The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

No one asked for this. Nobody wants it. And the constant pearl clutching is literally leading to censorship. There's no other reason this is all getting censored other than it helps these companies make money due to the sensitivities of advertising.

Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden 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, and they get early access to our interview series too. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

This week, I'm speaking to Jake Hanrahan. He is the founder of Popular Front, an independent conflict focused media outlet. There's a podcast, they do documentaries as well. But recently, Jake has branched out into another project called Away Days, which is more about counter culture. And I wanted to speak to Jake because obviously he is also an independent journalist.

He's actually been in the independent space longer than we have, getting close to ten years for him. And I think the ecosystem around tools and platforms has changed a lot for the better for independent journalists. We're able to run a website and take subscriber money in a very streamlined fashion. That said, platforms, social media, YouTube, places like Patreon as well potentially, have maybe not become hostile to independent media, that'll be too much, but there's a lot of friction there. And Jake has experienced some of that with his company as well.

So I want to have him on to talk about all of that and what sort of thing would be good to be developed for independent journalists. All right, hope you enjoy the conversation.

Jake, thank you so much for joining us. I really, really appreciate it.

Thanks, mate. Big fan of what you're doing. I've been a day one subscriber.

I I don't have my popular front on shirt right now.

That's why I got a flag.

I often do wear that. For those who don't know, what is Popular Front and how did that come about?

So basically, Popular Front, I started it in 2018, and at the time, there was a lot of very just normal tiny follower accounts doing a lot of incredible work. For example, Hugo Karman always comes to mind. He had like 300 followers on Twitter and was doing some of the best OSINT work and geolocation I've ever seen in my life. And I noticed journalists, you know, as the journalist journalism industry is, we were essentially just cribbing his work, you know, and like not mentioning him. I was like, this is bad.

And then I started seeing it happening a lot, and then I realized like, we should all be working together sort of thing, you know? Also, realized a lot of these people that were doing this work were kinda like me, kinda like, I guess unconventional, I would say weirdos. Know what I Sure. Not in a bad way. And so I was like, fuck it.

I'm gonna start this whole thing. And my idea was to launch an independent war reporting platform, but with the soul left in, which maybe that sounds corny. I don't mind. But you know what I mean? I I wanted to really I'd been to war for so long, and I just kept seeing the kind of essence of what made it so fascinating removed, you know, and what made the people, both good and bad, so visceral.

And so, yeah, I guess Popular Front was kind of my punk esque idea of doing war reporting, and thank God it took off because I was ready to quit at the time actually. So, yeah, it's it's gone well. We're in the year eight. It's on the up and up. But I guess one of the reasons we're gonna be talking is because we've had a big problem particularly with censorship, especially with our documentaries.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll we'll get to that. In a practical sense, what does Popular Front do? It's documentaries, it's written stuff, it's your podcast as well.

Like how do you take that and how does it manifest basically? What do you make?

Yeah. So the bread and butter has always been the podcast because at the time, I just had absolutely no money whatsoever to start the thing. So I was like, well, I have I know how to use my earphones as microphone. Right. And basically, the first episode, it just sounds so bad.

But, you know, I did it with that, and I remember within 10 episodes, don't wanna say it blew up, but it really took off quite quickly. And I just feel like I I maybe just noticed a little gap maybe where there was not enough of these kind of anoraki type people being taken seriously. And for me, those were just the best people as well, and they didn't have this I don't wanna be negative, but I definitely had I was very jaded, if you could say, like from doing war reporting and just meeting some very snooty people within it, you know, and I I didn't want any of that. And I wanted to do Popular Front without any of that kind of elitist arrogance, you know, and without any of like too much polish, you know, like our catchphrase has always been, well, first of all, it's warfare for weirdos for about three weeks, but I realized people didn't wanna come on with that. So I changed it to no frills.

I remember you changed, like, the the tagline in the podcast. Was like, hey. Stop saying nerds or whatever.

