The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:10

Hello. Welcome to the latest episode of the four zero four media podcast comment show. I don't know. I change it every single time. We're taking a little time to read through some of your comments and respond to them.

Joseph: 00:26

As we're recording this, we've been pretty busy with the TeleMessage hack, the GlobalX hack, and some other stuff. But there are plenty of good comments to go to go through. We'll try to get through as many as possible. I'll just introduce people case, you know, people are new subscribers. So we have Sam Cole.

Sam: 00:45

Hey. The subscriber music blows my head off every single time. That first, like, it's like, boom. And I'm just like

Joseph: 00:52

It's a lot. It's a lot.

Sam: 00:54

I hope it's I'm definitely not really good.

Jason: 00:56

It's it's way better than any other podcast music.

Sam: 01:00

I'm awake. That's for sure.

Joseph: 01:02

And that second voice you heard was Jason Kebler. And then also on this podcast is Emmanuel Mayberg. Hello.

Jason: 01:12

Wow. I think think we're gonna have some guests on this podcast also in the form of construction noises

Emanuel: 01:20

Definitely.

Jason: 01:21

Birds chirping, etcetera. We've been trying to record this for quite some time, and we simply cannot wait any longer. We must pod, but there's some truck idling outside my house. Sam might be outside right now possibly.

Sam: 01:37

I'm outside. I'm near a train track, so that might make an appearance.

Jason: 01:41

Yeah. And Emmanuel is, like, knocking down a wall in his house or something.

Emanuel: 01:45

There's they're tearing up the road for, like, the fifth time. I don't know what they're doing, but, yeah, big machines outside.

Joseph: 01:52

I see.

Jason: 01:54

And Joseph is in a side a silent cube.

Joseph: 01:57

In a silent cube. Yeah. Can hear my

Sam: 01:59

own location.

Joseph: 01:59

I can hear my own tinnitus. Just got it's one of those ones that has no sound and it will swerving. You go insane. I don't know if I could do that. I would actually flip out.

Joseph: 02:09

Have a Google Doc in front of me with a bunch of comments, but someone's put something at the top that says, let's say something up top. Who wrote this? Could you

Jason: 02:17

just No. I said I said basically like, usually when we do these comment shows, there are frankly not that many comments to go through and and pick out and talk about. But I feel like over the last few months, we've got a real comment community going. There's, you know, like, one of my articles I think has, like, 35 comments on it or something, and then, you know, there I'm sure that's happening to everyone's articles at this point. There's a lot of, like, back and forth and stuff like that.

Jason: 02:48

So it's been really it was actually really hard to pick comments because there's so many of them. So thank you for leaving so many comments, and, you know, please please continue to comment on the articles because I read every single one, and I like when people are, like, answering their own questions back and forth and starting conversation, etcetera. That's all.

Sam: 03:11

Don't we have an email? Like, a podcast email?

Joseph: 03:14

Yeah. I think if you do well, I actually can't remember it now. So it's either podcast or podcast. We haven't said that in so long, but it just goes to my email.

Sam: 03:22

Dopodcastandcc,thepluralYes.@404media.co. And you can like, just tell us directly what you want us to talk about on these shows because then they don't get lost in the in the website.

Joseph: 03:34

It's true because if somebody emails a question specifically for the pod to that email, like, they may craft it in such a way that makes it almost easier for us to talk about rather than us injecting ourselves into some comment beef in there, you know, where they even want us to answer it, but we're going to because it got published on our website.

Jason: 03:53

I think that we need to have a voicemail line.

Joseph: 03:56

Oh, that's good. Yeah. We can definitely set that up. Maybe we'll do that for next time or the time after. Okay.

Joseph: 04:05

Lot to get through. We'll try and do them a bit quickly. I have one here. This is from Chloe on the age of real time deepfake fraud is here. Story I did about how real time video calls, deepfakes are now being used for fraud and romance scams, all that sort of thing.

Joseph: 04:22

Chloe writes, as worried as I am generally about the possibility of being scammed or older family members being scammed, my primary anxiety after reading this is that this will push even more invasive ID verification techniques. If my voice and password are licensed and moving, talking face isn't enough, What else will they ask for? I actually brought this in more to ask you, Sam, because, like, we didn't really get into this and the fraud stuff, but there's a lot of the age verification stuff which you write about. And, you know, what do you think if if fraudsters are using real time deepfakes now and the age verification or the identity verification people are gonna have to do more? Like, is there more for them to do?

Joseph: 05:04

Like, what what what does that even mean? What what do you think about that?

Sam: 05:07

Yeah. I mean, I think every like, once a month, some use case will come up that's like it's like, oh, Asia verification is actually never gonna work for for porn websites, which is what's being pushed right now with a lot of legislation across The United States. It was like it was a thing with the IDs that you wrote about. There were, like, the fake generated IDs that were people were using to, like, bypass KYC and things like that. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's just like the HRification stuff is just gonna keep people are gonna keep clearing that barrier using other tricks and tools, which I think is what we're probably gonna see happen with this.

Sam: 05:49

But yeah.

Joseph: 05:51

Yeah. That makes sense.

