Jason Koebler

Exclusive: We obtained a leaked playbook that Flock gives to cops to coach them on "how to speak to city council" to avoid getting their contracts canceled. Includes strategies like "own the narrative" by talking to mayor "before public comment periods"

https://www.404media.co/own-the-narrative-leaked-flock-guide-shows-how-it-teaches-cops-to-promote-its-tech/

The FTC's repair settlement with Deere is actually good, & far better than other agreements and settlements that were slaps on the wrist, maintained the status quo, or actively helped Deere. Actual good news.

Here's what's different about this one:

https://www.404media.co/farmers-finally-get-a-john-deere-right-to-repair-agreement-that-doesnt-screw-them-over/

New: Researchers have quantified how easy AI search is to manipulate. Just 13 words buried in a random Reddit comment can poison AI search results. They suggest this is not easy to stop: "The way you can attack these systems is so much dumber than you think it is"

https://www.404media.co/it-is-trivially-easy-to-use-reddit-to-manipulate-ai-search-research-suggests/

New: A county commissioner in North Carolina refused to let citizens oppose Flock at a meeting this week, instead making dozens of people select one person to represent them: "You will not speak on Flock tonight...I’ve spoken. I’m not debating this."

https://www.404media.co/you-will-not-speak-on-flock-tonight-county-commissioner-refuses-to-let-residents-opposing-flock-speak-at-meeting/

For weeks I have been desperately trying to ignore a $200k LEGO YouTuber legal drama but then the police dropped bodycam footage and filmed an insane video in The Matrix's white void room and I could no longer help myself:

https://www.404media.co/the-lego-bricks-and-minifigs-reckless-benyoutube-scandal-has-broken-containment-can-no-longer-be-ignored/

A company that makes a no-tech, repairable tractor is having trouble keeping up with demand from farmers sick of John Deere's repair monopoly and simply want a tractor that turns on and works:

https://www.404media.co/demand-is-booming-for-ursa-ag-new-no-tech-repairable-tractor/

New: Hackers have been stealing high-profile Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI support chatbot to change the email associated with the account they want to steal.

Shockingly easy, terrible flaw associated with offloading support to AI:

https://www.404media.co/hackers-simply-asked-meta-ai-to-give-them-access-to-high-profile-instagram-accounts-it-worked/

Canvas hack is extremely bad, the "biggest student data privacy disaster in history" because it contains billions of messages between students and their professors, which can be extremely sensitive: "There's personal circumstances, medical circumstances, accessibility accommodations, disputes, sexual assault allegations, like all sorts of stuff would be getting reported to the instructor using Canvas."

https://www.404media.co/the-biggest-student-data-privacy-disaster-in-history-canvas-hack-shows-the-danger-of-centralized-edtech/

ICE has recently bought the capability of monitoring the location histories of entire neighborhoods worth of phones. The data is likely harvested from apps that sell your data, which filters up through data brokers and eventually to companies that sell to ICE:

https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

404 Media is making a print zine! About the surveillance technologies used by ICE. 16 pages, riso printed. Shipping early January. Features reworked versions of our best reporting and a few new things. We're very excited! And hope to do more if people like it:

https://www.404media.co/404-media-is-making-a-zine/

New: A judge in Washington has ruled images from Flock surveillance cameras are public records and that anyone can request them. Highlights the pervasiveness of this tech and just how much surveillance is being done. Very notable ruling

https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-flock-surveillance-images-are-public-records-that-can-be-requested-by-anyone/

New: The FBI filed a subpoena trying to unmask the person or people behind archive.is/archive.today, which have been running anonymously for 13 yrs. Site was widely used by GamerGate, and then to bypass paywalls but has become kind of core archiving infrastructure

https://www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to-unmask-owner-of-infamous-archive-is-site/

The end of Windows 10 support is going to be an environmental and security disaster, an egregious example of planned obsolescence that doesn't have to be this way:

https://www.404media.co/the-end-of-windows-10-support-is-an-e-waste-disaster-in-the-making/

