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I was just listening to all these CEOs talk about how much of their code is being produced by AI. That just doesn't line up. The idea that 75% of the code is like, the most influential tech infrastructure company in the world is being AI generated, that's not the complete picture.

Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to inner worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co, as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are four zero four Media co founders, Sam Cole. Hey. Emmanuel Mayberg.

Hello.

And Jason Kebler.

Hi.

Alright, let's get to our first story, which is one that Emmanuel just published. The headline is Google Employees Internally Share Memes About How Its AI Sucks. So you've been sent a lot of these memes recently, Emmanuel. We will display these on the YouTube version of the podcast. If listening and you'd rather have video, you can always check out the YouTube version.

There's a link in the show notes. We just go to our YouTube channel and obviously subscribe. Then every week you're going to get this, the video version of this podcast. But for those listening and to run us through it, can you just give us some examples of these memes first of all, before we drill down into them?

Sure. Yeah. So I really think that the meme I put at the top of the story sums up the sentiment of employees at Google and how they feel about their AI tools, specifically Jetski, which is Google's internal AI coding assistant. And this meme is the doubt face x press x to doubt face from LA Noire. Is everybody familiar?

I think we should do a survey as we no? Say I'm not familiar with this?

Not really.

I didn't super know this meme, honestly. I I got what it was like going for, but Mhmm. But I don't know this guy. Press x to doubt. Press it's like it's like press f to pay respects, but

That's right. It's like in the game, you're investigator and you're you're interrogating different people and you can react to their statements in various ways. And in this one, the main character is making a very skeptical face that he could press x to doubt, and the impact font says, JetSki built a functional operating system autonomously, which is something that Google recently claimed at its annual IO conference, which it's an annual conference. They've done it for many years. They just talk about like all their biggest upcoming stuff.

And understandably, this year, it's been heavily focused on AI. They showed off a bunch of AI products, and they made a bunch of outlandish claims like their AI was able to build an operating system from scratch. A lot of the memes are about JetSki, but a lot of them are also in response to to stuff that they saw at IO. So I think that's a really good contrast, which is what the story is about essentially, and kind of like the line of reporting I've been interested in in the past few weeks, which is what is Google saying publicly, what what other companies are saying publicly about their AI products, and what the people who actually make them and use them say about them internally.

Yeah. I'll just give one more example. There's the the big forehead fish.

People know this meme before we get into it?

I know that one. Yeah.

The diver. It's originally a video of a of a diver doing some like meticulous work on I don't know what is it a shipwreck or coral or something. And a a fish. I'm sorry. I don't know the name of a fish.

It's probably not even a fish. It's some sort of sea mammal. I don't know.

It's a it's a dolphin with a giant head.

It's not a giant

Giant head dolphin is the name.

And he's coming up to the diver and he's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know? He's like bugging him.

And then in this internal Google, AI version, the fish is like, aren't you using AI? Why is this all say taking so much time? AI is magic. Are you a muggle? New best AI tool launched just a day and the scuba diver is just trying to get on with their job.

Like that is the sentiment that seems to be coming out from these memes that isn't well, sometimes as you say, it's about specific products like Jet Ski, this internal tool or whatever. And then it's like, we're being pressured to use these AI tools even when we may not want to, which kind of reflects on the earlier stuff you had about the leaderboard at Amazon, right? And this is just like another way that employees are sort of saying how they feel about this, right? Is that sort of the vibe you got?

Yeah, I actually wanted to talk a little bit about like how I got into these stories, which is sometimes we get stories because people send us tips. Sometimes it's because we see something in the news. And sometimes it's just because, like, we have a feeling that something is a story. And in this case, I was just listening to all these CEOs talk about how much of their code internally now is being produced by AI. 20%, 50%, Google famously, as I mentioned at the at in the league of the story, more than 75% of the code at the company is being produced by AI.

And judging by everything we know about these AI tools and how often they make mistakes, this is something we've covered in many ways and also specifically about AI coding agents, it's like that just doesn't line up. Like, unless Google has some super secret, super powerful AI that doesn't make mistakes like every other LLM does, it just like the idea that 75% of the code at, like, one of the biggest tech companies, one of the most influential tech infrastructure company in the world is being AI generated, is like, surely there's like a different that's not the complete picture. Right? And we strategically published a story that was based on a lot of conversation that was happening on Reddit that showed exactly this, that people were complaining about how they're being pressured to use these AI tools to produce code, whether it was useful or not. We kind of did a broad story about that sentiment and asked for tips, and I would say, this is a strategy that we've used forever.