Niche and geeky because like we started to have like very, like, you know, a lot of people started coming on and I just I was like, you know what? Like, it's it's moved on a little bit from that. It kind of started off as this very niche thing, and now we're kind of an independent war point platform, you know, and we started doing documentaries when we started making money on the Patreon, and that really blew us up. Know, like that, when we started doing the docs, I kind of used the same style as the podcast, know, very scrappy, kind of irreverent, but, you know, heavy on the journalism. And also non bias, you know, especially at that time to really make money in that world, you had to be left wing or right wing or conservative.

And we were just like, look, man, you know, like, we we don't like authoritarianism wherever wherever it is, and that has kinda give us a very eclectic audience, which I think is great. But So we did the documentaries. We did magazine, which is all on hold for a long time just because the sheer insane amount it costs to send stuff now with EU and everything. But, yeah, we do merch. Believe it or not, our merch funds a lot of our projects.

It does really well.

It's it's very good merch. Like, I'm constantly checking the store in case you've done something new, and then I'll go and check for the cap. I think there's the one with the world on fire, right, or And she's like, it's sold out. What the fuck?

Yeah. We we got a new one now called Send Baron. It just says Send Yeah.

Yeah. I saw that.

That's nice. You know, we try to always do kind of a reverend kind of cool merch to kind of I guess someone said to me once like, oh, you're running this like a hardcore band, and I never thought of it like that. And I was like, yeah, I like the idea of that. So, you know, some people don't like it, and I totally get that. I mean, I'm particularly annoying and opinionated, but overall, it's been, you know, it's been a pretty good ride.

Certainly, wherever we go now, everywhere we go, there's someone who's like we just have so many lovely stories from people that are like, oh, I never thought I was the sort of person that could do war reporting or conflict journalism, but seeing Popular Front made me realize I can. It's like, yeah, if I can, trust me, you You know what I mean? Sure. So, you know, in our audience, we don't care where you're from, your gender, your race, or whatever. If you're good, you're good.

We don't care about certificates, you know, and I don't have any so and I and I think that really appealed to a lot of people. So, you know, it's it's been been good fun.

For sure. So you do that and it goes on the up and up as you say, and then you decide to, I guess launch Away Days as well, which Yeah. I'll let you phrase it. But to me it looked like a series of documentaries that were about things that weren't necessarily conflicts essentially, right? Like what is Away Days and how did you come to the decision to do that?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's kind of popular front book for counterculture, if you like. You know, I you know, I've been doing war reporting for so long. I I first went to the frontline when I was like 24. I'm 36 now.

And for anyone that's and god, I've been to a dozen wars, you know, and it kind of you do start to feel your luck running out, which sounds crazy, but to me, you kind of do. And, you know, I've had a few close calls and various family circumstances. Like, I can't die out there, And you I certainly have always been interested. I mean, if you read my book Gargoyle, I've never just been a war rapport. I've always done like counterculture, black markets.

Well, did a ton of the Silk Road shows as well, yeah.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. I actually was, I think the only reporter that went and traveled with a Silk Road drug dealer to his actual manufacturing house where he had all his drugs. But So I did all this underground stuff anyway, and I was like, well, how about I turn that into a documentary thing? And and, you know, my friends said, oh, just bring bring it into popular front, but I I thought that that would have been a mistake because I feel like too often, you know, I I just got my start at Vice. Right?

Vice became everything. And I think too often niche kind of platforms lose their edge when they try and do everything. Like, I mean, you can't go from, well, we're war on conflict, but now we're war on conflict and counter coach. It just didn't work. So I was like, you know what?

I'm gonna start a different thing. And I for some reason, people are like, oh, no. Popular Front's over. I said, no. You know, there's plenty of hours in the day.

Just stop scrolling and you'll find time, you know. So I do both, you know. But Away Days is definitely a lot more specific as in it's just a documentary series. You know? Like, we we having so much fun with it.

It's a lot more polished, you know, and really specific access, but it's not like a whole network. So I can run both at the same time. And, you know, so far, we've had two docs out. We've got about five ready to edit. It's just money is an issue.

But the first doc was we spent like a week inside the favela in Brazil with a gang, and it wasn't to be like, woah, we're in the favela. It was kinda to be like, actually, this is really sad, you know, and and it did really well. Like, that's that's pushing up to a million now. And then the second one, did really fun doc second documentary. Is a documentary about Kazakhstan football hooligans, which, you know, it's just like you would never think these things exist.