Some exciting news: 404 Media just won a grant via Muckrock to investigate book bans and educational censorship in the U.S. The plan is to file hundreds of public records requests around the country and to report on and archive all the documents for public use:

https://www.404media.co/help-us-investigate-book-bans-and-educational-censorship-around-america/

The much-hyped SIM farm the Secret Service seized uses readily available off the shelf tech that, very interestingly, has also become critical to ticket scalping. I, like others, am extremely not buying the idea that this was intended to take down the cell network

https://www.404media.co/the-sim-farm-hardware-seized-by-the-secret-service-is-also-popular-with-ticket-scalpers/

Buying anything from overseas is about to get more expensive, more logistically complicated, slower, and overall more annoying. Film photography community, retro games community, people into skincare already seeing chaos on eBay. eBay sellers locking US buyers out.

https://www.404media.co/trump-tariffs-cause-chaos-on-ebay-having-a-hobby-is-now-a-logistical-nightmare/

Today is the two year anniversary of 404 Media, which is hard to fathom. We wrote about how it's going, what we've done, what we're going to do, and what we've learned. We cannot do this without the support of our subscribers and for that we are endlessly thankful:

https://www.404media.co/two-years-404-media-anniversary/

All American trains have a vulnerability where a hacker can remotely trigger the brakes over radio frequency. A single researcher has been warning about this for 13 years and the government has FINALLY acknowledged it’s real and is making train companies fix it: https://www.404media.co/hackers-can-remotely-trigger-the-brakes-on-american-trains-and-the-problem-has-been-ignored-for-years/

Media outlets can't pivot to AI to save themselves. It's not a business strategy and it's not going to work. The only path forward is for journalists to lean into their humanity, to do things AI can't, and to make clear they are writing for people, not algorithms:

https://www.404media.co/the-medias-pivot-to-ai-is-not-real-and-not-going-to-work/

In 15 mins we're doing a FOIA FORUM about how we reported a story about cops using AI-powered sockpuppet bots on social media. This is for subscribers only, we'll be taking questions about FOIA, showing examples of our requests, etc. Come hang out!

https://www.404media.co/our-new-foia-forum-6-18-1pm-et/

Scoop: GitHub code shows Trump administration is building a platform to "accelerate" AI across the government called ai.gov that is supposedly going to launch on the Fourth of July

https://www.404media.co/github-is-leaking-trumps-plans-to-accelerate-ai-across-government/

Airlines sell passenger data to the feds through a separate data broker they spun up and put in the contract that DHS is not allowed to tell anyone that it comes from the airlines:

https://www.404media.co/airlines-dont-want-you-to-know-they-sold-your-flight-data-to-dhs/

Extremely interesting story: the Ukraine drones that did this weekend’s massive attack were powered by free open source pilot assistance software

https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-powered-by-open-source-software/

I talked to 15 teachers/professors about how AI and ChatGPT is ruining their lives:

https://www.404media.co/teachers-are-not-ok-ai-chatgpt/

Scoop: Texas police used Flock's license plate cameras to search nationwide for a woman who had a self-managed abortion. Claim it was "about her safety"

https://www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-searched-license-plate-cameras-nationwide-for-a-woman-who-got-an-abortion/

SCOOP: ICE, HSI, and DHS are getting side-door access to the nationwide system of Flock license plate cameras by asking local police to perform lookups for them, new public records show.

ICE does not have a contract to use this surveillance tool itself.

https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/

FYI: under capitalism your DNA is worth $17

https://www.404media.co/23andme-sale-shows-your-genetic-data-is-worth-17/

NEW: GlobalX, the company doing many deportation flights for ICE, has been hacked. Hackers claim to have stolen flight manifest information and flight details, and have also defaced the website

https://www.404media.co/globalx-airline-for-trumps-deportations-hacked/

New: LAPD demanded footage from a Waymo, whose cameras saw a hit-and-run. Shows the police are seeing these are roving surveillance cameras:

https://www.404media.co/lapd-publishes-crime-footage-it-got-from-a-waymo-driverless-car/