Jason: 05:53

We we haven't written about this yet, but, like, the the Take It Down Act was passed very recently, which is not exactly an age verification law, but it is, like, a massive social media, anti nonconsensual porn piece of legislation that is, like has many unintended consequences. I think we'll probably get to writing about it at some point. It's just been we've been so busy. There's been so much going on lately, but it's just like I don't know. The the legislation around this sort of stuff is, like, not good.

Jason: 06:34

Very, very rarely is it good. Tech Dirt, who we like, has a couple of good articles about take it down act. Mike Masnick is one of the best writers on that, but I I assume we'll probably get to it at some point either on a podcast or article perhaps or maybe Trump won't sign it. Fingers crossed. Don't know.

Joseph: 06:57

I mean, probably going to. Right? But I guess I guess we'll see. Here's a short one from Stephen Smith, probably our most prolific common commenter, and I always appreciate them. And this is on one of our behind the blogs, behind the blog, feeling smart along the way.

Joseph: 07:14

Honestly, can't remember what that one was about because Sam always does a really good job of, like, these engaging email headlines.

Sam: 07:21

He's not descriptive, not helpful headlines.

Joseph: 07:23

Well, they're they're they're very good in the moment because they they make perfect sense in the context of that week's news. But then when they come back weeks later, I'm like, I literally know. What what did I

Sam: 07:32

You wrote about GSBY, and then Jason wrote about the pit for some reason. And then Emmanuel and I did wrote about diaper I've read about diapers, and Emmanuel wrote about, I think, what we wrote about the economic headwinds, which I think we're gonna get into more.

Joseph: 07:49

Yeah.

Sam: 07:49

But that was what happened that week.

Joseph: 07:50

Gotcha. And then Steven writes, god, imagine running one of those awful AI podcast generators over a week's worth of four zero four content. Would it just explode or melt? I think what Steven's referring to here is, like, there was, like, Google tool, right, where you just feed it a document and then makes a podcast out of it, and it's like, oh, two people talking, and they're chatting about the topic. And maybe you can let NotebookLM,

Emanuel: 08:13

I believe.

Joseph: 08:14

What is that what's it called?

Emanuel: 08:15

NotebookLM. Is that the one?

Joseph: 08:17

Yeah. I tried that briefly. Somebody showed it to me, not with my work, but their own academic work. And I don't know. It was kind of interesting, and I think, Court Watch did it as well briefly.

Joseph: 08:31

And, like, I'm not gonna use it or anything, but obviously keep an eye on it. Should we put a week's worth of four zero four content in there? I mean, it'd be a very long podcast. Also, they'd be taking our content, so fuck you. So I don't know.

Joseph: 08:47

Maybe we'll try it. Here's one from Emmanuel. Emmanuel, do I need to play the sound first?

Emanuel: 08:56

You're muted, am I? Plea please play my drop. Yeah.

Joseph: 08:59

Okay. Here we go. That's well, Emmanuel, what's that sound?

Jason: 09:11

Wow. I've learned how the mute button works. That's unbelievable. This is crazy. Five years of Jesus.

Emanuel: 09:17

Oh, I'm pressing it. Sorry.

Jason: 09:19

Five years of video conferencing post COVID. Still doesn't know where the mute button is.

Emanuel: 09:24

I have my leg up on the desk, and I'm pressing my keyboard and muting myself. I'm sorry. It's okay. What was the sound? The the sound of sizzling beef is for our new segment beef of the week, in which I pick on someone who was mean to me on my on my platform.

Emanuel: 09:41

So I wrote this story about a Telegram bot that grew very fast to a hundred thousand users. It had a 50,000 users by the time it was shut down after I published my article. It produces very convincing, kind of bleeding edge AI generated videos of real people in sexual acts, let's say. I guess, to this person's point, let me read the headline, which is a hundred thousand people are using a telegram bot that makes AI come shot videos of anyone. This person was responding to the email we sent out in the newsletter, which did not have the word cumshot in it because, honestly, we thought it would get filtered out if it was in the subject line.

Joseph: 10:35

Really jump scare to have that word.

Emanuel: 10:36

And also it's a jump scare. But this person says, you really need a heads up for people whose kids might be reading your stuff. Nobody wants today's email to be a surprise to them. And I guess, Joe, to what you were saying, it's like, I don't know. Four four media sometimes is kind of a jump scare.

Emanuel: 10:52

Like, that is just the nature of what we cover and the nature of the blogs. And I don't really object to minors, kids, children reading our website. I think it's fine. I think it's educational. I think it's entertaining.

Emanuel: 11:10

It does contain some adult words, but I I don't find that to be a terrible thing to expose your your child to. And also, we try not to be frivolous. Like, I think the story was written in a very serious, respectful way, and it was written about a really important subject. And per usual, it got some good impact and took this really nasty thing off the Internet. So I don't know, man.

Emanuel: 11:45

Just like either don't let your kids read our website Or your email.

Sam: 11:51

Is your child in your email?

Jason: 11:52

That's my that's my beef with it. Know lot

Sam: 11:54

of questions.

Jason: 11:55

Sometimes podcasts, for example, be like, if you're listening to this in the car with small children, know that it has, you know, adult language in it, which I understand and is is it, like, makes sense for specific podcasts that are normally like, don't have adult themes in it. But first of all, many of our articles have adult themes in it. I think that I agree with you, very educational website. But who is, like, going through their email with their kids? Like, is is your kid sitting on your lap as you as you go through the the email?

