The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:05

Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist family company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.c0, 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.c0.

Joseph: 00:31

I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are the 404 Media cofounders, Sam Cole.

Sam: 00:35

Hello.

Joseph: 00:37

Emmanuel Mayberg. Hey. What's up? And Jason Kebler.

Jason: 00:41

Hello. Hello. If you're watching this video on YouTube, I'm wearing a knockoff 4 4 media horse t shirt. Please don't pirate our shirts. This is for an article in the future.

Jason: 00:52

However, our merch is now in stock. I'm shipping it actively, so you can check that out on our website.

Joseph: 01:00

You're talking about the real merch is in stock as in we have new designs we mentioned, last year. People will start getting them soon as you say has arrived. But the shirt you're wearing is well, whenever you tweet a t shirt design, all of those bots jump in and it's like, oh my god. Here's the here's the here's the the designer copied or whatever. You said you're gonna write about that.

Joseph: 01:23

So I'll leave it there. But, hey, it's a good shirt. You know, it it seems so.

Jason: 01:27

Yeah. It's pirated though. Don't do it. Don't do it.

Joseph: 01:30

Yeah. Please just get the actual merch from us that's actually good. Happy New Year to all of our listeners. This is the first real sort of new podcast of the year. It has been an exceptionally busy day.

Joseph: 01:45

A location data company was hacked. Jason did a bunch of stuff, on meta. Emmanuel did stuff about AI and minions. Honestly, there's almost too much to talk about. So maybe we'll even revisit some of those stories in future episodes.

Joseph: 02:01

But let's start with some of those meta stories. And, Jason, this is one you wrote just, basically a a minute ago. Facebook deletes internal employee criticism of new board member, Dana White. So what's this new appointment?

Jason: 02:21

Yeah. It's been a really, really busy day, busy week for Meta and controversies and Mark Zuckerberg, etcetera, etcetera. But basically, on Monday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Dana White, who is the president of UFC and also appeared at the Republican National, Convention with Donald Trump, would become a board member of Meta alongside folks also who like, the CEO Ferrari is gonna be on the board for some reason.

Joseph: 02:55

I didn't know that.

Jason: 02:56

Yeah. Reasons reasons that I couldn't possibly explain to you nor will I try. But Dana White is a very controversial figure because, one, he slapped his wife at a nightclub on video, on New Year's Eve 2023, and was not really punished for it in any way, shape, or form. You know, he's very much aligned with Donald Trump. Joel Kaplan also is, like, was promoted to be head of global policy.

Jason: 03:30

Nick Clegg is out. And if those words mean anything to you, then your your brain is slightly poisoned. But, basically, they got rid of this guy who I thought was quite bad. Nick Clegg was oversaw, like, some really bad policies at Meta over the years and replaced him with someone who seemingly is going to be even worse. Joel Kaplan was in the George w Bush White House.

Jason: 03:57

And all this sort of coincides with Mark Zuckerberg announcing that they are going to do a return to, quote, free expression. And what free expression in Mark Zuckerberg's, world means, no more fact checking for 1. You will be allowed to essentially do hate speech against gay and trans people more or less, like, explicitly is going to be allowed now on meta platforms. They're gonna delete a lot less content in general, and they're gonna show more political content, which is really interesting considering the New York Times did a gigantic story literally, like, 3 months ago saying Mark Zuckerberg is done with politics. Since then, he's gone to Mar a Lago.

Jason: 04:48

He's donated $1,000,000 to Donald Trump, and now they're sort of explicitly turning to this right wing ish, like, world. And I know that's a lot of setup, but, essentially, like, we got leaked internal communications, comments from all of these announcements that they were doing where pretty much any criticism of Dana White of this decision was being deleted by this internal these, like, internal content moderators, which are essentially, like, an arm of Facebook HR.

Joseph: 05:26

Where where is this conversation taking place? It's like an internal message board basically inside Facebook just so people can visualize it.

Jason: 05:33

Yeah. It looks exactly like Facebook. Like, it's a clone of Facebook, but only Facebook employees can see it. And so Mark Zuckerberg does a post there, and then there's a bunch of comments beneath the post. And, sort of, like, beneath the post announcing Dana White, there were comments from people who are employees of Facebook saying things like, quote, kind of disheartening to see people in the comments celebrating a man who is on video assaulting his wife, and another who was recently convicted of rape, which was, referring to Conor McGregor, who's like a a really big UFC fighter who was forced to pay $250,000 by a a court, after being accused of rape.

Jason: 06:18

Another person said, we have completely lost the plot. And then another person said, quote, I can kind of excuse individuals for being unaware, but Meta surely did their due diligence on White and concluded that what he did is fine. I feel like I'm on another planet. All of these posts were deleted.

Joseph: 06:37

Right. That's what I was that's what I was gonna get to. Because because it's not it's not just people are making these comments, these employees, and they're saying internally, look. We're not happy with this person being appointed to the board. That's already an interesting and important story and one that will be worth covering.

Joseph: 06:56

You know, it shows discontent inside, one of the most important tech companies even if it's relevant somewhat is kinda going off the rails. And I think we'll get into that with some of the AI stuff as well. But that would already be a story. But as you say, there's all of this context around, meta shifting to the right or even to zoom out even further. They're going from like a hands on approach to basically a hands off approach, where they're saying, I don't know.

Joseph: 07:25

Do whatever you want. Community notes will sort it out. Blah blah blah. We're not gonna fact check stuff. While Zuckerberg is saying all that, these comments by employees are being moderated and are being censored.

Joseph: 07:38

So what's the deal with them being deleted? Why why are they being deleted?

