal images. But the underlying photos are the work of artist Charles Brooks, who wasn’t credited when Musk shared the images with his 220 million followers. Musk…

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 the phrase “activist reporter,” waiting in line for a Switch 2, and teledildonics. JOSEPH: Recently our work on Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company, produced…