But we kinda go to not to gawk at them just to be like, how beautiful is Vitality? You know? And then there are other episodes that are very dark, you know? We've got like a underground fighting, no rules fighting episode coming. We got something fun with underground illegal street racing in Japan.

You know, like anything that's kind of like that, I like it and I want to know about it. And the people involved you meet are just so fascinating and cool to be around quite often. So yeah, a white day has been great fun as well, and there's a lot less risk of dying.

Yes. Well, I mean but then you're also in the car with the Japanese drifters and the street racers, so I don't but also they know how to drive, so you're probably easily Right.

When they're doing like a 100 drifting sideways down the side of a mountain, I was a bit like, the hell am I doing But it's definitely a I mean, I the way I'm wired, man, I need some kind of something to blow my hair back, know, when I I think away days is definitely a lot safer, but it's also, you know, again, it feeds that fascination I have with just outside of society stuff, you know, which war is as well. I mean, it takes place within it, but the kinds of people that end up fighting are usually those that they become transformed, you know, and I I really like the idea of like when someone is kind of almost alchemically transformed into someone else when they're involved in their scene, you know? Like, you know, from the main character in our Kazakhstan documentary, by day, he works valeting, like, cars, you know, but then on the weekend, he's like a hero of the forest fighting in groups and, you know, and then has all his friends, and then he goes to the mosque and he's chilled out. Like, just so many layers to people. I think that's what I'm focused on often.

Same with the war reporting as well. Like, our docs have rarely been straight news reports, you know. We do do them, but we can never be first, so we had to be unique, think.

Yeah. That's a good point. Is the is the business of Away Days like entirely separate from the popular front and like you're treating them as like two streams? Like not to get like two inside baseball, but like you you mentioned you mentioned money for the Away Days one. This is like it's entirely separate.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because it just I I didn't want anyone to think I'd fluke something. Well, to to be honest to myself, you know, and I was like, can I build another thing?

Obviously, I've got a lot more reach now and, like, eyes on me from popular front, but I wanted to do it completely separate. So I think of it is imagine it's like Jake Hanrahan the channel, you know, and then each one is like, you know, a vertical or a series or whatever. So they're separate, but they're with within the same wheelhouse. All my production company and the same team, exactly the same team that does Popular Front does Away Days, but it was just kind of almost a challenge to myself. And also, like, I was like, I can't be taking all the money out of Popular Front and be spending it on Away Days.

Like, that's why it's so slow. You know? Like, if I did that, we'd the docks would be flying out, but it's very slow. I'd be like, oh, you've only put two docs out. I'm like, do know how fucking expensive this is to do this, you know, without kind of crossing the streams?

So, you know, it is what it is. At the start, we just maxed out credit cards. And then, you know, the merch is doing quite well. We've made some money back on that. And then we're in talks with some people to try and get some funding, which is looking good.

We have actually no. I've not told anybody this, but we're actually doing a collaboration series with Vice soon and it's gonna be like Away Days on Vice, but it's gonna be much shorter, so like fifteen minute kind of segments. It was gonna be called Hard Week, like Away Days presents Hard Weekend, but we're gonna have to change the name because they already have something similar. But yeah, that's gonna come out this year, that will be fun. And I think that will bring a lot more highs and hopefully revenue.

And if not, it doesn't. You know?

And it and if not, it still gets the stuff out. You still get to make it.

Exactly. You you gotta do it, man. I I really do I mean, it's easy to say when you've been doing it ten years, but I the same way I tackle this now is the same way I did at the start. You know, the reason I got my job at Vice was I got a friend of mine that I knew was studying photography, and I was like, does that have film mode? He's like, yeah, I think so.

And we just went at the time we went, was like, I wanna go to Occupy not Occupy Wall Street, was Occupy London. It was the stock exchange, and then it moved to St Paul's. And we just went down there and just filmed and like did random interviews with people. And and even though it was absolute trash, I think like they realized like, okay, you're getting off your ass, you're doing something. And I and I think that still kind of counts, know, exactly as you guys did.