We started using it in motherboard. It's very effective. I've never seen it be this effective before in my career. Like, I I published a story, and I've heard from dozens of employees across the industry that were dying to talk about this problem. And, yeah, I I mean, to your question, it's like, this is the sentiment at Google and this is the sentiment at other companies is some people feel like the AI tools are useful.

Some people feel like they need more work and they'll they'll get there eventually. There's like a broad spectrum of, like, what the sentiment is about AI tools from, like, very positive to completely apocalyptically negative, but everybody agrees that they're being heavily pressured to use AI, that that pressure is there's no other goal other than to just show that they use AI. Right? It's like, it's not based on outcomes. It's not based on increasing productivity.

It's not based on anything like that. Just like we want to show that we're using AI, whether it's helpful or not, and that it's driving the employees crazy in many cases.

Yeah. And then not just making these memes, but then people internally at Google are, like, essentially upvoting them right or or reacting to them. Like, of some these memes have hundreds and hundreds of likes or whatever. So it's not just the people making the memes. Everybody's like, yeah, this fucking sucks as well.

I mean, want to maybe people don't know this, but like these tech companies have internal message boards. We've seen stuff from the past from Facebook and I think other tech companies over the years. Just briefly, what is this message boards for Googlers? Is it like a forum? Is it just for memes?

Like, what's the deal?

Yeah. So I think this is pretty weird and funny, but Google has many ways of communicating internally. You know, they have Slack and different forms and company registries and all that, but they also have something called MemeGen, which is like an internal social media just for producing memes. And this has been in the news before because in a way, it's like a temperature check on what employees across this giant company are thinking about and talking about and joking about that you can see if you have what they're memeing about. So I think the New York Times had a story maybe late last year about how they actually started to enforce some rules around the memes that people were making about conversations around Gaza.

So that's been in the news. So it's like management definitely keeps an eye on it. In terms of AI, what I've heard is that it's like a third or a quarter of all memes at the company are about this subject now, and that it spikes whenever Google talks about it publicly, like they did in IO, or when something breaks down internally. Right? Like everybody's trying to use jet ski, jet ski breaks, and then everybody rushes to MemeGen to to to make memes about it.

So it's like a dominant sentiment at the company, or at least it's it's one way to it's one way to measure it.

Yeah. It's super interesting, in my opinion. So Google gave you this statement that I'm just going to read out. We encourage our engineers to vigorously test and critique our internal tools. That candid feedback loop is vital to how we build technology.

AI coding models are designed to assist developers, but it's critical that we maintain humans in the loop, including the oversight and expertise of our world class engineering talent. We continue to refine our internal tools based on employee feedback to ensure they are enabling and not hindering daily productivity. Okay, sure, whatever. You get that statement Emmanuel, we then publish the piece and I think you get an email just before or just after, but Google wants to change their statement. Like, can you explain what the deal with that is?

Yeah. So I published a story with their statement, and then right after I sent out the story in our newsletter and published it on our website, I get an email from the same PR person. He's like, actually, do we have time to update that statement? And I said, I just published, but obviously, if you would like us to update the statement or like add another statement, we could do that.

If there's like more interesting information for our readers to know, like that sort of thing, like maybe they legitimately missed out an important detail or something. Maybe.

Yeah. So and then he sent the updated statement. Do you want to read that one?

Let I don't have it in front of me. Okay. So

yeah. It's, we encourage our engineers to vigorously test and critique our internal tools. That candid feedback loop, even via our internal meme generator, is vital to how we build technology. We continue to refine our internal tools based on employee feedback to ensure we are delivering the best experience that maximizes daily productivity. So I don't know how you would what do you read in that edit?

I'm not I'm not I'm not sure. But, clearly a lot of eyes on this.

I mean, the thing that stood out to me was that they have explicitly removed the bit that says it's critical we maintain humans in the loop. I was like, that was actually a pretty interesting thing to include in your statement like saying, hey, you know, we are bullish on AI, but it's very important that humans are still still involved. Wait, scrap that. We don't want that in the statement anymore. That's even more telling, in my opinion.

What do you think it means? Because I have a I have a take a take on that as well. Like, what what what do you what do you what is that signaling?