Jason: 07:42

Yeah. So Facebook has the this team called the internal community relations team, which is essentially, like, content moderators for what you say to other people within Facebook, like, what Facebook employees say to each other. And they, have to abide by these rules called the community engagement expectations, which are, like, rules for how you talk to your coworkers. And, basically, like, a member of that HR team comes in and says, hey. Like, we've deleted a lot of, a lot of stuff.

Jason: 08:17

And the thing that the the HR team says essentially is, you know, these violated the CEE, which is the community engagement expectations. And they're they said, quote, we need to keep in mind that the CEE applies to how we communicate with and about members of our community, including members of our board. Insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or board members is not aligned with the CEE. So But but you can say are, like, very respectful, like, very respectful, just like, hey. Like, why did we appoint someone who slaps his wife to our board?

Jason: 08:56

Like, why are we doing these sorts of things? They were, like, very run of the mill criticisms, and these were getting deleted and saying, you know, that they didn't apply to this they didn't follow the CEE, like, these internal rules. And so there's been people beefing. And then meanwhile, publicly, Mark Zuckerberg is saying, like, we're rededicating ourselves to free speech. We're gonna moderate less.

Jason: 09:22

So rules for the public are gone. Internal rules when they, like, cause problems for Facebook or when they cause any sort of, like, strife because these decisions are very unpopular within the company. I don't know. It's just like it's a mess.

Joseph: 09:39

So in Meta, you can't insult or even mildly criticize a new board member, but you can say that gay or trans people are mentally unwell. And, like, that's literally in the policy now. Right? Like, we didn't write this. There was a Wired piece that just came out and, you sent it to me, Jason, as well.

Joseph: 10:01

But just very, very briefly, what's that? In that, along with this announcement from Zuckerberg, there's also changes to the actual code of con conduct. And it's something along the lines of, well, you know, this is part of the national conversation now in America, so you should be allowed to say that trans or gay people have mental health issues. Is that basically the sum of it?

Jason: 10:21

Yeah. I mean, Zuckerberg recorded a video, like, explaining these, sort of, like, wearing a giant chain and with his new look saying that, they're trying to simplify our content policies and remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse. And so what this means in practice, which was reported by Wired as you said, there's been specific changes to Facebook's community guidelines, which are the internal the outward facing rules for using meta platforms, so Instagram and Facebook primarily and threads. And now you can essentially do what you just said. You can call gay people mentally ill, which is something that you, like, could not do previously on meta platforms.

Jason: 11:09

It sounds like sounds like politics is out of out of Facebook to me for sure.

Joseph: 11:15

Yeah. It's interesting how they say out you know, immigration and gender and that the conversation of that has changed sort of in the mainstream. Yeah. Because Trump got a slight, you know, a slight percentage point over or whatever. It's just the the point is that these companies will shift with different administrations.

Joseph: 11:35

And this time, it's been basically mask off. And that it's not just, sort of going along with the administration, but, like, actively sort of pandering to it. So you wrote this other message story that I think we'll just talk about briefly. And this sort of happened over the holiday break. But it's called I think it was over the holiday break.

Joseph: 12:00

Meta's AI profiles are indistinguishable from terrible spam that took over Facebook. It's a great headline. What are these or were these AI profiles exactly?

Jason: 12:15

Yeah. So in September 2023, Meta announced that it was going to have these AI profiles where they were, quote, unquote, like, people, like, profiles on Meta, but the people were not real. They were AI generated. All the content that they made was AI generated, and you could also chat with these AI generated people. And when they announced it, there were 28 of them, and 15 of them were based on celebrities.

Jason: 12:43

The the most memorable one to me is that Snoop Dogg was a dungeon master, like, a a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master, and you could, like, talk to Snoop Dogg about Dungeons and Dragons. Mister Beast also had one. There was, like, a a handful of other ones. And they announced this, and this was a big deal for a moment, and then no one used them at all. And Facebook well, Meta deleted all of the profiles belonging to celebrities.

Jason: 13:11

So of the 28th, they delete 15 celebrity focused ones, presumably because they didn't wanna, like, keep paying the celebrities because they were on

Joseph: 13:19

top of their likeness or whatever.

Jason: 13:21

Yeah. It just, like, wasn't working. But they left up they left up 13 other profiles that were not based on real people that were just, like, these, I don't know, like, themed stereotypes of people. So there was Carter, who was a Latino relationship coach. There was Izzy, who was, like, an independent singer songwriter.

Jason: 13:47

There was Alvin, the alien, who was like a blue alien that talked about how earth was weird weird. And they were all, like, using Metas imagined by Meta AI to post images that were, like, engagement bait more or less. And they did

Joseph: 14:06

this first they were real as if they were real users. Like, oh, hey. I'm the alien. Here's my Facebook profile, and I'm posting funny little pictures. Like like, obviously, they're not misrepresenting themselves.

Joseph: 14:16

Like, they are saying they're they're AI, but they're trying to act like a normal user,

Jason: 14:21

basically. So, like, Izzy, for example, the singer songwriter posted an image of a concert, like an AI generated image of a concert and said, still reeling from last week's show. What's your favorite show you've ever seen? Like, that's the type of thing that that they were posting. So these were, like, launched in September 2023.

Jason: 14:43

They existed for a few months, and then they all stopped posting. Then a lot of time passes. No one really talks about it. None of these, profiles were, like, popular in any way. A lot of the posts had, like, 6 likes, 2 comments, things like that.

Jason: 15:01

And then over Christmas, the Financial Times does an interview with this meta executive named Connor Hayes who tells the financial times that meta is going to allow people to create their own AI profiles, meaning you'll be able to, like, create an AI profile, like a create a character type thing, and then set it up with its own Instagram profile or its own Facebook profile and let it loose on the world more or less, which is very similar to other products like, character AI and and some that Sam have written about. This interview gets a lot of attention. People get very mad about it because it's a dumb idea first of all. And, like, I think the consciousness around the types of, like, AI that Meta is shoving down people's throats is is a lot more well understood now. But in the aftermath of that, people find these old AI profiles that Meta set up.