You were like, right, this isn't working. Okay. Let's go and do it. And you you just have to do it, you know, I think.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, on that, there's the making, the journalism and the filming and the writing, the recording or whatever, and then there's the distribution, which frankly, when I worked at Vice, I didn't give a shit about because I didn't have to. I was an intern, I rocked up on my table at the London Vice Office or whatever, wrote my shitty little blog post and it went out on the internet. I didn't have to worry about any of that.

But now when you run your own media business, you have to figure out how the hell am I going to get this in front of people, not necessarily to be like, oh, I won't click someone views, but you do want people to see it because of course, what's the entire point? Right? Of course.

Yeah. I've always said that, like, never ever. I don't get why people are you know, I don't wanna be narcissist. Like, what are you talking about? You make this to show people.

I I don't want a niche group. I want as many people to see what I'm doing. It's journalism, you know?

You distribute on a few different platforms. We also do the same, and I'll I'll go like specific sort of one by one, but like YouTube, obviously, key for you, putting out documentaries. But you've had some stuff with YouTube, right, where maybe have they like demonetized videos or taken them down? Like, what's the deal with YouTube and you?

Yeah. So I mean, I I will say I do think YouTube is still an excellent platform, and I do I'm very glad it's there, but the censorship issues are just beyond the pale. You know? It's like North Korea. It's it's crazy.

I mean, we we had we had a clip, a short, a reel. Those shorts, they are, they're taken down because it it was had had the word hooligan in the thing, and it was deemed as promoting violence. I was like, what? Like, you know, we weren't saying this is great. Anyway, whatever.

It was a piece of journalism about hooliganism.

Exactly. Yeah. Of course. You know? And I think maybe because we we showed them in a decent light because this isn't street stuff.

This is all private in the forest. And I was like, who cares, you know? But anyway, so the problems began pretty early on with Popular Front. So the way that I edit, the way that I produce my stuff, I don't really have the wagging finger. You know?

I'm like, this is what's happening. And I I certainly would edit my stuff. Like, if we're in a riot, you're gonna see we're in a riot, and it's gonna feel fun to watch the same way it would to be in it, you know? And a lot of journalists will say, no, it's not that. It is.

You know? It absolutely is. It's not that I've been don't worry. I've been shot in a riot like with a big rubber bullet that like scrambled my innards. I'm not saying that's fun and that that same riot, someone lost their eye, you know?

But I'm saying like there is part of it that's maybe not fun, but like there is some exhilaration to it, you know. So I was like, well, I I want surely as a journalist, you want to get across that because that's a lot of why actually people are involved in riots and stuff like that, you know? It's not all political. So I was like, that that to me makes, you know, it's a no brainer. I'm gonna edit it to make it feel as close as I can for the viewer to what it feels like to be there.

And, you know, I stand by that. We always have. Some people say how it's gratuitous. Those same people are now happily posting up, you know, war footage from Ukraine with silly music everywhere. You know, suddenly it's different when they support the war, but anyway.

But yeah, I don't think it is. I think it's more honest actually. I think it's super honest. And so anyway, so immediately we were getting a bit of like, you know, this has been age restricted, this has been put behind whatever. And then we had our big kind of breakout with Plastic Defense, of course, the documentary about three d printed guns, JSTAC, and that hit like a million views like very quickly for us because we were like, I think we had 20,000 subscribers before that, if that, and it just went off.

And because of that, in some ways, we started getting eyes on us. Right? So the whole channel got demonetized. Basically, they were just like, yeah, you're not gonna make any money now. And but the irony is they didn't take the doc down or even actually age restricts plastic defense.

So I I presume they were like, well, we're making money from this. You know? So it carried on because I know to this day there's adverts on it, but I don't make any money from it. You know, we we had we got some footage from Sicario filmed on his phone and just showed what is actually a very grim representation of life in the cartel, and that did really that blew up in Mexico. Mexicans were like, this is great.

Like, this is reality. So that did really well. So my big news channel over there were kind of talking about it. I didn't even know. So they made god knows how much money off that.