Jason: 12:30

Like, what what's going on here? I don't understand that one.

Emanuel: 12:33

Dude, as you know, my favorite phrase, as a father, that does happen. Definitely, my kid has been exposed to many emails and other things that run across my screen, but I feel like that was before he even, like, I don't know. His vision was fully formed, you know? That's just how it is with a baby. You kind of hold him

Jason: 12:52

as a is not of reading age, though. I mean, I

Emanuel: 12:55

don't know. Definitely not. Yeah. And he's not, like, reading subject head headlines for

Jason: 13:00

I'm just imagining, like, let's go let's go through mommy and daddy's emails. Yeah. Like, let's read them together.

Emanuel: 13:08

Yeah. Oh, look. It's sweet green

Jason: 13:09

If you do that, though, that's great. That's fine. It's like, I I appreciate I mean, please share share share our work.

Emanuel: 13:17

Yeah. And I'll I'll just like the website is is is gonna have this stuff. Like, I feel like we're not really gonna compromise about writing about this sort of thing and censoring ourselves because we don't wanna offend some theoretical child who's reading your email.

Joseph: 13:34

Yeah. Because, I mean, that is really what separates us apart is that we take coverage of sex and AI and those abuses seriously, way more seriously than any other outlet does. And that's why we write the stories we do, and that's how we get the impact we do and the expertise we have through, especially yours and Sam's reporting because we're not gonna be like a normal outlet that just has like a generic thing where, oh, we're just gonna write that it's like a bad boss on Telegram. It's like, no. We have to viscerally tell you fucking what it is

Emanuel: 14:07

because that's actually very important. Story. Yeah. It's kind of critical to the story.

Joseph: 14:11

But that said but but, I mean, that said with the email headline, we did have the discussion where we're like, we can't put the word cumshot in the email subject line. One, because maybe Gmail or whoever will filter it for spam, and we don't want that because the entire point of email is that we can reach readers directly. But also, it's like, I do kinda get that you don't want that in the subject line where you're just scrolling your email. If you open it, you see the headline. And, you've opened the email.

Joseph: 14:39

You know what I mean? So it's a trade off. But, yeah, you're right. We're not gonna compromise.

Emanuel: 14:44

Related to this, just like happened to happen this week, somebody is pitching us a story about sex, and they DM'd me and was like, can I pitch you can can I send you an email about this? I was like, yeah, please. I'd love to read that. And I was waiting around for it to come and I guess like, oh, I guess this person didn't send me the pitch, and it was in spam because it had sex in the subject line. So Right.

Emanuel: 15:08

It does happen. Please play a sound. I wanna hear the sound effect again. That's the end of my segment.

Sam: 15:19

It's like a deep fryer. Jesus.

Joseph: 15:21

It's really good.

Sam: 15:22

It's not even a grill. It's a frying hook.

Joseph: 15:25

Definitely gonna keep that on. Okay. I'm just gonna hit the vine boom every so often. I just love it so much.

Jason: 15:32

Dude, speaking of spam, I just went to my spam filter and someone responded to the email we sent out earlier today and it said, yes. Thank you. I saw that. I subscribed to four zero four.

Sam: 15:46

And maybe this is their first podcast that they're hearing.

Joseph: 15:49

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Jason: 15:51

They responded to our email of our article being like, yes. Thank you for sending me this. Uh-oh. I saw I saw this. It was they responded and they're like, thank you.

Jason: 16:04

I received received email.

Sam: 16:07

You're welcome.

Joseph: 16:08

The good one I get, which and you don't all see this because when when we send out the automated things like, hey. Thank you for signing up. Thank you for becoming a paid subscriber. Usually, thank you for becoming a free sign up, and then they eventually become a paid subscriber. But people reply to that, and people would just say, hey.

Joseph: 16:26

Thank you for your email, Joseph. Blah blah blah. I'm gonna check out the site. And I'm like, sometimes I reply because I feel bad because, like, that's that's an automated email you're responding to. You know?

Joseph: 16:39

And then I feel bad, and I get into a whole conversation with them. Here's another one from Chloe, which is actually from our four zero four media year review podcast for a little while ago now. I'm not gonna read the whole comment, but basically what they're saying is, noticing that some AI transcription tools aren't always, you know, actually being fully accurate on what they're doing or they're interpreting them. I found that very interesting, I replied saying just the other day and I noticed I'm reading out my own comment on the comment show, but fuck it, whatever. Just the other day, I noticed a transcription service on the platform we use to deliver the subscribers podcast, change what I said.

Joseph: 17:18

I always say four zero four media. The transcript said 404 And that was really what? Like, the transcription service just literally changed my words. I haven't seen that before. I'm just wondering if anybody else has seen anything like that.

Joseph: 17:34

And and this is Transistor, which is the platform which integrates with Ghost, which we use to email out the subscriber podcast. Anyone seen anything like that?

Sam: 17:43

That's weird. Because you would need to say zero. Yeah. It's just It's much different. I would understand if it was like, oh, like, o h.

Joseph: 17:51

Right. It just literally changed the word into no. We think it sounds better as zero. And I'm not not big on that. I don't

Sam: 17:58

I'm gonna blame the Britishness.