I I I think you'll have a more informed take than me. But for me, it's probably or could be like just a PR move in that, wait, we don't want to acknowledge that we probably should have humans in the loop when we're talking about 75% of codes and Google is now AI generated and stuff. It's like, no, no, no, we're all in on AI and don't we want give even the perception to investors, whoever the market, like, don't know, that we're not that. So for me, it was that sort of positioning. But what do you think?

No, I think that's spot on. I will like, scoop myself on the pod because I haven't decided if I wanna publish a story about this yet. But another way that I've seen that same messaging expressed internally at Google is there is a document that software engineers at the company can refer to for expectations, like soft expectations. It's not something that says, you have to work this way, and this is how you write code, but it's like, you're like best practices. Right?

And there was a message just sent was sent out in the last few days that edited that document, which is already filled with a bunch of guidance about AI use. And the note about the update highlighted the fact that AI coding or AI assisted coding is now just referred to as coding. Right? So it's like to remove the distinction between somebody writing code and somebody writing code with an AI agent is not a distinction they want to make anymore, which I think is sort of the same idea. You want you wanna you wanna you wanna show that the it's like a completely normal, legitimate way that the company works now.

Yeah. And that may not include a human in the future.

Right. Yeah. That is really interesting. Alright. We'll leave that there.

When we come back after the break, we're gonna talk about Jason's story on Microsoft basically saying the quiet part out loud.

We'll be Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Wait. Wait. Breaking news.

It's the Asian

it's the Asian sheep head wrasse is the type of fish in the meme. Is it a fish? It's a fish, not a dolphin. It's native to, the Western Pacific Ocean. It lives near Korea and China and Japan.

Respect for the fish.

Yeah. And it's super crazy because it looks like a normal fish when it's a kid, but then as an adult, it becomes like it grows this big, like, bulb on its head.

Just like me for real? Yeah. Alright. We'll be we'll be right back after this. Alright.

And we are we are back. The headline of this one by Jason is Microsoft wants oh, sorry. It's double bylines, isn't it? It's it was originally Jason, then Emmanuel wrote as well. I'm gonna acknowledge that.

Apologies. Written by both of you. Microsoft wants to quote make people addicted end quote to its new AI assistant internal documents reveal. So Jason, just tell us about this addiction line first. Like we'll get into the different phases and stuff, but this is obviously the most important part.

What is this internal document and what's it saying about addiction?

Yeah. So it is an internal document about a new product that when I was writing this article had not been announced or released yet, and it was called ClawPilot. And it was basically Microsoft's attempt to use OpenClaw on its Microsoft three six five products. We can talk about what all that means in a minute. But basically, it was a strategy document for, for this upcoming product, and it had, like, three phases for the deployment of this product and sort of, like, what the plan was.

And phase one was, quote, make people addicted. And that is pretty crazy to see in an official company document because AI companies have been repeatedly sued for making an addicting product. They've been repeatedly, like, attacked by I mean, correctly so. But but, basically, it's like that that word addicted and addiction is like a third rail for social media, for Internet companies, for, for artificial intelligence that, like, politicians don't like, that regulators don't like, that courts don't like, like, that sort of thing. And here here it was as them putting it as the very first thing in this strategy document for this new product.

Yeah. You're taking notes on the criminal conspiracy, and you're pulling it in writing. I like straight up, I think this is gonna lead to, like, some sort of legal action, surely. The fact that they just came out and said it, but we'll talk about that in a minute. So they're preparing

It's definitely it's definitely like a they admit it situation,

you know? Right. Right.

So eventually then they actually launched this product and then we publish or sorry, they announced this product and we publish on the same day and that's called Scout now, right? Before we get into sort of more about the document, just what is this product then? Like it's one of these new AgenTA KIs that goes and does stuff for you and this this is like Microsoft stab at it?

Or Yeah. So basically, for a while, Silicon Valley was obsessed with OpenClaw, which was an open source, is an open source tool that allows you to create AI agents, which are basically like it's AI that does stuff. So it's AI that can send emails. It's AI that can add things to your calendar. It's AI that can kind of like act on your behalf.

And to do this, you need to give it access to a bunch of your accounts or you need to make accounts for it. So you either need to, like, have a standalone, like, online world for your AI agent where they have their own email address, they have their own, you know, like, calendar, they have their own, in some cases, bank account. Like, the the things that people were doing with OpenClaw were quite wild and led to, like, all sorts of crazy things happening where, you know, they were, like, making phone calls. And I say they because I don't know what else to call them. They're not people, but, like, I'm just using that terminology

Mhmm.