We didn't make a single penny. So basically, long story short, we didn't make a single penny from any of our documentaries. Bearing in mind, you're looking at 5 to $10 loss every time, you know, which is a little, it's very little money for what we were doing, but we we do everything on a shoestring and I was editing them all. So I was like, you know what? I can accept that because every time we had a doc went out, we got more on the Patreon, we got more support, more merch.

So I was like, you know, it's not exactly like we're not getting paid for docs, but it kind of evens itself out. Then they started age restricting things. And as I'm sure you know, when they age restrict things, it's gone essentially, you know. It doesn't work the same way. It just falls off the face of the earth.

What they started doing was what I was calling like retroactively age restricting. So our last documentary, the one I was on about where I got shot in the belly, I think we were the only people that were interviewing every part of the people involved in the very intense riots that were happening in Paris, not just for May Day. It was on May Day we went, but it was like a long continuing thing for about six months. And it got age restricted about eight months after it first was published. Now that never happened to me.

Now I can't confirm that if this is true, but I was told by someone that I I know for a fact works there, that that is only done with like manually. Like someone has kind of gone, right, age restrict that. And that just for me, it was kind of the final straw and I was like, right, I'm sick of losing money on this. I was prepared to do it if people could see it, but when they can't even see it, it just falls off and they, you know, I was like, right, I'm done, you know, like I'm done with docs. So we haven't made a doc for about well, we had two go out actually.

We did one in Sednaiya Prison in Syria We're in Lebanon one, but we haven't really made a proper doc for about two or three years because of this. And to be honest, it's it just really has stopped us. Luckily, through away days, I found, unfortunately, a way to get through it. I was always very against self censoring, but, you know, I've accepted it now. So we are gonna start doing docs again.

I'm just gonna have to put put them out very heavily censored.

Yeah. That I I was gonna ask that, like, what's your response to that? And initially your response was sort of, well, fuck you, I'm gonna keep making this. Then and then it just seems the YouTube response got so aggressive that you came to the conclusion, correct me if I'm wrong, that if we want to get anything out, we have to adapt what we put out unfortunately, because like, otherwise what's gonna happen?

Exactly. And I think I was a lot younger and more idealistic at the time. I was like, I'm not going to bow to it. And it's like, you know, we live in hell. We gotta dance in hell.

You know? Like, I was like, you know, it it ultimately, it was like, that's my ego almost. Like, I I shouldn't have to. And it's like, well, the whole world has to, you know. I personally don't feel that the West is any less authoritarian than our so called enemies.

It's just done in a different way. I mean, it is, you know, physically perhaps, but especially in England, we're we're feeling it so heavily. Like, it's outrageous. Like, I went to Nando's the other day and it's it says you're not allowed more than one glass of Coke, and it literally says on the label, it's government mandated.

There's a little sign? Oh my god. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Government mandate. So I had my little, you know, one government mandated Coca Cola and, you know, people might find that funny, but the real implications behind that is so dark, you know, and we're just seeing it everywhere. And I I I was like, you know what?

It's sink or swim. So, yeah, now I tried it with the WaitAze and it's worked. You know, we actually have our own completely independent website where you can watch them uncensored, and it's it the the amount of sign ups were unbelievable, completely for free by the way, like no one's no one's paying for the AwareDay stuff, but the sign ups were like thousands, and I really think five years ago that wouldn't have happened. I feel like almost the the censorship has created a cottage industry for people that are against it. So I've I've realized that I'm gonna have to play along with it, and so we have some stuff coming out for popular front soon, and I'm just gonna have to put the uncensored stuff on our Patreon.

But we've had problems with Patreon and then you also can't put four ks on Patreon, but you know, we'll find it, we'll find a way.

Yeah, we'll get to Patreon in a second though. I was just gonna bring up the Awaydays website. So you just uploaded the docs basically to the site. Like, is there a Vimeo embedded there or does it just let you upload video just like straight into the CMS?

So we bought a great friend of ours, Elias. He's an absolute wizard man. He basically just built us built us a website and yeah, we got server space, and he even worked out a way to make it really cheap and we can still stream four k, like 25 frames per second. So, yeah, we we own it completely, right? So we have it also.

