📄 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. In May 2022, the Chief of…
We start this week with Joseph’s story on the inherent friction between secure chat apps like Signal and the phone they’re running on. Incoming message content can be stored in a phone’s internal notification database. After the break, Matthew tells us the latest about the data center pushback. Then in the subscribers’ only section, Emanuel…
Thomson Reuters, the technology and content conglomerate that owns the Reuters media agency but also owns and operates the investigative CLEAR database, fired a longstanding employee after they spoke out about the company selling data products to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. The lawsuit and firing come after…
An independent privacy audit of Microsoft, Meta, and Google web traffic in California found that the companies may be violating state regulations and racking up billions in fines. According to the audit from privacy search engine webXray, 55 percent of the sites it checked set ad cookies in a user’s browser even if they opted…
A hacker has compromised a backend system for Doublespeed, an a16z-funded startup that uses a phone farm to flood social media with AI-generated TikTok accounts, and attempted to have those accounts post memes calling a16z the “antichrist,” according to screenshots seen by 404 Media. The hack is at least the second time Doublespeed has been…
Why does the internet feel like it’s getting worse every single day, and why does it feel like the political landscape is getting worse in response? The answer might seem obvious, especially if you read 404 Media on a regular basis, where we’ve been documenting this decline, but it’s important to occasionally zoom out and…
WebinarTV, a site that scrapes Zoom webinars without permission, has downloaded and posted Zoom Webinars for anonymous addiction recovery meetings, support groups for caregivers and people who suffer from chronic illness, and a meeting of nudists. WebinarTV’s Michael Robertson told me that the company asks every single person for permission to “promote” their webinars, but…
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 gun violence and chatbots and acceptance of depravity. EMANUEL: It takes a lot for a post to shock me these days, especially if it’s from a known…
In February, Oklahoma native Darren Blanchard attended a city council meeting in Claremore with the plan to speak out against a proposed datacenter in the community. When he went a few seconds over his allotted 3 minute time limit, the city ordered Blanchard arrested and transported to the county jail. The city charged Blanchard with…
This week we start with Jason’s story about how wildlife cops are doing Flock lookups for ICE. It shows that ICE is gaining access to this sort of information through pretty unexpected ways. After the break, Emanuel tells us all about the AI ban at Wikipedia. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down a set…