Jason: 16:03

And there were 2 in particular that were very ridiculous. One was Liv, who was, quote, a black queer mama, who is just, like, offensive on its face because she's a caricature of diversity at a company that notoriously doesn't have a lot of diversity.

Joseph: 16:27

Yeah. They bundled them all they bundled all the diversity into 1 AI, and, like, they thought that would be, like, good enough. And then, I mean, you'll get to it, but, like, who knows if that was even trained on days that they came from diverse people? Whatever. Yeah.

Jason: 16:38

Who knows? Just yeah. But then, like, you look through Liv's posts or people start looking through Liv's posts and, like, there's one about it's, quote, kicking off the New Year in service of our community. Leading this season's coat drive was an honor, especially because it provided my little ones a tangible example for helping others. And then the AI generated image is of, like, coats being donated to to homeless people.

Jason: 17:02

And it's just like, this didn't happen. Like, you didn't donate coats to homeless people. Like, it's very offensive. And then there's another one about, you know, her hanging out with her daughters at our house, and it's a slideshow of 3 images. And in the first image, the children are black.

Jason: 17:22

In the second image, the children are much darker black. Like, they're definitely different children with a different skin tone. And then in the 3rd image, the children are white, just like straight up white. And they're different children in each image, and their hands are fucked up. Their faces are fucked up.

Jason: 17:40

They're obviously AI generated, and it's just like, what what are we doing here? Like, this is crazy.

Joseph: 17:46

So it's just bad. It's just it's not it's not even offensive for what it's doing. It's also just really shit at what it's doing as well.

Jason: 17:54

Yeah. All of the above. And so people get really mad that this sort of, like, was happening and thought that this was, like, like, announcing. And so I wrote a story kind of explaining, like, actually, these profiles are old. Still bad that Facebook tried this and that seemingly there's more to come even though this was a horrible failure and no one liked it.

Jason: 18:20

And then people pointed out that you couldn't actually block these AIs. And so Meta then goes and, like, deletes all of them. So they're all gone now. And there's been a lot of people who, like, been talking to these AI characters as in, like, chatting with them and trying to expose more about how they were trained or, you know, whatever, like, interviewing them. I don't wanna talk too much about that because these are, like, hallucinations.

Jason: 18:54

These are not you cannot take what these things are saying seriously. But it's very obvious that these are, like, deeply broken tools that were just sort of, like, rolled out onto the platform, said a bunch of, like, really caricatured stereotypical stuff, and, yeah, big mess. Big, big mess.

Joseph: 19:18

Yeah. So I mean, you say they kind of haphazardly just rolled out. And I think sort of the main question, just before I ask about sort of the other spam you that you've covered. But what does this show us about Meta, the company? They have this, where they're they're rolling this out, kind of like stepping on a rake multiple times as they're doing it.

Joseph: 19:40

They have this other story you did that we don't need to get into, but basically where Instagram was showing a user's own face back at them in some sort of AI experiment. We had Meta and and the metaverse, obviously, and that was a gigantic flop. Like, what the fuck is Meta doing? Like, what what does this show us about this company? Is it just flailing around trying to figure out what to do?

Joseph: 20:05

Or

Jason: 20:06

Yeah. I mean, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg has any idea what he's doing, to be totally honest. It's like he had the he had the one great idea with Facebook. They bought a bunch of other companies. They're desperately trying to find the next big thing with the metaverse and then now with AI, and it's not working really.

Jason: 20:26

Like, I it doesn't seem like users want this. But at the same time, the company is so large and so powerful that it's able to experiment on with these, like, really fucked up AI things, change its algorithm to promote AI, you know, get rid of various content moderation rules, change them all the time. And people are sort of limited in what they can do to fight back because a lot of people feel like they have to be on these platforms because their friends are there because they they feel like locked in. Like, that's kind of my takeaway, but I actually am curious what Emmanuel and Sam think is going on here because it's it's, like, all I've been thinking about for the last several months. And it's just to me, it seems like a super messy company that is just so powerful that it can do these things, but I I do wonder if at some point there'll be an actual backlash.

Sam: 21:28

I mean, just the fact that they have to have a moderation team for their own internal employees is crazy to me. That just shows how fucking huge this company is, and how many different moving parts of it there are. Like, we know this. Like, obviously, you can see the numbers everywhere. But just in practice, that's how do you even get, like, one good idea launched in an environment like that where you're collaborating with, like, thousands of other people potentially?

Sam: 22:01

I don't know. It sounds like a nightmare. It's also it's hard to imagine, like, Facebook and this is me just talking as someone who's, like, not a Facebook reporter. Like, it's there are much further people doing this, but, like, it's hard to imagine Facebook being as big as it is, having the issues of, like, growth pressure, which I assume is what this is. Like, it's got to be just like investor pressure and the need to grow in order to stay alive and going.

Sam: 22:28

They have to keep growing and they have to or growing, you know, quote, unquote growing. Like, they have to keep launching new bullshit and see what works. And then if stuff doesn't work, they just trash it and move on, which I think of as a problem of, like, startups or, like, new, you know, accelerator companies or something. It's not like Facebook's been around for, what, like, 15, 20 years or something. So how do they still have that problem is crazy to me.

Sam: 22:55

I don't know.