Here I explain why the idea that we are going to suddenly make iPhones in the U.S. is pure fantasy and if Apple WERE to do that it would come after several years of deep pain. The iPhone is perhaps the most global product that has ever existed: https://www.404media.co/a-us-made-iphone-is-pure-fantasy/

DOGE "saves" a million dollars by taking critical government archives off of best-in-class, durable tape archives and putting them on hard drives

https://www.404media.co/doge-gsa-magnetic-tape-archives-digital-storage/

Framework has stopped selling versions of its base laptop model in the US because of tariffs. Says that if it kept selling them in the US it would lose money. Framework is the only company that makes reliably upgradeable, repairable laptops

https://www.404media.co/framework-stops-selling-some-of-its-laptops-in-the-u-s-due-to-tariffs/

The most powerful people and companies in the world have successfully orchestrated one of the most damaging and stupid self owns imaginable:

https://www.404media.co/big-tech-backed-trump-for-acceleration-they-got-a-decel-president-instead/

NEW: Yesterday, a T-Mobile tracking app for children began showing parents the exact real-time locations and images of random kids, and showed the locations of their own kids to other random adults:

https://www.404media.co/t-mobile-shows-users-the-names-pictures-and-exact-locations-of-random-children/

23andMe as a functioning company was a privacy disaster. 23andMe as a bankrupt, for sale company is a fucking nightmare

https://www.404media.co/dna-of-15-million-people-for-sale-in-23andme-bankruptcy/

New: Facial rec company Clearview spent $1 mil trying to buy a database of 390 million mugshots, SSNs, and arrest records. It seemingly got scammed, is now trying to get its money back. Great to have

on 404 Media:

https://www.404media.co/facial-recognition-company-clearview-attempted-to-buy-social-security-numbers-and-mugshots-for-its-database/

We are testing Ghost's ActivityPub beta integration for 404 Media! We're really excited about the future of the decentralized internet, we're stoked that Ghost is leading the way, and we're proud to be one of its first adopters. You can follow us @index

Right now things seem pretty buggy but it's obviously very early. Looking forward to messing around with it and making the product better

Tucker Carlson and others alleging new Deep State conspiracy about JFK records. Someone at National Archives with knowledge of the situation, meanwhile, tells me that thousands of pages of 60-year-old documents don't just magically digitize themselves

https://www.404media.co/why-all-of-the-jfk-assassination-documents-havent-been-released-yet/

My latest: Generative AI is enabling a brute force attack against the algorithms that control reality. AI slop is taking over every algorithmically controlled social media platform and search platform, and the tech platforms are helping:

https://www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a-brute-force-attack-on-the-algorithms-that-control-reality/

We've confirmed that the TSA credit cards it uses to pay for stuff for bomb-sniffing dogs have been cut off

https://www.404media.co/tsa-k9-bomb-sniffing-dogs-funding/

A French University has so much interest from American scientists trying to flee the country that it is now asking other European universities to begin taking them into "scientific exile"

https://www.404media.co/nasa-yale-and-stanford-scientists-consider-scientific-exile-french-university-says/

this is so so so wild, must read:

https://www.404media.co/super-nintendo-hardware-is-running-faster-as-it-ages/

Pokemon Go sale to a Saudi Arabian company owned by govt comes with six separate corporate announcement blogs, not one of them directly addressing what happens to 100 million people's location data, AR mapping capabilities, or the AI maps they have been training:

https://www.404media.co/saudi-arabia-buys-pokemon-go-and-probably-all-of-your-location-data/

very dumb question but does anyone know why 404 media links arent expanding on Mastodon anymore? Worked for a very long time, and still works on other social media platforms:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-cybertruck-owners-group-copes-with-relentless-mockery/

