We start this week with Sam’s piece about ManyVids, and how some creators believe its CEO, and the person who controls their livelihood, may be experiencing ‘AI psychosis’. After the break, Jason gives us an update on some mysterious disappearing ICE footage. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Flock and what police are being…
An app that purports to help people stop consuming pornography has exposed highly sensitive data, including its users’ masturbation habits. Some of the data exposed includes the users’ age, how often they masturbate, and how viewing pornography makes them feel. According to the data, many of them are minors. An example of the personal data…
The Department of Homeland Security now says that two weeks of critical surveillance footage from within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s Broadview detention center wasn’t actually lost in a “system crash,” but rather, was never recorded in the first place. It is also arguing that, had the footage been recorded, it would be irrelevant because prisoner…
Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and many of the most popular adult sites in the world, announced today that starting February 2 it will restrict people visiting the site from the UK. In a call on Tuesday, leadership at Aylo and Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which acquired Aylo in 2023, said that after six…
Police officers are being told to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not leak sensitive information via public records requests, according to records obtained using a public records request. The warning originated from a Houston-area police intelligence center that includes members of the FBI…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Researchers are raising alarms over “unexplained pauses” that have interrupted dozens of U.S. federal health surveillance databases covering vaccinations and overdose deaths during the second Trump administration. The breakdown is creating…
Over the weekend, one of the weirder AI-generated influencers we’ve been following on Instagram escaped containment. On X, several users linked to an Instagram account pretending to be hot conjoined twins. With two yassified heads and often posing in bikinis, Valeria and Camelia are the Instagram perfect version of the very rare but real condition. …
In this week’s interview episode, Sam talks to Kolina Koltai. Kolina is an investigator, senior researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. Her investigations focus on the people and systems behind AI companies and platforms that peddle non-consensual deepfake explicit imagery. Kolina walks us through how a OSINT investigation into non-consensual AI imagery site administrators work, why…
It’s a long standing joke among my friends and family that nothing that happens in the liminal week between Christmas and New Years is considered a sin. With that in mind, I spent the bulk of my holiday break playing Escape From Tarkov. I tried, and failed, to get my friends to play it with…
After being shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis earlier this month, Renee Good instantly became a symbol of anti-ICE sentiments among protestors. Raw bystander footage of her death quickly spread online. A day after her murder, an angle from Ross’s phone camera also spread, sparking even more images, memes, protest signage…