Jason: 18:00

Yeah. Yeah. I think that I think these tools have actually been getting better and more reliable. I do double check everything, but I find myself having to change a lot less. It obviously depends on the quality of the audio, and I don't actually don't use Otter.

Jason: 18:17

I use some other services, various other ones. But this technology has come a long way in the last few years. But it you know, I do worry that they're gonna start just, like, guessing what people said, and it will be correct often, but not always. Luckily, it's like the tools that I use are time stamped, and Otter is as well. But I always relisten to the parts that I'm going to use.

Jason: 18:49

And so I don't know. I feel like I feel like it's one of the most useful tools for sort of the grunt work of journalism that has come out in the last few years. And I used to never ever ever use it or think about using it. I would just type very fast when I was interviewing people and then, like, go through my own things. And it's like, I don't even type while I'm interviewing people anymore.

Jason: 19:16

I just will run it through the robot, which is a total change in my own process over the last few years. And I've found that it's gotten much better.

Emanuel: 19:28

I'm disappointed that you don't do that anymore. And I'm disappointed in myself for not doing it anymore.

Jason: 19:33

Yeah. I think I think it's my own setup where people can hear the click clacking of the keyboard, and I think that it I probably get better conversations now because I'm not typing really fast. But I do it every once in a while if I'm like on my laptop or something and don't have like an ideal setup for it. But, yeah, I did that that I really do miss typing very fast.

Emanuel: 20:01

I feel like it's just the ideal way to do it is record but type in real time as the person is talking because if you're doing that, I find usually it's faster because you're filtering out what is important and what isn't in real time. And you don't have to go back and, like, listen to it again or, like, sift through the transcribed text and all that.

Joseph: 20:27

Yeah. If I'm on a call, I'm recording and I'm talking to them, I'll take notes and I'll have one eye looking at the timestamp when they say something interesting, and then I'll do one minute forty five and a quick note being like, this is where the quote is or something. That's also good. I think I learned that from our former colleague, Adrianne, actually, back at motherboard. I think she told me how to do that.

Joseph: 20:49

Jason, I actually just had a couple quick questions for you. I know it's very early days, but how is the referral program going?

Jason: 20:58

Honestly, not very well. It's like I think it's just hard. I think it's a thing that people don't really do Right. Which is a fear that I had, but I wanted to try it anyway. We've got 62 sign ups from it in about, like, twenty days, something like that.

Jason: 21:16

So it's not nothing, and a few people have earned some socks. And I think one person earned a tote. And, of course, you know, we'll be mailing those out. Actually, already have mailed most of those out. But to be totally honest, like, the software that does this is quite expensive, and only a few people are actually doing it.

Jason: 21:41

So TBD, how long will keep it going? I think it'll probably I think we'll probably, like, keep trying it for another month or so and just, like, pushing it. And then, like, if it doesn't work that well, then it's like, okay. We tried this experiment experiment over. Experiment failed.

Joseph: 22:01

I mean, not Use or lose it. I mean, that's tough.

Sam: 22:05

Guys, use it or we're gonna get rid of it.

Joseph: 22:07

Oh, yeah.

Sam: 22:07

Yeah. Really realize it wasn't like a hot a hot item. But

Jason: 22:13

Well, you know what? People to love it. What move fast, break things, fail fast, and iterate something something startup bro language.

Joseph: 22:21

Yeah. That's definitely our vibe. Yeah. What about merch? I feel merch is almost, excuse me, is almost doing too well.

Jason: 22:31

Merch is doing great. Very really good. We've been selling lots of merch. I feel like I've gotten a little bit better at, like, my process of mailing them and stuff like that. But the the thing with the merch, the the issue for me on the back end of the merch is that we don't have enough orders for me to totally offload it to, like, a third party service.

Jason: 22:56

Like, it doesn't make sense to do that. Those services are, like, very expensive. So I need to mail them all, which I don't really mind doing. But the sweatshirts, the crew necks, and the hoodies, and it's summer now. We're not getting that many orders of those right now because it's summer, are at a warehouse that's like a half hour from my house.

Jason: 23:24

I don't have space for them at my apartment, so I keep them there. So when people order those, which to be clear, you should please order them. Like, I'm happy to mail them. But I have to, like, go there to mail them. And it's a kind of tricky it's kind of tricky logistically at this moment.

Jason: 23:45

It's not tricky like, it wasn't tricky when a lot of people were ordering those because I could just go and mail a bunch at a time. But for example, I have, like, one sweatshirt that I need to order that is gonna require, like, an hour long round trip trip for me just to to get it. The new hats are not that popular. The old hats, the OG hats are good, selling very well. And then the the other thing I was gonna say is knowing how many of each size shirt to order is tricky because we don't want to do drop shipping, which is where we use like Teespring or something where it's a print on demand service where when you order it, they make the shirt and then they mail it to you.

Jason: 24:33

And the reason that we don't wanna do that is because one, a lot of those companies are pretty shitty. There's surely a couple good ones, but a lot of them are are kinda like the quality is not very good. And then, honestly, it's just like the margins on those, it's like we would make like $1 per shirt. It's just like they charge you a lot of money. Like, they charge us a lot of money.