Scoop: The databases powering doge. gov are insecure, and people outside the government have already pushed their own updates to the site to prove it:

https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-gov-website-2/

A "True Crime" documentary YouTuber racked up millions and millions of views with fully AI-generated murders that did not happen

https://www.404media.co/a-true-crime-documentary-series-has-millions-of-views-the-murders-are-all-ai-generated/

Wikipedia is rolling out anonymity features piloted in countries with authoritarian governments in the US & is making a change to not show editor IP addresses in response to a global "increase in threats" from Elon Musk, Heritage Foundation, and governments

https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-prepares-for-increase-in-threats-to-us-editors-from-musk-and-his-allies/

Just spoke very briefly to National Archivist Colleen Shogan, who confirmed she was fired by Trump a few minutes ago: https://www.404media.co/trump-fires-national-archives-director-colleen-shogan/

senator proposes bill that would criminalize downloading open source AI from China

https://www.404media.co/senator-hawley-proposes-jail-time-for-people-who-download-deepseek/

New: Github reveals some of the code and banal back-and-forth discussion used to clean a federal database of "forbidden words" in a dataset that tracks spending effectiveness for Headstart, which affects "America's most vulnerable young children":

https://www.404media.co/forbidden-words-github-reveals-how-software-engineers-are-purging-federal-databases/

"Everything I say leaks," Zuckerberg says in leaked meeting audio. "It sucks"

https://www.404media.co/zuckerberg-says-everything-i-say-leaks-in-leaked-meeting-audio/

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a declassified World War II-era CIA guide to sabotaging fascism in the workplace has become one of the most popular free ebooks on the internet:

https://www.404media.co/declassified-cia-guide-to-sabotaging-fascism-is-suddenly-viral/

Oklahoma is considering a bill that would criminalize porn: https://www.404media.co/oklahoma-senator-dusty-deevers-porn-bill/

Turns out "incinerate money and boil the oceans" was not the smartest strategic gambit

https://www.404media.co/deepseek-mania-shakes-ai-industry-to-its-core/

You can watch the Trump administration play DEI whac-a-mole with employee policies and public websites on GitHub, which is automatically cataloguing all of the changes the 18F agency is frantically making to its internal and external webpages:

https://www.404media.co/github-is-showing-the-trump-administration-scrubbing-government-web-pages-in-real-time/

New: The manufacturer of a medical device that costs six figures has told hospitals that they will no longer be allowed to fix them. Hospitals must now sign repair contracts with the manufacturer if they want the device fixed. Repair monopoly in action:

https://www.404media.co/medical-device-company-tells-hospitals-theyre-no-longer-allowed-to-fix-machine-that-costs-six-figures/

The last few weeks have really highlighted just how fragile corporate social media is, and just how beholden to political power it is. To build any sort of ground-up power we must continue to invest in decentralized alternatives that are resistant to intervention

https://www.404media.co/decentralized-social-media-is-the-only-alternative-to-the-tech-oligarchy/

We've been lucky enough that we are getting a lot of merch orders from Europe in particular, but we (and our customers) are getting killed on shipping for obvious reasons. If you know of a good EU merch printer/supplier/fulfiller, please let me know? Would be good to work with a small shop

New: The FTC has formally sued John Deere over its tractor repair monopoly, which is the strongest punitive action the federal government has ever taken against a company over restricting right to repair

https://www.404media.co/ftc-sues-john-deere-over-its-repair-monopoly/

Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized, open source Instagram competitor that has had skyrocketing signups in recent days:

https://www.404media.co/meta-is-blocking-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed/

Beautiful stuff: "It’s not really enjoyable to make music now… it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you have to get really good at an instrument... I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music."

https://www.404media.co/ceo-of-ai-music-company-says-people-dont-like-making-music/

New: Meta has deleted trans and nonbinary Messenger themes, as well as the blog posts announcing them. Happens the same week that it has changed its rules to allow users to say LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill"

https://www.404media.co/meta-deletes-trans-and-nonbinary-messenger-themes/

New: Meta employees are furious about a new policy that allows users to call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill." Some have resigned in protest. Some LGBTQ+ employees have started saying they if they are 'mentally ill' they should get leaves of absence from work