Emanuel: 22:56

I think, a couple of years ago, they stopped reporting monthly active users or one of those metrics because that's what companies do when that number slows down. But probably for advertisers, they keep having to juice the numbers, and I think that's just, like, ultimately what is going on. It seems like it is inevitable that at some point it will collapse because advertisers will figure out that all the engagement around their ads is bots talking to bots. But, like, that seems to me pretty clearly what is going on. I feel like we've mentioned it a couple of times, and we'll probably keep talking about it until either I don't know.

Emanuel: 23:37

That just becomes the new normal or it blows up in their face. But it seems across the board that is that is what they're doing with all of these AI features.

Joseph: 23:47

I just can't get over the low quality of it. And just very briefly to touch on the headline, it says this stuff is in indistinguishable from terrible spam that took over Facebook. That's referring to the stuff that Jason's like led everybody's coverage on around, you know, shrimp Jesus, and there's an artist uploads this thing, then AI rips it off and posts it, blah blah blah, and spamming all over the place. And people are commenting on it sometimes if it's as if it's real, sometimes the comments are bots, blah blah blah blah blah. To be honest, the spam sounds like it's better than some of these meta AI profiles, which, are kind of inconsistent, and they can't even have the children, you know, remaining identifiable from photo to photo.

Joseph: 24:32

What do you make of that just?

Jason: 24:33

The the spam is better. The spam that people are making is more engaging, and people are engaging. It's, like, shows in the numbers. It's more successful. What I think is happening is that Facebook well, Meta has been trying to incentivize people to post on its platforms, and I think that the overall appetite Facebook's goal is to have people on its site forever and for there to be an endless stream of new content and for people to engage with that content endlessly.

Jason: 25:09

And even though you have literally billions of people posting on Instagram and Facebook, there is you're gonna run out of content at some point for specific niches. And what Facebook has learned over the years is that if you can hyper target ads to people based on their interest, their behavior, blah blah blah, that is a lot more effective for advertisers, and therefore, you can charge more money and more people are gonna advertise, so on and so forth. And so what I think they're banking on is that they will be able to create, like, an endless supply of hyper specific, artificially intelligent generated content that will be hyper, hyper specific to each individual person eventually, and that it can then sell ads that are really, really well targeted based on that behavior. And that and that that is a more, like, sustainable model for endless content creation than it is, like, relying on user generated content forever. Like, that is where I that's what I think their big bet is.

Jason: 26:20

I don't think it's gonna work, but that is, like, why I think they're leaning into this so so hard.

Joseph: 26:26

I mean, I don't know, but it sounds like you hit the nail on the head. So we'll we'll leave that there, and we'll we'll come back to Mesa when it continues to burn to the ground. We'll be right back, and we will talk about a story from Sam, which, you know, has been several stories leading up to this point, about how Pornhub is now basically blocked in the majority of the US, south. We'll be right back after this. Alright.

Joseph: 27:03

And we are back. Sam, as mentioned, this is one you wrote. The headline is Pornhub is now blocked in almost all of the US South. So when did this come into effect? December 31st, January 1st?

Joseph: 27:16

Like, when did this become reality?

Sam: 27:19

Yeah. So it's been, like you said, a long time coming. It's been something that's been in process for, oh, I wanna say, 2 years now, almost 2 years, where these states are kind of slowly we're seeing this creep of age verification laws being passed and enacted in all these states, mostly in the South, also some in the Midwest. And I can list the states in a second, but this is news now because 3 more states, passed age revocation laws as of or they passed them, but then they're they're enacted as of January 1st. Although, I will say, and this isn't in the blog, which I should probably update the blog, Tennessee, a judge in Tennessee blocked this the age verification law in that state as of January 1st.

Sam: 28:09

So you can still get to Pornhub in Tennessee. God bless. But, a couple other states joined the list. So it was Florida and South Carolina, were the other 2. And that kind of you know, if you look at a map and I I made a little map.

Sam: 28:27

I made a map just on a on a website on a website called mapchart.net.

Jason: 28:33

Did the map roll? The map the map roll is on roll.

Sam: 28:36

Yeah. It felt very, I don't know, like, color by numbers. But

Joseph: 28:41

We're doing data journalism. Yeah.

Sam: 28:43

Yeah. That's the vibe. But yeah. So if you look at this on a map, it's like, holy shit. Like, it's all of this almost all of the South and then a huge chunk of the the Midwest and, you know, it's just it's like a really stunning thing to look at because it's like it's most of the states at this point.

Sam: 29:01

So or it's not most of the states, but it's like this huge chunk of the United States. So, yeah. Just shall I just list the Yeah. How's that? 17 states?

Joseph: 29:13

Yeah. And sorry that if it's boring to listen to, but I think it's worth hearing that because

Jason: 29:17

I have

Joseph: 29:18

cameras yeah. You you do that, and then I have a question about why those states here.

Sam: 29:21

Okay. So it's Pornhub is right now, as of January 1st, Pornhub is blocked in Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi, Texas, Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, and South Carolina. And in Georgia, there is a bill that has passed and is set to go into effect in July, which we can assume, the same effect will happen. Pornhub and all of its sister sites will be blocked or what they will pull out of the site state. And then, in Louisiana, which kicked all this off, they passed a law in 2022 where, it became like the blueprint.

Sam: 30:04

But there, Louisiana actually has, an ID like, a digital ID. Like, it's called LA Wallet or something, but it's, this digital ID verification that's run by the state. So Pornhub is using that on its network of sites, or Alo, which is the company that owns Pornhub, is using that on its network of sites, to verify age because it's more secure. They don't have to roll their own age verification, things like that.

Joseph: 30:32

So Pornhub is in Louisiana, but you have to jump through those age verification hoops. Whereas in other states, Pornhub is like, we're not even gonna engage because we have to build this age verification system. Yeah. Is that yeah. Yep.

Joseph: 30:44

Okay. Very, very pretty stupid question. Why is it these states? You know? Like, why is there a trend there?