Not to anthropomorphize these agents. But basically, this like went super viral and then every big AI company was like, oh, we need some version of this. Mhmm. Because right now, we're basically stuck in chatbot land where you talk to a chatbot and you have to then, like, copy paste the email that it writes for you over into Outlook and send it. And so this is basically like Microsoft's attempt to take OpenClaw and to integrate it into their products.

And so Scout is what they're ultimately calling this. It is an agentic AI that will live on Microsoft three six five, meaning that, yes, it can, like, add to your calendar. It can send emails. It can, like, maybe it can, like, delete files. It can, like

In OneDrive or something, presumably? Yeah.

Yeah. It can, like, interact with, like, all the Microsoft products that you have and then also with like Windows, more broadly.

I mean, that's when it would start to get a little bit crazy and you're gonna end up like that Meta employee who deleted their entire inbox or whatever. So that's the idea. That's the product. As you already said, this is what Microsoft wants to make people addicted to. The actual quote is make people addicted, right?

And they want to do that with this. What is the idea after that? Because this document lays out a couple of phases. Right?

Yeah. So I think it's important to say that the document itself was written by AI. Like, so the person who is doing this is a Microsoft executive named, Omar Shaheen. And as he describes it, he's now written many blog posts and LinkedIn posts about this, and all of them have been AI generated for what it's worth. Like, very obviously AI generated.

You can just tell. One, you can tell, but then also Pangram, which is the tool that we've mentioned a few times before that detects AI writing is like, this is 100% AI. And so it's there is that can be not necessarily foolproof, but they're they are AI generated for sure, because it it reads that way, but then also the actual document that we obtained says that it was generated by AI. It with it's it's like, let me see what exactly what it says.

Like assisted or or

It says co create the document that that we obtained or that we saw and wrote about, at the top, it has Omar Shaheen's name on it, but then it has a subheading and it says, quote, co created turn by turn with AI, human verified every sentence. Including make people addicted. Including make people addicted. Yeah. And so I just say that because phases two and three are, like, inscrutable to me.

They don't really make very much sense.

They're kind of boring.

They're of boring. Yeah. So phase one is make people addicted. Continue shipping the standalone claw pilot experience, polish the UX to grow the user base, and build the skill and tool ecosystem that makes people depend on it daily. This is already happening organically.

Phase two is connect with Lobster. Lobster is like the broader Microsoft plan to, like, integrate OpenClaw in its products and, like, have AgenTic AI more or less. And then phase three is AgenTic identity and new significant planned features. It says, once connected, expand into mobile app for voice, govern skills and MCP marketplace, agent to agent collaboration, co creation tools for team level skill authoring, and deeper MCP server ecosystem integration with the Graph Teams enterprise MCP offering. So that is like some gobbledygook, like, product stuff.

And it I it's basically saying, like, they're gonna add features to it. Like, they're they're focusing on the core product, trying to make people addicted to it, and then they're gonna add features and, like, new abilities to it. And later in the document, it starts talking about how, like, eventually they will need to worry about security, which I think is kind of funny because security is, like, really critical with a tool like this because you're giving it access to do stuff on your behalf. It's not just giving you like canned answers that then you need to act upon. It's like acting for you.

And so

As we've seen with the Meta AI chatbot, the EU covers where people were prompting the Meta AI to give them access to Instagram accounts. Like when you give these AIs access to actual accounts and stuff, shit's gonna get really, really crazy, really, really quick. So, Jason, what was sort of the reaction to some of the people you spoke to about this document? Because it's one thing for us to see the document and go, woah, that's kinda crazy. But what did people inside Microsoft

Yeah. I mean, we got the document, because Microsoft employees were like, woah, this language is crazy. And also, frankly, we're kind of like upset about it. Like, we're upset that this is explicit strategy that is being written down. It's not like make a good product that people want to use.

It's like addict people, addict people like and notably, I mean, Microsoft has not been super good at making addictive AI products. As in, they've launched a bunch of different things, like Copilot through GitHub is probably their most successful one, but it's been kind of surpassed by Claude Code and and a few others. Well, I guess it's probably number two after Claude Code in terms of usage, would think. But there's been a few things that Microsoft has tried to launch where it was like an AI assistant on integrated into Windows that would take like snapshots of your computer and things like this. And people were really mad about it.