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

As of today, Pornhub is now blocked in almost all of the American South. The only place where it is still freely available is Georgia, where it will be blocked in July

https://www.404media.co/pornhub-is-now-blocked-in-almost-all-of-the-u-s-south/

good stuff out of wordpress, which is a very serious place

https://www.404media.co/wordpress-login-pineapple-on-pizza/

Artist makes website that lets you take selfies through NYC's network of traffic cameras. NYC Department of Transportation sends cease and desist. Artist nails cease and desist to a very very very long pole & holds it up to one of the cameras to take a photo of it

https://www.404media.co/traffic-cam-photobooth-cease-and-desist/

New: Texas AG Ken Paxton has subpoenaed 404 Media for confidential reporting about an internal Google privacy incident database we published in June. If Paxton wants the database, he can get it directly from Google. Our lawyers have formally objected to the subpoena:

https://www.404media.co/404-media-objects-to-texas-attorney-general-ken-paxtons-subpoena-to-access-our-reporting/

Many major health insurance companies have purged or deleted the pages where they show executive names and bios in the last 24 hours:

https://www.404media.co/multiple-major-health-insurance-companies-take-down-leadership-pages-following-murder-of-united-healthcare-ceo/

X's legal filing in the InfoWars bankruptcy case is both batshit crazy and also what you'd expect. It asserts that X owns every account, can do whatever it wants with them, and can inject itself into legal proceedings that have nothing to do with it.

This is why it's incredibly important that people invest in platforms that they own, and move toward federated/decentralized/portable, noncorporate social media as rapidly as possible

https://www.404media.co/xs-objection-to-the-onion-buying-infowars-is-a-reminder-you-do-not-own-your-social-media-accounts/

This story is really wild. Notably, the cryptocurrency Tether is worth less in Mexico because of its widespread use in money laundering and drug trafficking

https://www.404media.co/tether-has-become-a-massive-money-laundering-tool-for-mexican-drug-traffickers-feds-say/

A new privacy-focused cell network is doing very interesting things but I do not think anyone will ever convince

to get a phone

https://www.404media.co/i-dont-own-a-cellphone-can-this-privacy-focused-network-change-that/

Pokemon Go players have been unwittingly mapping the entire world to train a geospatial AI model whose most obvious use cases are for robotic navigation and possibly the military

https://www.404media.co/pokemon-go-players-have-unwittingly-trained-ai-to-navigate-the-world/

One of the most popular pregnancy tracking apps has a vulnerability that allows for full account takeovers and it is refusing to fix it, which seems concerning in a country where many states criminalize abortion and investigate women who have miscarriages

https://www.404media.co/pregnancy-tracking-app-what-to-expect-refuses-to-fix-issue-that-allows-full-account-takeover-2/

One of the most popular types content on Facebook is "Elon Musk will fix America with this absurd invention" AI content that have millions of views and endless people commenting about how he and Donald Trump will save America thinking it's real

https://www.404media.co/absurd-ai-slop-about-how-elon-musk-will-fix-america-is-megaviral-on-facebook/

New: An open-source project called DeFlock has mapped thousands of license plate reader surveillance cameras all over the world. See if they're in your city. They also need help mapping more

https://www.404media.co/the-open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world/

Wild: iPhones cops confiscated as evidence are suddenly rebooting en masse, making them much harder for police to hack. Cops theorize Apple pushed an update where iPhones communicate w/ each other and tells them to reboot if not connected to a network

https://www.404media.co/police-freak-out-at-iphones-mysteriously-rebooting-themselves-locking-cops-out/

Over the last four years (longer actually), GOP has built tools & orgs to not just challenge voter eligibility and purge people from voter rolls, but also built websites that publish the addresses and vote history of people that plugs into that apparatus

https://www.404media.co/voted-in-america-this-site-doxed-you/

NEW!