Sam: 30:54

I mean, so the trend is that like, if I mean, like, obviously, if we're talking about, like, the South and the Midwest, we're talking about a lot of red states. Virginia is not a red state, so we can it's, like, not a perfect analogy.

Joseph: 31:10

Right.

Sam: 31:10

But, you know, it's and, you know, at the same time, it's like Arizona blocked, this law from going into effect very strongly, and that's a red state, and Tennessee, obviously. So it's not a perfect one to 1 kinda comparison, but, what we're seeing is the people who are pushing these laws to pass are always or almost always conservative politicians who, are equating porn with harmful material. It's like these are the same thing in the rhetoric that they're using. So, it's not just we wanna keep kids from accessing porn until they're old enough and then they can, you know that then they're adults and they can do what they want. It's that porn is harmful as a product, as content, and it's bad for society.

Sam: 32:00

And that's kind of the, that's the messaging that they're using, and they're starting with, well, porn shouldn't be accessed by anyone without showing an ID. And they use this analogy that's like, well, you you have to show an ID to buy cigarettes and alcohol. So how's the say how is this not the same thing? And it's a totally totally different thing from showing a card physically to someone in person, than it is uploading all of your personal information that's very sensitive to potentially some kind of database or, you know, it's like it's a it opens up the sites themselves to a whole lot of security issues, and, it's just it's a totally different beast online than it is in person. So

Joseph: 32:43

I mean, yeah, I I covered that site, autotix or what however it is. They have a really, really weird written name, a u one zero t I x. Anyway,

Sam: 32:56

were they I'm sure.

Joseph: 32:57

Were an ident yes. An identity verification provider for TikTok, and I think Uber, and that sort of thing. And, you know, they had exposed credentials and research managed to get in and find a bunch of IDs. So you're right in there. There's a distinct difference between quickly flashing ID to somebody in a store to be able to buy beer or whatever, to uploading an identifier which is stored on the server somewhere, which is then potentially, depending on how it's implemented, links to what you're viewing or something like that.

Joseph: 33:27

I mean, I'm sure they they could design in a way where it's not actually linked to the viewing, but, you know, it's still not, a nice feeling. And, obviously, people don't wanna do that. And Sam will ask you about VPNs in a second, but, Emmanuel, because you look a lot of like, you know, when people go and they find pretty horrible stuff on Telegram or they go down rabbit holes and that sort of thing, and you look at a lot of these sites as well along with Sam, we have spoken about it before, but just to hear hear your thoughts on it. What happens, do you think, to at least some people when they can't access, Pornhub? What are some of the sites that they may end up on?

Emanuel: 34:07

Yeah. It's funny because, I listen to a lot of podcasts of comedians, a lot of whom moved to Texas to be near their, King Joe Rogan. And it's funny to hear them all talk about how they're blocked in from viewing Pornhub in Texas. So, like, one Do they talk about that? They do.

Emanuel: 34:28

Yeah. They joke about it. And, like, the the the the not very harmful, result is that people just go to other very popular similar sites, that are not getting picked on as much by these laws because people don't know about them. They don't have the same brand recognition as Pornhub and that's not so bad. But then as we've said before, because of Pornhub's brand recognition, because we've done a lot of reporting on it, it's like a pretty cleaned up site at this point after like much turmoil, after the site frankly has done a lot of damage to a lot of people.

Emanuel: 35:06

But now it's pretty good. But a lot of the alternatives are not, you know, have have not been scrutinized as as much and have a lot of, like, very harmful content on it whether you're going to Telegram or sites that are dedicated to nonconsensual porn or just like any other, you know, tube site that's, like, fast and loose with with the rules and is hosted in a different country where, they're not worried about what, like, local law says in Texas. So people are just being exposed to worse sites with worse content, as a result of these of these changes.

Joseph: 35:46

So it's basically a harm reduction argument in a way whereas in the same way, like, you know, you don't wanna or you can't tell people to stop doing x y z, be that drugs or something else. You just create the environment where they're less likely to hurt themselves. You can't really stop people wanting to watch pornography in a moderate amount or whatever. So why not allow them to view it on a site where there is moderation and they have removed nonconsensual pornography and all that sort of thing. And to be clear, like, Pornhub was really bad.

Joseph: 36:18

It was really, really bad. And then, Manuel and Sam did a ton of reporting on how there was basically a sex well, there was literally a sex trafficking ring on Pornhub, and then there were all these changes. So it's not like Pornhub was magically this, heavily and well moderated place. That's only come after years of of people getting very, very hurt and then lots of reporting and investigations. But some people will some people will be in Texas or one of these other states or whatever, and they will continue to access Pornhub, but they'll probably use a VPN, you know, which, of course, routes your traffic through another country or another state.

Joseph: 36:57

Sam, have you seen anything specifically come this January 1st sort of deadline where now the majority of the South Pornhub is is blocked in? Have you seen, like, a spike in VPNs or anything like that? I know it's sometimes hard to tell.

Sam: 37:12

Yeah. I mean, it's hard to tell for sure. Pornhub themselves told me that they when I mean, you can see this happen all the time from Google Trends where, suddenly because your Google Trends breaks it down by, states and location, things like that country even. But, you can see searches for VPNs go up when these laws go into effect, which is just, like, darkly funny. People are immediately like, what's a VPN?

Sam: 37:38

But yeah. And there's always a spike when these when these laws are enacted. But Pornhub said that they they could see from their end and, you know, I like, I have no way of really checking this, but, they told me that, they could see that, traffic was moving from their site. And then I assume they're using a site like SimilarWeb or something like that to check this, but, they could see where people are going traffic was going down on their site and going up on other sites that are not, like, Emmanuel mentioned that are not moderated. So people are just jumping to the next thing.