Jason: 24:57

They charge you a lot of money. It doesn't really make sense. It would be nice for us just in terms of, like, we want people to have our shirts and stuff, but it would be us, like, maybe barely breaking even. Whereas, like, with these, with the merch that we have, it's, like, worth it for us financially. It's, like, a good it's, like, good.

Jason: 25:20

It's good for us, I think. It's better for us to manage the inventory and sell sell it. But, like, for example, we had a bunch of the Black Horse t shirts and it took a really long time to sell out of the extra large ones. I think we had like 15 extra large ones. And when I placed an order for new ones, we were out of large and medium.

Jason: 25:42

So I bought a lot of large and medium, and I only bought five new extra large ones. And in the time that I placed the order and they came, like 15 people bought extra large horse shirts, and so now we're out of them. But we're but but but I have every other size. And so knowing how many of each size to get is just like impossible. It's like a an art, not a science.

Joseph: 26:10

I mean, there must be, like, software that people I'm not saying we do this, but, like, companies I mean, they'll be looking at data and

Jason: 26:17

their I mean, there is where it's like they, like, calculate the, like, average American size as, like, calculated by, like, shirts sold at Target or whatever. But I think that unless you're doing it at a we're not doing it at a large enough scale for it to it it's just like we might suddenly get a lot of orders for one specific size and then we don't have enough in stock at any given time for me to I'm not buying a thousand shirts at a time, I guess is what I'm saying. Like, I'm buying 50 shirts at a time and knowing the size distribution of that is a little bit tricky just because there's like it's it takes about two weeks for the merch place to make the shirts and print them and stuff, and then me go pick them up. And, like, right now, we have a lot of everything in stock except for XL Black Horse t shirts. And so I kind like, I don't know.

Jason: 27:14

I want to get those back in stock, but I would need to order, like, 50 of that same size.

Emanuel: 27:21

What do we need to move, Jason? What what do we what what sizes? What what what merch do we need to move?

Jason: 27:28

We have a lot of mediums of everything. Tons of mediums. If you're a medium average fellas and gals. Yeah. If you're a medium, place order.

Jason: 27:38

Good boys. Sorry.

Emanuel: 27:40

We're not doing that right now.

Jason: 27:42

Oh, and we're doing we're doing tank tops soon. We're working on a tank top. We got a specific bespoke request for a tank top, and we've we've been wanting to do a tank top for a while. Summer is almost here, so hopefully that will be in soon. But merch is going really well.

Jason: 27:56

It's been very rewarding. If you get merch and you buy merch and you enjoy the merch and also are not shy, it's totally fine if you are, send us pics of you wearing the merch and we'll put them on Instagram with your permission.

Joseph: 28:13

Yeah. That'd great. Somebody did say I think I mentioned this before, but they sent an email or something that the hoodie is the best quality hoodie they've ever had, and I absolutely agree with that. And I just mean that even if it wasn't our own thing, it's like it's insanely good quality. Yeah.

Joseph: 28:32

This next one from Stan on the Reddit study. Is this yours, Jason? I'm I'm not sure. It might be

Jason: 28:39

Yeah. So this is Stan Gertler on the Reddit study. Quote, personally, I think journals or in computer science broadly conferences tend to be where most research is published, should be significantly more proactive about requiring ethical review. But I'm also wondering in the long term, The US seems poised to withdraw from a lot of research funding. Does that suggest that the standard of ethical review for a lot of research may lower as that happens?

Jason: 29:03

I and also Stan left more of a comment. That's just like an excerpt. This is a really smart comment and something that I'm very worried about because already peer review in science is seen as a really thankless task. And I think a lot of journals are having trouble getting people to sign up to do peer review. A lot of scientists and academics have to do peer review on top of all of the other stuff that they're doing, which is a lot usually.

Jason: 29:41

Like, usually are teaching classes, doing their own research, and then also peer reviewing other people's work. And I would imagine that that goes for ethical review and institutional review at universities and stuff like that. I just think our entire, like, scientific infrastructure is extremely under attack right now, and I really worry about it. And then alongside of that, there the rise of things like archive, which is ARXIV, is where a lot of new AI research is being published, which is not peer reviewed, notably. And a lot of the research that gets published there eventually is peer reviewed and published, and there's a lot of interesting things that go on there.

Jason: 30:28

I I think that archive is quite interesting. But I think what we're starting to see is a lot of people doing initial research that either can't be replicated or that is not gonna be peer reviewed. They publish it. It gets a lot of hype. And it's, like, pretty unclear whether, like like, it's just not a great system.

Jason: 30:52

It's like the the importance of peer review can't be sort of, like, understated, but I feel like a lot of the most hyped research gets publicized before it is peer reviewed, and that is not great. Because often, if the science doesn't work out, like, if it is bunk science, you know, of of research that's been ultra hyped, that, like, debunking of the science is usually not nearly doesn't nearly get as much attention, I would say.

Joseph: 31:26

Yes. Then you have this second one. Right? The second comment?

Jason: 31:33

Yeah. This is from Chris Corner. This about the Reddit study. This, of course, begs the question, how many times have people been manipulated by bots on Reddit for other nefarious purposes? It's alarming how easily we can be manipulated by simple text, especially when we think it comes from another genuine human being.