Even then, like Vimeo can't take it from us. You know, Vimeo was, it's there now. You can't censor it unless the servers get blown up or whatever, you know, it's there. So I did it that way because I just I just realized like to really know it's not getting tampered with, we have to be the baseline to upload it, you know. And certainly, me and Elias were talking about actually trying to make some kind of platform together to do that for other reporters, you know, but it would unfortunately have to be exclusive and elitist in a way because you couldn't just do it for everybody because of how expensive it would be for the server costs.

But I don't know. It's something we'll look at. But, yeah, it's it's I think, unfortunately, that was the only option for us. So ironically, when I first started doing anything with editing and films and that, it was literally when I was about 12 years old filming on my granddad's like digital camera, just me and my mates just skateboarding, like fighting, like breaking, you know, like nonsense stuff and editing it in Windows Movie Maker. And at that time, the only way to put it online or show your friends was to upload it.

I think was like Angel Fire or something like that at the time. And now ironically, in 2026, I kind of have to do the same thing again, you know, because of all the platforms have become so difficult to to not be censored on. And look, I don't make anything that outrageous. I'm not doing like hardline political commentary. I'm not talking like violence is good, like, which a lot of very big streamers are, you know, and because they're so big, they don't get tackled.

And that's the problem because we are like, we're not big, we're not small, we're kind of like there. It's like, you know, we're kind of if we do get vanished, people notice, but we're not big enough to not get vanished. You know? And and I do think that's a big problem, the favoritism within those streaming platforms and all the multimedia world.

Yeah, was gonna bring that up, like your size is great and impressive, but then you get to a certain point where it almost works against you because you're not obviously a CNN or something where you can appeal and have contacts in YouTube or whatever, and you're not a rando who like nobody's gonna pay attention to. You're in that middle ground where shit, we're actually gonna get like the worst parts of the platforms potentially.

Yeah. Because if if you do get taken down, you need your channel back. So say you have like five subs, you go, whatever, man. Like, I'll just start another one. You can't do that if you you know, I think we got nearly 200,000 subs on on on our popular front YouTube, 35,000 on away days, I think 12 on my own.

I can't just go, oh, I'll start again. You know? It's just not gonna happen. You know? That that's a long time to build that stuff up.

And, you know, we're not channel five. We're not Hassan Paika. We're not, you know, whatever the the right wing equivalent is. Yeah, So, we're in a weird space where we can't just start again, but we also then can't really get the, you know, get the attention. Luckily, we we've we've been, you know, decent enough and worked with enough people that do have that level.

Neither of those two actually helped us. But Tommy g, for example, randomly, like, helped us get our monetization issues fixed through YouTube. And that is really messed up that the way we have to get these problems fixed is to appeal to bigger creators that can say, hey. We'll help you out. And, god, I I appreciate them so much, you know, like big shout out to them.

Not the ones that completely ignored us after we helped them, but the ones that did. And it's just like that this is absurd. You know? This really is absurd. And, man, I I thought we were jumping through hoops at the start.

Like, it's so bad now and and it's it's very difficult. And now you've got like the new digital ID and VPNs and all these issues now. What's gonna happen? I don't know. You know, I'm quite worried about that.

And we have viewers all over the world. We have viewers in like, you know, restricted parts of the world that they have to get their VPN just to watch our docs. If we're gonna be are we gonna be taken off for for like, you know, like having a anti Israel stance or an anti Russia stance? You know? Who knows?

I mean, I didn't think we'd have facial recognition without anybody voting for it, but here we are. So it's little bit of a worry, you know, and I just don't know how to tackle it, but we do keep finding ways to do it. But it's really, as you know, it's an extra job on top of your job.

It becomes like more than 50% sometimes.

Way more, way more.

Yeah, Oh, my job is now I have to figure out distribution rather than making journalism. Sometimes when I'm doing that and I'm focused more, and I know I've learned to enjoy the business part because I think if I didn't learn to do that, I mean, I'd be depressed, right? Like I've learned to embrace and I actually do genuinely enjoy it now. But there's a limit to like, man, I just want

to do some journalism. I think everybody at four zero

four feels that as well. You mentioned Patreon. What happened with them then? Because this is now not just about the distribution, this is fucking with your money.