And so, like on the contrary from making addictive AI products, they've made AI products that people are, like, repulsed by and are furious about. And so I think that part of this is them being like, let's make one that people, like, actually wanna use. But then they're they're couching in this language that is, like, quite harmful. It's like addiction also, you know, it has, like, you know, like, tones to drug addiction and alcoholism and, like, all of these sorts of things. And so some of the employees that I heard from were like, I have friends who have addiction problems.

I have, like, family who have addiction problems. And so, like, the fact that this is our explicit goal is like offensive to me and I don't like it. I'll also mention that like the document says that, they had been piloting this internally on more than a thousand employees. So more than a thousand employees were using it. And that includes Satya Nadella, the CEO.

Like, that's what the document said at least that that he was using it. And then it says, quote, CloudPilot has organically grown into one of the most requested internal tools at Microsoft. And so it seems like for them, they're just like, we have another chance to launch another AI assistant, another like AI product. This one should be addictive because like we want it to be sticky. We want it to, you know, there's like all these other terms that one could use.

They could have said sticky.

Yeah. That probably wouldn't have raised like alarm bells, I think. But I think the fact that they use the term addictive, especially in the context of AI companies being sued for making an addictive product is is what set employees off.

Yeah. And what is might trigger, some lawsuits. I imagine at least some people are exploring that, as I said. We'll leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out.

But if you are a paying four zero four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about a big, big Lego drama and companies manipulating Reddit. You'll see what we mean in the subscribers only section. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. We'll be right back after this.

This can be in the subscriber section or bonus. So so pretty much like the craziest thing that's happening on the Internet right now is this thing happening in the LEGO community.

Oh, yeah.

Are you aware of this, Joseph?

Only in passing. So I definitely wanna hear you talk about it. But yeah.

So so unfortunately, I don't know what's going on and to figure out what's going on would require me to watch like nine hours of YouTube videos, which is, the really upsetting thing. So there's a store called Bricks and Minifigs. I don't know where the store is. It's a it's a brick and mortar store. And, basically, someone took their Lego collection there to consign to consign it to have them sell the Legos, and it was $200,000 worth of Legos.

And the store stole the Legos from this man. Basically, they either sold I don't know if they sold the Legos or the Lego bricks, Lego brand bricks. Sorry. Legos is not the correct plural. So the store bricks and minifigs sold the Lego and or just stole them from the person.

And then that person either, like, sued or made a YouTube video about how their Lego was stolen by this, and that YouTube video went super viral. And then I believe I believe, I don't know, because I haven't been following. And again, there's every YouTube video about this is like two to three hours long and there's 40 of them. Then a YouTuber named Reckless Ben, like, investigated the situation in some way, and he was arrested by the police.

What for?

For, like, he tracked down the thief. He, like, he, like, did, like, vigilante justice of some sort. Like, he went and found the owners of this store who stole the Lego, and then he was arrested for, like, accosting this man.

Uh-huh.

Then, like, several hours of body camera footage of the arrest has come out because either someone foiled it, although everyone's being like, the body camera footage has leaked. It's been leaked on this mysterious Dropbox. Like, it's leaked. It's leaked. But, like, body camera footage is public records as we know.

So that came out yesterday. And now there's, like, five hours of body camera footage of this YouTuber, like, being arrested by the police after, like, accosting the this store that stole a bunch of Lego. And now, Reckless Ben has made, like, many YouTube videos about being arrested and including the body camera footage and all of that. And then and then his Patreon got banned. His Patreon got banned because he's like a criminal because he got arrested essentially.

And now the CEO of Patreon is making like hostage style apology videos for like banning this guy. Wow. And like everyone is like super pissed about that too.

There's also like there is some local coverage, think, like Fox fifty four news Huntsville, and they've done like a YouTube well, I mean, it's a news report upload to YouTube. I did see the tech dirt thing. That's how I got into it. There was an article, published by friends at Tech Dirt and the headline. I'm not gonna read the whole thing.

It's really fucking long. I think it's like 6,000 words. It's all Mike, post about it. But everyone in this leg of dispute should have spoken to a lawyer earlier than they did is the headline, which is amazing.

It's nuts. And also, so Brixon mini figs is like a chain of stores that franchises them out. So it's like a corporate situation, and then this local franchise stole all of these, like, Lego. Mhmm. So now it's just like all these corporations are, like, involved in the scandal.

There's a there's a Wikipedia page for it, and the Wikipedia page has 20 no. 34 links in it. And also, like, it is impossible to follow what is occurring. It's crazy though.