Jason: 31:52

That is something we actually address on the normal edition of this podcast, but I think it's really important and it it's just like kind of the saving grace of this really unethical study. It's just like the fact that they did disclose it sort of shows how easy something like this can happen. And the fact that it happened, like, I I just think that we know people want to manipulate Reddit. I think that text is really hard to tell if it's a bot or not, sort of depending on the context of that. Like, I think if you're one on one talking to a bot, it can be quite easy to determine that it's a bot or at least I think it's easier.

Jason: 32:36

But when it's just like a comment in a thread of hundreds of comments or like a a person responding to a tweet among hunger hundreds of people doing it, it can be really difficult. So I think think very bad. Not a good sitch.

Joseph: 32:52

Yeah. Totally. Here's a quick one I wanted to bring up on how four zero four media is navigating economic headwinds piece. You know, sort of just an update of some people unsubscribing because of the economy, but, hey, things are okay. Our business model, the whole point is that we can be prepared for this, etcetera, etcetera.

Joseph: 33:11

Go read the full thing if you're interested in that. But here's here's one from George. You've all been doing great work, and I'm I'm especially happy to support a journalist founded enterprise. I've shared many articles and your scoops have led to fairly wide recognition. I'd say keep it up.

Joseph: 33:26

And I think the reason I brought this up was just when they say I've shared many articles and like, it really is word-of-mouth is crazy because it's just I mean, it may not have the scale, obviously, of social media, but it's just so much more effective in that if somebody's scrolling and then they see an article from four zero four media and they're not familiar with our work, they might be like, what the hell is this website? Like, obviously, you as a bank subscriber, you know us and you're familiar. The vast majority of the world is absolutely not. You know, by all metrics, we are tiny, or small compared to other things. And I can often tell this where we'll have a huge scoop that basically breaks containment out of our normal sort of readership.

Joseph: 34:10

And it doesn't have to be subscribers, just sort of the normal sort of people who might read a website like ours, like a tech site, and politics site. And you'll start getting replies from people who are clearly not familiar with 404 I got one the other day. There was like a screenshot of like a one of these stupid bias meters, and there was like, here's an assessment of four zero four media. And I don't know why you're applying to that at me. You know?

Joseph: 34:36

I run the website. I know what's going on. I don't know. Who who are you trying to convince? I don't know.

Emanuel: 34:40

And that's the funniest thing that happens. Like, it used to happen in Vice all the time where you would write something, it would go viral, and someone would disagree with you, and they would comment something to the tune of, oh, wait until the owners of four four media hear what Emmanuel did on their website. And it's like, bruh. It's it's just it's me and my friends. It's like, you gonna report me to Sam?

Emanuel: 35:05

What are you doing? It's true. Like, as if there's a board and, like, a CEO and, like, all that stuff.

Jason: 35:11

Like a long time ago, the DJI article or one of them where it was, like, email sent to Sam being like, your colleague Jason did something deeply unethical blah blah blah. And it's like

Sam: 35:22

Yeah.

Jason: 35:22

Did not.

Sam: 35:23

People do that back and forth to us all the time. Not all the time, but when they do it, it's fucking funny. It's like, yeah, know I was there.

Jason: 35:29

You'll never I

Sam: 35:30

told him to

Joseph: 35:30

do it.

Jason: 35:30

Come between us. You'll never pull us apart.

Sam: 35:33

Tag him if he wants. It's pretty funny. We should get in here.

Joseph: 35:36

It's like when people reply to the paywall, and I'm sure I've said this before, they just say paywall. I'm like, yeah. No. I put it on. Like, I went into the CMS, and they put the pay why are you telling me, dude?

Sam: 35:44

It's like, it's working.

Joseph: 35:45

That's good. But when you have when you break out containment and then other people see it, blah blah blah. But when you have word-of-mouth, kinda like George's and to be fair, they don't say word-of-mouth. They say sharing, but I'm just using it as a jumping board for it. But, like, if a friend if somebody tells their friend, hey.

Joseph: 36:02

I saw this article on four zero four media. I've read them for a while. They're legit. Like, that is probably just so much more likely to get somebody to actually read us and actually subscribe rather than coming across this website kind of randomly that has pretty slick black and green branding and stuff. And they to be fair, if if you haven't come across it before, you're like, I don't know what is going on with this site.

Joseph: 36:26

I hope the journalism speaks for itself because it's so transparent about where we get information and that sort of thing. But that's all I wanted to say. Whose is this one? The headline was vibe coded AI app generates recipes for cyanide ice cream and cum soup. I literally don't remember this one.

Joseph: 36:42

Maybe I was awake.

Sam: 36:44

Sounds like a manual.

Jason: 36:45

Yeah. Take a wild guess. A wild guess.

Sam: 36:48

Did you email that? Yeah.

Emanuel: 36:52

I'm only doing cum stories today. So this story was about a vibe coded app from someone who was actually pretty high up at Y Combinator, and he wanted to make a recipe app. He vibe coded it. He was like, wow. Vibe coding is so amazing.

Emanuel: 37:07

And by the time I found it, some trolls had already found it and were making it generate a bunch of, like, really stupid, perhaps dangerous recipes for bombs, for making cocaine, for cum soup, etcetera. And there's a couple of comments I wanna read here. The first one is from PJ Connors, and he wrote a really long and good comment, but I'll read just a section of it. He says, the guy who made the cum soup recipe could have made a cum soup recipe the old fashioned way with a pen and paper and a little creative ingenuity, but he didn't. He waited for an artificial intelligence program to come along, and then he told that program to make a cum soup recipe.