'The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet,' recorded off a German radio station on a cassette in the 1980s, has finally been identified

https://www.404media.co/the-most-mysterious-song-on-the-internet-has-finally-been-identified/

by @mjgault

Exciting news: Mark Zuckerberg confirms AI spam is part of the strategy, more is coming, and Instagram & FB will become even less about your friends and who you interact with and more about shoving AI slop into every corner of every product

https://www.404media.co/zuckerberg-the-ai-slop-will-continue-until-morale-improves/

An artist has been documenting her transition every week on Instagram for more than a year to determine exactly when Meta's content moderation algorithm / operation detects her nipple as "female" and deletes it:

https://www.404media.co/when-does-instagram-decide-a-nipple-becomes-female/

Years after Microsoft said it was killing its "gender detection" facial recognition AI, which has been shown over and over again to be inaccurate and weaponized against trans people, it turns out that, actually, it was still available and being used:

https://www.404media.co/microsoft-provided-gender-detection-ai-on-accident/

I don't know how to easily sum this one up for social media but the Washington Post was very important to my family and to me, and now it's not. 

The people at the Washington Post do good work in spite of, not because of Jeff Bezos & WaPo leadership

https://www.404media.co/the-billionaire-is-the-threat-not-the-solution/

what could go wrong: https://www.404media.co/why-the-us-general-in-charge-of-nuclear-weapons-said-he-needs-ai/

New: A leaked training presentation from a NY's largest hospital system shows how doctors are being encouraged to use AI for everything from writing emails to summarizing clinical evaluations to "diagnosing pancreatic cancer" and "parse" health records

https://www.404media.co/northwell-health-ai-hub-tool-chatgpt-doctors/

The movie Twister—and ONLY the movie Twister—is unrentable from remaining Redbox machines and no one knows why even after weeks of people reverse-engineering the kiosks.

Twister is Redbox's last DVD.

If you know why this is happening, please tell me

https://www.404media.co/redboxs-last-dvd-twister-is-unrentable-in-remaining-redbox-kiosks-and-no-one-knows-why/

An encrypted messaging app based in Australia is leaving the country after police pressured an employee. Possible additional fallout from Telegram situation:

https://www.404media.co/encrypted-chat-app-session-leaves-australia-after-visit-from-police-2/

Amazon argues that it has a First Amendment right to union bust, and claims requiring it to post NLRB posters about workers' rights & host trainings about workers rights in response to labor law violations violates its free speech rights

https://www.404media.co/amazon-says-it-has-a-first-amendment-right-to-union-bust/

by

An Elon Musk-funded PAC is microtargeting Muslim people in Michigan and Jewish people in Pennsylvania with opposite messaging about Kamala Harris using ZIP code targeting, according to data I pulled from Snapchat. Few things from this investigation:

https://www.404media.co/this-is-exactly-how-an-elon-musk-funded-pac-is-microtargeting-muslims-and-jews-with-opposing-messages/

This conversation I had with

and

about discoverability on the internet, the fediverse, and the future of the internet was one of the best convos I’ve had in years- I left it feeling optimistic, excited and definitely scared … please listen!

Incredibly cool: A community of people on Discord are salvaging Redbox kiosks from Walgreens all over the country and are reverse engineering and modifying them. Redbox OS got dumped this week and people are actively figuring out how to repurpose it:

https://www.404media.co/tinkerers-are-taking-old-redbox-kiosks-home-and-reverse-engineering-them/

The WordPress situation is so so crazy https://www.404media.co/wordpress-checkbox-login-wp-engine/

Thousands of people are using an AI-powered automatic job application bot to spam job apps on LinkedIn. “I applied to 2843 roles” one person said. I used it and applied to 17 jobs in less than an hour. Here's what it looks like:

https://www.404media.co/i-applied-to-2-843-roles-the-rise-of-ai-powered-job-application-bots/

1: AI is hallucinating events, historical figures, entire concepts on Wikipedia

2: a task force of Wikipedia editors is detecting and deleting this stuff

https://www.404media.co/the-editors-protecting-wikipedia-from-ai-hoaxes/