It's I feel like you gave it a cogent summary there, especially when it was like Patreon gets involved, that sort of thing. I don't know. Maybe we should write it, but it does seem daunting.

It's impossible to write. I don't know what I would write because it's just like

think why

we're talking about it now. It's like it's like 19 companies and, like, dozens of people are involved. And, of course, like every YouTuber is making like a bricks and minifig like video. And so I could I can't like really follow it. There's also like a GoFundMe to like re to like give give money back to the person who lost their Lego.

Sorry. Can you explain

They're also they're also all Mormon.

Oh, okay. Cool.

It's happening in Utah.

The the one thing though is that so they ban sorry, reckless Ben. That was his name.

Reckless Ben.

Patreon bans Reckless Ben because he's technically a criminal at that point. Why are people mad about that? Because no, he was doing the right thing and investigating the theft of these LEGO bricks. Is that the vibe?

I might be wrong about this. Patreon refuses to ban him.

No. It's just something completely hostage.

Patreon refuses, but but still did a hostage video.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Being like, we notice. They gotta take down notice from Brix and Minifig being like, you have to stop funding this criminal who, like, is accosting our employees or whatever. Right. And and the CEO of Patreon who has like a crazy beard, like filmed the video being like justice for reckless Ben.

And like the YouTube videos that have like now millions of views have titles like unexpected twist in the Lego scandal. It's just like it's just like the the Lego scandal has overtaken YouTube entirely.

That's amazing.

The parallel universe that this is in your feed.

It's not in my feed, dude. It's not. We have gotten multiple tips from our readers about And then so, like, I got an email, I like, in the middle of the night last night from a person being like, the police body camera footage from the bricks and minifig scandal has leaked. Here it is.

As if you know what that means and everything. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I did know. I did. I had heard I had seen a little bit about it. And then there there's also, there's a subreddit like, what's going on with it?

And the the title of the the Reddit post is what's going on with bricks and minifigs, a $200,000 Lego collection and Mormons.

I mean Okay. Great. Now now let's do ten minutes on Adam 22 and, you know, the plug getting a divorce.

Can you can you please? No. This This can't the subscriber section.

This is much more complex. It's much more complex. Is

who who are those people?

I I'm not I'm not doing this. I've I've haven't done enough reporting. Don't wanna Neither is Jason record.

Bricks and minifigs. So Right.

I'll the only reason I'm like, we have to be on this is because I opened YouTube and the top video is, like, 9,000,000,000,000 views. There's just, like, dozens and dozens of them. I think it's, like, the biggest scandal for, like, all nine year olds in USA.

An audience we want for sure.

It It is. I was, hanging out with my friends, and, they're, like, seven year old and nine year old yesterday. I should have asked them if they knew.

Oh my god. I bet they do.

Oh my god. There's can I read some of the YouTube videos and then we can do our actual podcast? I'm very sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. Please. I'm I'm trying to read the 6,000 word post. I'm not gonna be able to do it.

So you

do It's just like a few it's just a few of them. These aren't even the popular ones. Like, there's these are just the ones that types in that pop up if you type in bricks and minifigs. What the body cam actually shows, Joshua Johnson, bricks and minifigs, and reckless Ben. The bricks and minifigs disaster.

A lawyer explains the reckless Ben lawsuit.

Wait. Let's have him on or her, the lawyer.

Bricks and minifigs corporate responded to the video. What nobody's saying about bricks and minifigs.

I just saw that.

That I'm flicking. That I'm flicking.

How about we finally know the truth parentheses, Lego thief. Yeah. And then unexpected twist in the Lego scandal. Yeah. Bricks and Minifigs decides to sue Reckless Ben and to pick a fight with Patreon.

Bricks and Minifigs is finally finished. Bricks and Minifigs is so cooked.

This is like big YouTubers as well jumping on the drama. Yeah. You're right. This is this is gonna

Dude, mister beast is gonna, like, open a Bricks and Minifig franchise and lock reckless Ben and the Patreon CEO in there and form a cage match made of Lego?

That'd sad.

I'm very sorry.

No. No. That was good. Alright. Let's do let's do this, subscriber headline now.

The headline is companies are using Reddit to manipulate chat GPT and Google AI search. This is one you reported, Jason. What's the biohackers subreddit?

Yeah. I I do know what's occurring here. I can I can explain? I can explain. So, the biohackers subreddit is for people who are, like, Silicon Valley quantified self life extension bros, more or less.