Emanuel: 37:46

I don't think it's just AI making everything easier that leads people to make horrible garbage that they otherwise wouldn't, but, of course, that's a factor. There's also the fact that AI engine protects the makers of AI garbage from taking ownership of the garbage they make. Really great point. Right? It's like, we see this all the time, and I've I've just, like, kudos to to TJ for really boiling it down to the most important point about this, which is this guy who's allegedly smart, very involved in the tech business, has a lot of money, invests in companies, and so on, makes this thing it turns out to be garbage, and he could just be like, it's the AI.

Emanuel: 38:31

It wasn't me. You know? And just wanted to point that out. And then someone responded to him, David, and he says, not everyone is afraid of being known as the creator of cum recipes. And he links to Sam, I was wondering if you had already mentioned this in a different story that you did at Motherboard, but he links to this book called Semenology.

Emanuel: 38:56

It's the semen bartender's handbook.

Sam: 38:59

Oh, yeah. Classic. What? Classic.

Emanuel: 39:03

You know it?

Sam: 39:04

Yeah.

Emanuel: 39:04

Okay. I was wondering because at some point you wrote Sam did a column at Motherboard called rule 34, and one of them was about cum, just like the prevalence of cum and, like, the fetishization of cum and and porn. And I guess that's where it showed up in that one.

Sam: 39:24

Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. And it's like I think and, like, I think Vice has written similar stories because there's it's like and it's along the vein of, like, that woman who did the yeast bread. Do you remember this?

Emanuel: 39:38

Like, I want the yogurt. I remember a

Sam: 39:40

yeast like bodily fluid recipes. But, yeah, I had heard of the com recipe book. I do not own a copy, unfortunately.

Emanuel: 39:49

But yeah. I just completely forgot about it. And it just it's it's a full book, and there's, like, an intro intro here that's pretty well written. I just wanna quote a part of it. This is from the semenology book.

Emanuel: 39:59

I originally wrote the book to change the negative view of semen as food and encourage readers to open their minds, kitchens, and ultimately their mouths to semen. We eat milk, cow secretions, and eggs, chicken menstruation. So why all the fuss about semen's inappropriateness as food? I mean, I I it's a well articulated argument. I don't I'm not sure I agree with it, but I just thought it was a really funny thing for a comicer to point out that these recipes actually do do exist and were written by humans.

Sam: 40:32

This is what AI is taking from us. Yeah. The innovation in the kitchen with come. Get in there. Get back in the kitchen.

Joseph: 40:41

Sorry. I got distracted by figuring out what fonts this beer menu is using because I I see that font all the time. I thought it was play gothic bowl, but it's not. That's a it's a different font. Anyway

Jason: 40:55

Thank you. Thank thanks for that one. That was good.

Emanuel: 40:58

Do you want some of the do you want a recipe for a semen rimmed margarita? Not

Jason: 41:04

right now. That's maybe later. You

Joseph: 41:08

wanna talk about I wanted

Jason: 41:09

to I wanted to bring up this article by Splinter, which is titled plagiarizing independent journalists as part of mainstream media's business by Jacob Weinling. It's a very good article. And while I was reading it, I got a push notification that the New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes. New York Times does good articles, of course, but also really doesn't like to link to people who broke news. In this case, it was about our friend at the handbasket, Marissa Cabas, who has been breaking tons and tons of news.

Jason: 41:43

But also, we've been breaking lots of news lately and lots of people at larger outlets, let's say, have not been linking to us or they link very deep in the story, like, you know, paragraph 15, something like this. And I think it's most affected Joseph's articles recently, but I think we've all experienced it a lot over the years. And this is something that I have beefed about aggressively with, you know, like, writers at the New York Times, at Bloomberg, at at big publications, sometimes politely in their DMs and sometimes politely in emails, and then other times very aggressively publicly on Twitter and Blue Sky. And I just wanted to bring this up that it really sucks when people don't link to you. I think we try our best to link.

Jason: 42:44

There are times where you, like, publish an article that comes out at, a similar time as someone else and you're both sort of working on the same story and it's unclear sort of, like, if if any linking is necessary and and there's some, like, gray areas, blah blah blah. But, yeah, it definitely is a thing where, like, bigger news outlets don't like to link to smaller news outlets. Happens to us all the time at Vice. It happens to us still. I think that some outlets are pretty good about it, others are not.

Jason: 43:20

And I was just curious how y'all feel about this at the moment because I've had a real evolution in thinking over the last few months on this. It's still annoying, but I I I've had like a a real evolution. So I'm curious what what you guys think.

Emanuel: 43:34

What could this evolution possibly be? I wanna know first. Yeah.

Joseph: 43:37

You at peace or some shit? You're like all zen about it now? Change. Oh, I feel like bigger than that.

Jason: 43:41

No. So okay. A few things. One, used to really piss me off. Does still upset me.

Jason: 43:48

Like, I'm not happy about it. But it is not always the case. I think that working at many of these larger companies, like, sucks ass. And many of them have so much, like, bureaucracy and nonsense that if I were forced forced if I were to work at one of these places, the overwhelming feeling I have is pity. One of deep pity.