Yeah. So I mean, I don't wanna go too hard at Patreon because they have been good to us, but they have also been bad to us in a sense where like all of a sudden we'll get our all of our funds frozen. Right? So this happened very recently. They were just like, hey, we need to check out your funds.

Well, actually, they didn't. Firstly, there was nothing. There was just nothing that we couldn't get the money. I you know, out it comes. And I, you know, I have like people relying on me now on our team.

It's not just me at all. So I gotta pay people now. Like, someone you know, one of our guys is in Romania, you know, in a very impoverished area and relies you know, he does great work for us. He's amazing, but, you know, there's no industry for him, what he's good at, where he is. So he's pretty much reliant on us.

And I'm just terrified. I'm like, oh my god. Like, you know, so it was fine. I I paid out my own money and whatever, but it's one of these ones where all of a sudden your your money just goes and it just vanished into the ether. Like, it was nowhere.

There it didn't come through. There was no message. There was nothing. So I withdraw my money and it vanishes. And there's just I mean, to this day, there is still no live chat on Patreon, right, for help.

It's just insufferable. The back end, I mean, I'm sure you've seen it. It's a disaster. I'll be honest. Every new update, it's buggy.

It's confusing. It's like, oh, you need help with this? Yeah, click it. Oh, here's 50 articles, you know, and it's just like this is madness. And long story short, eventually after I think two weeks and me just sending constant emails, luckily someone I know who, you know, has money offered to give us like lawyers for free if it never came back, and I was like, thank God.

And you know, I started, you know, emailing them like, look, we're gonna have to do this illegal thing. And all of a sudden, it just all came back and there was nothing. And eventually, all the retroactive emails come through, what's the problem? And it's like, man, this is not good. You know, this really is not good.

And it's not like, oh, big, poor me with my independent journalism. No, it's just wrong. Like, you know, like if you're doing this independently or whatever, you shouldn't be accepting one day's pay late, you know? If you don't get paid in a normal job, you don't come back to work the next day or the next day.

Well, Vice had an issue paying freelancers, but, you know, as do a bunch of outlets, but yes.

Yeah. When I first started working there, I never forget I was paid seventy eight weeks late in a row.

But yes, you're right. With a salary, you don't just rock up the next day. You're like, what the hell? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, or if and if you go to your manager and they just don't tell you anything and you're just silent, you'd be like, right, I'm out, you know, like and I've always said this freelancers, unfortunately, we can't live like this, but we, I mean, you know, we're independent, we're essentially freelance on a way. And it's like freelancers like you shouldn't be paid one minute late ever, not once. Once is unacceptable. One minute late is unacceptable. I don't care.

It's not fair because the people at the top are not getting paid late, you know what I'm saying, ever. And and, know, it wasn't like Patreon struggling. Was for some reason we got hit with this thing and for whatever reason, they don't have the adequate customer, you know, service to help you. And I just think that's it's just I don't know, man. I think it's become almost acceptable now.

Noticed it with YouTube. Good luck speaking to anyone at YouTube, you know. It's so difficult, you know. There's this thing now where they just expect like, yeah, we don't really have to get back to you. We have no obligation.

You know, you're just talking to an AI chatbot, an email, like nobody helps, and it's just beyond it's so bad. Think the bare minimum you should at least be like, well, the people that literally make us money, you know, that they take the percentage off, we should probably get back to them if everything goes wrong, you know? Ironically, the only people that have ever got back to us is Twitter, like in a timely fashion and really tried to help us. And we had a very minor issues with them.

Like like shadow banning or or what was it? We

got banned once. Like, randomly, I got banned. Me and this lad were like having a joke, and I said, yeah, come and meet me after school and we'll have a fight. You know, like we're messing around like banter. And I got banned for that.

And I was like, what the hell? And, you know, eventually they were like, oh, we're so sorry. Like, we sorted out. I was like, oh, thanks. A guy from Bellingcat actually helped me, like, you know, put a lot of tweets out and that was great.