It's, like, hard to explain exactly, but, basically, it is people who are, like, exercise and eating healthy is, like, not exactly it for me. Like, maybe I wanna do some of that, but I also wanna be taking, like, tons of different supplements. I want to be, like, wearing different, like, smartwatches and things like this. I want to be injecting myself with research chemicals and seeing what happens. And it used to be a place where, it would be like, I put an RFID chip into my palm or, like, people who were like doing body modifications and stuff like that, like doing literal biohacking.

Yeah. Like, and it would intersect with the hacking conferences and that sort of thing and that sort of vibe. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, there's still a little bit of that, but for the most part over the last two years or so, it's become really about peptides and hormone replacement therapy for the most part. And so peptides, encompasses like a really wide range of substances. Like insulin is a peptide, Ozempic, like GLP-one is a peptide. But then there's now all these other ones.

I mean, they've always existed, but now people are like injecting them into them, their body. And they're like often sourcing them from China and things like that. And so like oxytocin is one where it's like the quote unquote love hormone and you can like feel happier if you're like injecting this or spraying it on yourself, like quite regularly. There's like hair regrowth ones. There's like skincare ones.

There's ones that are like essentially steroids for like muscle growth and recovery, but are like precursors to that. So may like the theory is that it's not as like crazy as doing like anabolic steroids.

Well, and it's big in like this, sorry to use the term, like Luxmaxing community that's fucking everywhere now across social media, and that's why I think a ton of people are talking about it now especially. Right? Or at least more.

Well, I think I think GLP one is the reason because people have gotten like a lot more comfortable with injecting themselves with things. And a lot of Ozempic and like Wegovy and things like that, can get from an app now. And the way that it works is it comes from like compounding pharmacies. And so what a compounding pharmacy is, is where you're sent like a mixture and you mix the like powder and water or powder and like another substance, and then you inject it and it's essentially, I might be wrong, but as I understand it, it's a way of like eluding the FDA. And so, these have become like very popular.

Like it's become a popular way to make these injectable substances. And so there's now all these companies that sell the compounds for different peptides and you can buy them legally under like a research they're not licensed, but they're they're like called like for research use only. And so then you like buy them and you're like, it's not for human consumption, but then like humans take them. And so it's become a big business. A lot of the company like most of these are made in China, but then there's a bunch of like American companies that are repackaging them or sourcing them and then kind of putting like a friendlier, more medical face on them.

And then just very briefly, because I mentioned it, hormone replacement therapy is used very widely in for gender affirming care in like the trans community, non binary community, etcetera. But in this context, the biohacking context, it is being used by like men to like increase their testosterone levels, for like weightlifting purposes just like sperm purposes. Like these are like Brian Johnson, like life extension weirdos. And then it's also used by women in like perimenopause and menopause and things like treat symptoms and and like do hormone replacement there. And there are ways of doing this like through a doctor, but then there are also ways of doing it like DIY type vibes.

And it's very popular topic of conversation on the biohackers subreddit.

Yeah. And you have all these companies producing and sourcing these peptides and these products. And as the headline says, we're gonna get to sort of the shenanigans they're doing. This starts with something I think the mods announced on the biohacker subreddit, right? Like, what did they reveal or set?

So they basically they banned all new threads about peptides and about hormone replacement therapy. So these are like two of the most popular topics of conversation on this subreddit and they're totally banned. And the reason that they're being banned is basically because the moderators said that all of the threads that are about this have been attacked by companies, posing as normal Redditors. And the companies are basically trying to do what's called AEO, which is AI engine optimization, which is an evolution of search engine optimization. But basically, they are trying to get their companies mentioned in ChatGPT, in Google's AI Answers, in Claude, when people are like, what peptide should I take?

And so what these companies know is that Reddit is one of the most popular sources, for LLMs and AI tools. And so they are trying to manipulate the underlying content that is then being scraped by these LLMs.

Yeah. Which is I mean, it's a complete mess. But then, of course, it's Google, right, that has the deal with Reddit to then feed it. Is it is it Google that has the the deal to then get information

from you? OpenAI signed one as well. I mean, Google, like, famous Reddit's on OpenAI too. But Okay.

I understand.

Google was, like, the big one because Google, when they first launched AI knowledge, like AI answers, they had the famously glue pizza. Mhmm. That was taken from a Redditor who, like, made a joke about putting glue on a pizza, and that Redditor's username was fuck Smith. And so, like, Google Google is basically like, we'll offload our, like, highly influential and important, you know, search results that has built our entire company to just like these random Redditors. And that, like, hasn't changed actually in a year and a half.

