Less than two weeks ago, the Trump administration ended de minimis, a rule that let people buy products from overseas without paying tariffs or associated processing fees if the item cost less than $800. As we predicted, the end of de minimis has made having basically any sort of hobby that requires the purchase of…
If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced Michael James Pratt, the owner and operator of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking ring, to 27 years in federal prison on Monday….
An Instagram account with almost 400,000 followers is promoting racist and antisemitic t-shirts, another sign that Meta is unable or unwilling to enforce its own policies against hate speech. 404 Media flagged the account to Meta as well as specific racist posts that violate its hate speech policies, but Meta didn’t remove the account and…
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently spent nearly four million dollars on facial recognition technology in part to investigate people it believes have assaulted law enforcement officers, according to procurement records reviewed by 404 Media. The records are unusual in that they indicate ICE is buying the technology to identify people who might clash with…
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that transgressed the rules, explored extraterrestrial vistas, and went with the flow. First, ants are doing really strange things again. I don’t even want to spoil it—you’ll just have to read on! Then, plan your trip to the latest hot exoplanet destination (literally, in…
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 slop in history, five-alarm fires, and AI art (not) at Dragon Con. EMANUEL: We published about a dozen stories this week and I only wrote one of…
Days away from finding out his sentence for sex trafficking as the ringleader of Girls Do Porn, Michael James Pratt and his attorney are attempting to paint a picture of a man reformed behind bars, through personal letters and certificates from classes he has passed inside prison. GirlsDoPorn was a sex trafficking operation posing as…
Members of a congressional committee have demanded Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem for more information about Mobile Fortify, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) new facial recognition app, which taps into an unprecedented array of government databases and uses a system ordinarily reserved for when people enter or exit the U.S. 404 Media…
A hacker has broken into Nexar, a popular dashcam company that pitches its users’ dashcams as “virtual CCTV cameras” around the world that other people can buy images from, and accessed a database of terabytes of video recordings taken from cameras in drivers’ cars. The videos obtained by the hacker and shared with 404 Media…
Science and music YouTuber Benn Jordan had a rough few days earlier this week after Google’s AI Summary falsely said he recently visited Israel and caused people to believe he supported the country during its war on Gaza. Jordan does not support Israel and has previously donated to Palestinian charities. Jordan told 404 Media that…