Sam: 38:14

But with VPNs, yeah, it's like any teenager knows how to use a VPN at this point. It's not, like, some elaborate hacking, like, thing that I think people think it is. Like, it's just an app that you can install on your computer or your phone.

Emanuel: 38:31

Commonly widely advertised everywhere also. Yeah.

Sam: 38:34

Yeah. Definitely. And advertise a lot of the time as something that you can use, for porn specifically a lot of the times. But, yeah, VPNs are VPN advertisers are everywhere. Yeah.

Sam: 38:45

They're definitely I mean, people just get around it. Like, it doesn't it doesn't work. Like, that's that's kind of the thing. It's not just like, oh, this is, infringing on adults' rights. It doesn't work to protect children from anything either.

Sam: 38:59

If anything, it creates more harm for kids because they're going to sites that, are less moderated. So yeah. Yeah. I I

Jason: 39:08

I've it's also like VPNs are a tool, to evade government censorship and authoritarian nations. Like, that is what people use them for. Like, I mean, they use them for other things as well, but it's like, this is some bleak shit, which comes through, but it's like, this is how people, like, evade the great firewall in China, how they evade, you know, government blocks on content in places like Indonesia, Turkey, etcetera. It's happening in the United States. It's happening right now.

Jason: 39:41

It's happening in 17 states. Like, that's really crazy. And Sam, I know you've been covering this for a long time. I have a question very quickly, which is like, this is part of a concerted lobbying effort. Correct?

Jason: 39:55

Where, like, they're basically going, like, state by state by state, and they, in this case, is, like, a group of different lobbyists who are pushing essentially the exact same law. Right?

Sam: 40:06

Yeah. This I mentioned before this started in Louisiana. So these laws are basically, like, copy paste almost in some cases of that original law. And, yeah, they're backed by groups that, like I said, want to see porn classified as harmful content across the board, not just bad for kids to see, but bad for everyone to see. And in Louisiana, they they wrote this law, and it was really strange to me, especially when it first came out.

Sam: 40:38

It was so strange that I was like, maybe this is not gonna work. There's no way. Right? Like, there's no way our our lawmakers are that fucking dumb. But it was, like, a third of your site must be, adult material to fall under this law to be liable for this be liable for, like, the fines and the opening up to, legal scrutiny and lawsuits from private individuals that, would put you under this this law.

Sam: 41:06

So you had to be it was, like, 33.3% of your site or something, had to be adult material, which is a lot of sites, actually. It's probably Twitter at this point. It's, like, it's just

Joseph: 41:17

It's probably 404 media at this point.

Sam: 41:19

Fuck. Yeah. It's probably probably is. Probably your inbox, thanks to us. But, yeah, it's like it's just so, pulled out of, like, their ass, obviously, that they're just like, oh, a third of a site must be, it's not even like most of your site, a 100% of your site, which would be like a foreign site.

Sam: 41:40

It's a 3rd, which is so strange. And and then the the wording of the laws is like it I mean, I don't even know if I wanna read it here, but it's like the wording of these laws themselves are pornographic. It's like they list out, like, every little, like, sex act and genitalia and all these things very specifically.

Joseph: 41:58

That's in the law?

Sam: 41:59

Yeah. It's in the it's in the legislation.

Joseph: 42:01

I mean, don't read it now, but I'm gonna go read the law Yeah. Just because I didn't know that because that's, yeah, I didn't know that.

Sam: 42:06

Of the law of the written law is probably pornographic. Like, it's a huge chunk of it. It's just like a list. It's like, this is somebody's, like, kink list or something. I don't know.

Sam: 42:19

But, yeah, it's

Joseph: 42:20

Someone wrote them. It was their it was their job to

Jason: 42:23

write that list.

Sam: 42:25

Someone yeah. To to figure out what classifies adult material. But, yeah, I mean, it's like with the Tennessee being Tennessee law being blocked. And then in Texas, like, I mentioned, there's an ongoing, you know, legal battle happening between Free Speech Coalition and a couple of other, porn sites including Alo, versus, our bestie, Ken Paxton, in Texas where they're fighting these laws, filing challenges, challenge after challenge. It's kind of wild how the process goes sometimes.

Sam: 42:59

So there is, like, hope, I think, and I think especially in this coming year, I think we'll see more and more legal challenges to this. I think, again, it's like that these laws kinda go through uncontested because legislators are are literally just like, that sounds cool, signed, you know, like, our my constituency will like this. Protecting children, nice. We like that. But I think as they go into effect and as people realize that they're actually not not useful for protecting anyone and also a huge pain in the ass for constituents, I think we'll see more and more legal challenges and pushback against them, which will be really interesting to see.

Sam: 43:43

And, obviously, we'll be tracking that as it happens.

Joseph: 43:46

Yeah. Yeah. The legal challenges will be interesting for sure because I don't know. You you you think, you think in a country, where the first amendment, the government will be able to push laws that be able to step on this sort of speech. But, look, we'll leave that there.

Joseph: 44:02

If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you're a paying for reformes subscriber, we're gonna talk about how the US government is preparing to reveal the, quote, unquote, key witness who provided it with its own backdoors encrypted chat app. You know? You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.c0. We'll be right back after this.

Joseph: 44:42

Alright. And we are back in the subscribers only section. This is one I wrote. Government to name key witness who provided FBI with backdoored encrypted chat app, Anom. I feel like we're falling into the hole where even the headline assumes that people knows know what Anom is.

Joseph: 45:04

You know what I mean? But it's like I don't know, man. Get up

Jason: 45:08

to speed. It's a it's a it's a tricky there's a lot going on here. This is what, this is what Peter Kafka came after me for on his podcast about because he's just like, people are too dumb to understand your headlines. And I I would argue, Peter, that people know what we're talking about.