Right.

It's still going to Reddit and everything and that that sort

Reddit is the the most cited source by both Google and ChatGPT as far as I know. Like, there's been a few different research papers about it. I can't really vouch for the, like, quality of that research. I think it's a little bit hard to study because these are, like, closed systems. But time and time again, Reddit is the most cited source by, like, LLMs.

And so companies know this and they're basically like, well, we're going to just like post a bunch on Reddit and we will like surreptitiously insert information about our companies. And, like, Reddit manipulation has been a thing for a really long time, but companies are getting like a lot better at it. And so it's become a lot harder for moderators to moderate against this. And I can't say for sure that this specific company is doing anything on the biohackers subreddit, but just to, like, illustrate, like, what the problem is and and sort of, like, how this works. I was told about a company called Red Rover, which advertises AEO, and they specifically advertise gaming Reddit for companies.

And so they basically say, like, on their website, quote, increase your AI search ranking within days. And the way that they do that is basically they say that they have an army of bots that will post on Reddit. Says, quote, an army of agents publishing blog content and Reddit posts that solves both SEO and AEO at scale. So there's some of that, like, going on. And the reason that these are, like, a little bit more effective than they used to be is because the bots are better because they are also using LLMs.

And so, basically, like, they are then able to just not do, like, stupid copy paste stuff, but actually respond to, like, other Redditors and respond to original posts and stuff. And, like, yeah, maybe they're getting caught, but it's happening at, like, such a scale that that is it is still working. And then the other thing that companies are doing is they're using warmed up accounts, which mean accounts with a posting history that, is not strictly promotional, and then they're like inserting information there as well.

And they, like, buy those or they compromise?

They buy those accounts or they I mean, I don't know if there may be some companies that are, like, using hacked accounts. I have no idea what Red Rover does for this, but or they're paying actual human Redditors to post this type of content without disclosing it. Like, I I know that there's some of that happening as well, where there's like advertisements like, are you a long time Redditor? Like, we'll give you money to post for our brand. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a lot of that happening.

So so to wrap it up, what what's the end result here? That it's just that Reddit is the most reliable source for humans and then it becomes the most reliable source somewhat for AI and now that's being poisoned and now that's going to be degraded? Like, what's the end result of all of this?

Well, this is an outgrowth of people like wanting like when you Google like best suitcase, I always used to be like best suitcase Reddit because the results for best suitcase would be full of just like SEO spam, where it was just like companies doing affiliate links and trying to collect money. So they were doing like these poorly researched articles. They were going to the top of Google. And if you wanted people's like actual opinions, you would type in Reddit. And then you would get results from Reddit.

And then it'd be like, oh, you're getting a response from, like, an autistic person whose special interest is testing suitcases. And they'll they'll have, like, a 9,000 word, you know, Reddit post that, like, discusses the ins and outs of the best suitcases and things

like This is exactly what I want.

Yeah. Exactly. It's just like, oh, amazing. The guy who's tested 40,000 different vacuum cleaners has told me which one to buy. Like, that's the one that I want to to to buy.

But it's like then the brands learned this and then the brands started like attacking Reddit in this way. And and so now that people are using ChatGPT and Google has changed its search to rely so heavily on AI, they are basically doing the same thing, but they're attacking these large language models by attacking the underlying content. And so the result of it is that it's like these communities are getting fucked with. They're getting like invaded by bots. And so like if you are a member of these communities, you're like dealing with a bunch posts.

And if you're a moderator of these communities, you are like dealing with it. You're an unpaid person who's like dealing with an onslaught of this like spam. And then finally, it just makes like the whole internet like a lot less human. And then finally, I just talked to some researchers. I'll do an article later, but it's really easy to manipulate this stuff because of the way that LLMs work where the answers that they're providing are very similar to the queries that people are asking.

And so it's like, if you're like, what's the best suitcase? It's gonna pull from a Reddit post that is titled, what's the best suitcase? And so that basically, these companies are figuring out like, what are people typing into LLMs? They're making threads about it on Reddit, or they're finding threads that already exist, and they're responding in the comments. And it's like trivially trivially easy to kind of manipulate these things.

So the end result is just like a less human internet, you know, LLM results that are manipulated. It's it's like not a good sitch.

Yeah. Sounds bad. All right. With that, we'll leave that there. And I'm gonna read the outro now, even though we're recording this out of order.

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