Nick, he's brilliant. But, yeah, it was, it's just crazy now that you kind of you can just make all these companies money and make the you make the platforms what they are, right, without which user, Patreon is nothing, and they just have no obligation to get back to you, you know? I'm sure it's illegal part of the time. I'm sure there's like trade in standard laws where you have to get back to people in timely manners, but yeah, it's just madness. And I think that's just it's gonna get worse and worse with AI, you know?

Like half the time you now just end up talking to a chatbot and then it's like, here's a link to the problem that isn't the one you told me about. And yeah, I just pray it doesn't happen again. It's constantly on eggshells, you know, constantly worried that the rug is gonna get pulled at any moment.

Yeah. That's definitely the feeling. And I mean, just on the AI thing, I mean, Jason just reported that, you know, the AI is so bad for the customer support things that hackers can then use it to take over people's accounts because they just trick the AI.

So this on Instagram. Yeah. Instagram the other day, everybody's losing their accounts. Like, it's crazy.

So I think just my last question is like, as you as an independent journalist, what sort of tools or platforms would you want? Like, what would you want there to exist for you to better do your job? Is it just improvements to the current ones? Is it something different? Like, what would you want?

Yeah. I mean, basically the ones we have and just the people that own them and run them stop being children, you know, like it's infantilization. You know, we we can't post up a war report without blurring certain things because and I'm not talking pure gore. I'm not even, like, you know, like, we have to blur the end of like a gunfire in one. Yeah.

You know?

Like,

this nonsense infantilization, that has to stop. It won't stop because I understand that the only real I mean, people say they care about people and it's because of their it's nothing to do with that. It's advertising. Right? But advertising is infantilized.

Advertising needs to grow up. I mean, go to the nineties. When I started Away Days, I was doing loads of research into like my favorite period of TV, like mid two thousands. The the adverts were absolutely wild and rightly so because we're adults. You You know what I mean?

Oh, but someone might see it and then, you know, they might feel a certain way, so what? That's part of being an adult. And I I don't even mean it in this like, anti woke thing. That's all dead. I don't mean that.

Who cares? I'm just saying like, stop treating everybody like a child. No one asked for this. Nobody wants it. And the constant pearl clutching is literally leading to censorship.

There's no other reason this is all getting censored other than it helps these companies make money due to the sensitivities of advertising. Do you think the CEO of YouTube cares what goes out? If he did, he would stop like AI slop. He would stop the absolute trash of like Mr. Beast and that because it's scrambling children's brains.

He doesn't care. He cares about the bottom line, and that's fine. But unfortunately, treating everything like a nanny state has led to really serious censorship. And, well, it depends who you are. Like, for example, if you're Hassan Pika or the other side, Tim Pool, too degenerates in my opinion, you can make a load of money, you can say whatever you want, you can incite violence, and you can just still make the money because it makes them a lot of money.

Right? But if you're midway as most people are, you're kind of at the mercy of them, you know, some random AI or some random guy deciding if it's it's worth them unbanning you because it will make the money or not or it will keep the advertisers happy. And all I want is the same platforms to just chill out basically. You know, like I would love a I would love a anti censorship kind of YouTube alternative, but the pure amount of server space, it's just never gonna happen, you know? Like, I mean, you got Rumble, but again, when you when you when you run on like no censorship, it just becomes right wing crap.

Well, it becomes something else anyway, right? Yeah. Like like Rumble is like a right wing cesspool because they've taken that idea, but they've kind of done it in the other direction, right? So it's like, no, that's not what we mean.

It's annoying. I think what we need to do is just go look, this is a platform, we're gonna be adults and that's it. You know? No stuff feels like that, you know? And it's just like, think stop it.

But honestly, other than that, it's fine. I just think they need to leave the tools alone a little bit and fix the back end on Patreon because it's chaos.

Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I'll leave it there, Jake. Thank you so much for joining us. People listening, check out popular front of the way days.

I'll put the links in the show notes, but thank you so much, Jake. Really, really appreciate it.

Cheers, mate. Appreciate it. See you in a bit.

As a reminder, four zero

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