Sam: 45:26

I'm too dumb. Can you explain it to me?

Jason: 45:28

He's well informed our well informed readership.

Sam: 45:31

I work here, and I I forget what an om is every single time. So

Jason: 45:34

please. Yeah. Please.

Joseph: 45:35

Well, just on that, Jason, I would say that I really enjoyed, that episode, and you should go listen to it, for those listening. It's called Channels. Go check it out, and there's interesting conversations there. But he definitely did pick just the 3 most recent articles on the website. And it was just a bad day for very technical articles.

Joseph: 45:55

It was like, oh, that's like 3 really, really geeky articles.

Sam: 45:58

It was like the week of Thanksgiving or something or like right before, and we were just like fucking

Jason: 46:02

We're holding the bangers here. We're holding them.

Emanuel: 46:04

Dude, all of you should not cede any inch to Peter. All the stories, the beautiful gems that everyone loves, and I have the data to back it up.

Jason: 46:12

Agree. Agree.

Joseph: 46:12

That's fair.

Jason: 46:13

Alright, Joseph. What the hell is a nom for people who do not know?

Joseph: 46:17

Yes. So a nom, oh my god. Even I'm getting confused. So a nom was part of the encrypted phone industry for criminals. This is where criminals, they don't use WhatsApp or Imessage or Signal, although they do now, a little bit more.

Joseph: 46:35

They use apps and phones from companies called EncroChat and Sky and Phantom Secure. And these companies made a lot and lot of money selling those to criminals, you know, tens of 1,000,000 of dollars each, if not 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars. And in around about 2018, somebody, called AFG, a f g double o, was making a new version of those. And it was called ANOM. And the idea was, you know, he was gonna compete with some of these some of these other companies.

Joseph: 47:06

The FBI shuts down Phantom Secure, sort of one of the big ones used by the Sinaloa drug cartel, and and bikers, and and all of these sorts of people. So AFSC thinks, maybe I'll play this ace up my sleeve and then offers it basically to the FBI. And says, look, if you give me a lower sentence or take into consideration this cooperation for charges I may or may not be, facing, now or in the future, you can use this encrypted phone company and you can put a backdoor into it. The FBI leaps at the chance to do that. They do.

Joseph: 47:45

They intercept more than 20,000,000 messages over several years. They intercept massive drug shipments of cocaine. They shut down amphetamine drug labs using, working with authorities in Europe, Sweden, Germany, elsewhere, South America a little bit as well. And it culminates in this massive worldwide domino track of raids and arrests in which something like 9,000 law enforcement officers on a single day perform these raids in the largest sting operation, ever. So that's all, pretty successful.

Joseph: 48:26

I mean, actually, in in my book, Dark Wire, behind me, it's it's debatable how successful it was. Some of the Swedish officials I spoke to said, well, the cocaine's still coming. So, like, what's the point? There's all these, like, massive ships of Coke still arriving. So, like, are we even doing this the right way?

Joseph: 48:42

But broadly, pretty successful, annoyed a lot of criminals, hundreds of different criminal, gangs. Well, as this headline suggests, the government may now be naming AFSCU. And should I just briefly say what

Jason: 49:01

Yeah. I mean, so that's bad. Why is that bad? It's like and and by bad, I mean, it's bad for AFGU. It's like, like, you know, he might get killed.

Joseph: 49:10

So yeah. I'll I'll I'll say a couple of things. 1st, it's it's going to probably be revealed, I think it's actually definitely gonna be revealed in discovery to defense lawyers who were defending people who sold their nom phones. In like a very cruel, ironic, funny twist, depending on how you look at it. The FBI and prosecutors also investigated and charged people who were selling phones, non phones to criminals and then charged them for being part of this big conspiracy.

Joseph: 49:39

As part of that, the government is gonna provide the name of AFSCU to defense lawyers under as part of discovery. And that would be under a protective order, which means only the defense lawyers can see it. It's for their eyes only. And that is so, you know, they can look into this person. They can sort of figure out what their deal is.

Joseph: 49:59

They can find ways to perhaps attack their character or something like that. Because, look, a defense lawyer's job and, you know, presumably ones that are making a lot of money if they're private or maybe they're so there are, I think, some federal public defenders, but most of the lawyers I speak to around this case are private. Their job is to get their client off. Right? Or give them a much lower sentence or or whatever it may be.

Joseph: 50:25

So first, it's got 1st, AFSCU's identity is gonna be disclosed there. But the government confirmed to me, as in prosecutors in San Diego who, who I contacted. And they said, yeah, if AFSCU testifies at trial in March, we're gonna have to name this person, which to me is crazy. Like, I never thought about that. Like, you you you always think about in mafia cases when there's informants and that sort of thing, it's like, hey, we're the FBI.

Joseph: 50:57

Don't worry. We'll protect your identity because you're giving us really, really important information. Oh, by the way, several years later, we're gonna reveal your identity. I mean, maybe I'm just naive on that because I focus on the tech side of crime, but, like, is that weird to you,

Jason: 51:09

Casey? It is weird to me because I that I've only seen mafia movies, but that's as as I understand, the witness protection program isn't like witness protection until, you know, the defense, attorney's demand wants to know, and we'll make it, public in discovery. I think, also, like, the people who are asking for this information are alleged to have committed, in many cases, quite violent crimes and were revealed by AFGHU, and so they are the specific people who you would not want to reveal his name to. Not that you could keep that information secret once it was real to anyone, but in these cases, they're being revealed to people who are accused of being, like, you know, fucked over by AFSCU.

Joseph: 52:01

Yeah. So the people who would get it under discovery, I don't know if they're specifically violent. They're people who sold encryptophones to or alleged allegedly sold encryptophones to organized criminals. Some of them, from my reporting, they come from sort of organized crime backgrounds. They have lots of connections to organized crime.

Joseph: 52:24

But your point stands in that they're not a neutral third party. They are intimately involved in this, and they are going on trial, and they are imprisoned because, as you say, because of AFSCU's actions, essentially. So you have that discovery part first. And then if this if if AFSCU's name is gonna be revealed in public court, I mean, that is then free game for anyone, journalists, researchers, whoever. But most importantly, the hundreds of distinct criminal gangs which were impacted by this operation, they find out who this AFGU person was, and then they can try to spend resources to have them hurt or eliminated or something like that.

Joseph: 53:13

And I think and I'm quite sure that is already the case. I'm quite sure there's already a bounty, on this person's head. But I don't know. May maybe I'm being naive because in or or just or just maybe I was a little bit ignorant on sort of the the role and the use of informants and confidential human sources. Because you look in the court documents, and the defense seemingly, legitimately argues that they need this information under the 5th and 6th amendments, so they can form a a proper defense.

Joseph: 53:44

And that, on one hand, yes, I understand that. On the other, are you nuts? You know?

Jason: 53:51

Yeah. So in this case, like the broader Anam case, there was this mystery about a third country that the if I remember correctly, it was like the United States didn't have the jurisdiction to read the messages that they were intercepting directly, and so they used a third country in Europe. Which one is the second country? Australia?

Joseph: 54:16

Australia is the second country because that's where they sort of did a beta test of the phone. Yeah.

Jason: 54:20

I see. And then there was a third country in Europe that was helping them to read the messages they were intercepting. And the US government went far out of its way to keep the identity of this third country secret. We now know the identity of that third country, thanks to your reporting, and also thanks to court documents. Well no.

Joseph: 54:46

No. It's it's not in court documents.

Jason: 54:47

It's still not in court documents. Well okay. So but

Joseph: 54:49

The DOJ refuses to say it.

Jason: 54:51

Yeah. It's Luxembourg. Correct?

Joseph: 54:53

Lithuania.

Jason: 54:54

Lithuania. Lithuania. 1

Joseph: 54:56

of the elves.

Jason: 54:56

Yeah. You know?

Joseph: 54:58

One of them. Yeah.

Jason: 54:59

It's funny that they say that that is like a security risk. Presumably, like, that that's sort of, like, why they're not revealing this. Whereas this perhaps, they they're not fighting as strenuously or I don't know. Say what you wanna say about this because, I I think that there there is some it's worth discussing, like, the the two situations.

Joseph: 55:22

Yeah. So the country is Lithuania. We revealed that in an article last year at some point, I think. I learned that while reporting the book, but I didn't wanna, like, sit on it for the book because it seemed like it was important enough to get out. So we published the it's Lithuania.

Joseph: 55:41

The DOJ refuses to acknowledge that even though defense lawyers are saying, hey, it's been in the media. And the the defense knows. They they found that out under discovery after my article, and, they now know. But, yeah, the DOJ refuses to acknowledge it. And, I think the FBI, actually, while I was doing my book, they discouraged or asked me to not include that because they think it could harm, ongoing operations.

Joseph: 56:13

My my assessment was that a norm was over. And more importantly, there's a public interest in knowing that country because if this is the largest thing operation ever and there are gonna be defendants caught up in that, they should be able to defend themselves. And also if it's legal, what's the problem? But what what's the problem in knowing what country was using this worldwide interception if you have a valid court order? Like, what are you trying to hide?

Joseph: 56:39

You know? So there's that. And they still don't, as I said, want to formally acknowledge that. And then on the flip side, they're gonna name the person who, provided them with a nom. And I went, to great lengths and pains in my book to not identify that person.

Joseph: 57:06

Because while I think that it's important for the public to know that Lithuania was the country using that, I don't think it's very important that the public know who that confidential human source is and the risk to them. Right? I mean, that being said, if this trial happens, I'll be going there. Thanks to paying subscribers, and I'll go to San Diego. And if they do reveal it in the public court, I feel like I'm probably gonna have to cover who this person is.

Joseph: 57:39

You know? I mean, well, don't hold me to that because we'll discuss that in the tutorial meeting later. But, like, I don't know. It it just seems like a very, very strange, dissonance between the it's it's just very interesting how the government is handling 2 secrets, essentially. Yeah.

Jason: 57:55

Yeah. Should we end it there?

Joseph: 57:59

Yeah. Let's end it there.

Jason: 58:01

I feel rusty. I feel rusty. First pod back, did everyone feel rusty or no? Just me?

Sam: 58:08

I'm very sleepy. I drank my 16 ounces of Red Bull during this podcast, so it didn't hit.

Joseph: 58:15

That's insane. How long does it take to hit? 10 minutes?

Sam: 58:19

I'll be buzzing in, like, 30 minutes and then, you know Cool.

Joseph: 58:22

The Internet

Jason: 58:23

has no one to pod with.

Joseph: 58:25

I'll just sit there for bed.

Sam: 58:27

I'll just be zooming I'm just gonna be doing zoomies around my own apartment. Yeah. Don't worry. You guys will pay for it later. Stay tuned.

Joseph: 58:33

Okay. Cool. I'm also rusty, and I'm forgetting how I do this. Oh, I say, I'll play us out. Okay.

Joseph: 58:39

Right. Okay. Give me

Jason: 58:40

a sec. You say, the podcast is over.

Joseph: 58:44

Podcast over. Transmission ended. Okay. And here we go. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers.

Joseph: 58:57

If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media. Dotc0. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope.

Joseph: 59:16

Another way to support us is by leaving a 5 star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been 404 Media. We'll see you again next week.