Jason: 44:15

I'm just so happy that I don't work for, like, a large news organization. I can't imagine doing it ever again. I don't wanna do it ever again. The fact that we control our own website and control the business and control what our policies on linking are and all of that. I, like, see someone linking to us in, like, the fifteenth paragraph, and my feeling is, like, wow.

Jason: 44:40

This person works for a well funded large news organization, and their editor is, like, go aggregate Jason and Joseph and Sam and Emmanuel, and we'll, like, link to it in the fifteenth paragraph. And they're just, like, rewriting our stories, and that probably sucks. Sucks to be them. That's my evolution. It's one of deep pity.

Emanuel: 45:07

I love that. That's so good. Just on that point

Jason: 45:11

Agreed or not agreed? I mean,

Emanuel: 45:14

I do know, and I think we we reported on this at Motherboard or someone did elsewhere, where a lot of the time writers, specifically at the Times, would want to link and it would get removed in editing. Like, it's not necessarily the person who's byline you see who's making that call. It's higher up in the organization. I do think about that when it happens.

Joseph: 45:41

Yeah. I still pursue it. And as you say, Jason, it was me with some stories recently. One example is just, you know, we first reported the the Trump administration was using tele message. We beat the Washington Post to that by, like, twenty minutes.

Joseph: 46:00

I asked, hey. Look. We reported this first. They said respectfully, we also saw it. And I'm like, yeah.

Joseph: 46:05

Sure. Whatever. Twenty minutes. Whatever. New York Times, the day after reports it without crediting us.

Joseph: 46:11

I'm like, come on. It's a day after. Like, you gotta credit us there. And so I emailed the New York Times and they did update it. With the hack, it's been quite and it really depends on the story.

Joseph: 46:23

Like, if it's a story where there's no plausible deniability, basically, that the Outlook could have found it anywhere else, they will link to you. Like, with the TeleMessage hack, it's like, four zero four media is reporting that this signal clone was hacked and, like, the company isn't providing a statement now. Like, they they have to credit you. But, you know, I would say that I haven't become fully content in my soul like you, Jason, but I, like, don't care if smaller sites do it. I don't have time to do that.

Joseph: 46:54

But if it's like the Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Feet, the the normal big legacy outlets, then I'll do it because it's like, hey, man. I put a lot of work into that, and all I want is just my fair credit. You know?

Emanuel: 47:05

I mean, at that point, you have to, which is I think the point of the article that Jason was talking about. Like, if someone like the New York Times is not linking back to a smaller publication that broke the story, they're they're just robbing us, like, straight up. There's we we we were talking about word-of-mouth. That's really important. This is really important too.

Emanuel: 47:28

Like, this is one way we grow. So

Joseph: 47:32

Sure. Jason, you put a comment here about your massive blue story with Emmanuel.

Jason: 47:38

Oh, wow. Why are all mine in a row?

Joseph: 47:40

I I think you

Jason: 47:41

put a little So so, yeah, to be clear, still mad, but very zen. Very feel feel bad. Feel bad for them. Feel bad for them. So this is about our massive blue story on Emmanuel's beef of the week from several weeks ago.

Jason: 47:58

Rashaev left this. Personally, I appreciate the heads up on things like Massive Blue and Shadow Dragon, especially because tools like this are used not just are not just used on a municipal level, but also on a national and international level to surveil and control individual people in silence descent, which makes it all the more concerning that the comment about clickbait is essentially an attempt to silence a warning about these products. This was about someone who was beefing with us because we were, like, amplifying the existence of MassiveBlue, which is the AI bot tool that cops were using. And Emmanuel handled it very well in the behind the blog. But basically, like, our position is if cops are getting money if cops are using taxpayer money to buy a piece of surveillance technology, it makes no sense for us to not write about it.

Jason: 48:54

People need to know about that. And in this case, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I do think that us writing about it does not amplify it so much as gives other cities and other city councils the ammunition to consider whether a technology like this is something that they want in their town. Because often, you know, the cops will try to buy something or buy a new toy in a town, and the city council have no idea what it even is, but the cops are there and the and, like, representatives for the company are there promising the moon about some new technology, and there's very little information about it on the Internet. And so the city council in the case in any case, only has information directly from the cops and directly from the companies selling it.

Jason: 49:51

They don't have any sort of, like, privacy perspective. They don't have any journalistic perspective. They don't have any perspective on the other cities that have tried this technology and found that it doesn't work. And so I think it's really important that we do this sort of reporting, and I wanted to thank Rashaad for for noticing that. But, Emmanuel, this was like your original beef.

Jason: 50:10

If you have anything to add?

Emanuel: 50:12

Just that. There's a part in the story where we show emails that we got in a FOIA request from a city council member who's like desperately trying to find more information about this technology and whether he should approve it, and if it works, and what does it even do, and that is that's why we do the story. Right? It's like people are trying to find information about this stuff so they can make decisions about how to spend taxpayer dollars and impose, like, AI systems on their, you know, constituents or whatever.

Joseph: 50:51

Yeah. Sam, I think this one is yours. Mark Zuckerberg thinks you don't have enough friends, and his chatbots are the answer.

Sam: 51:00

Yeah. Yeah. So this story was based on an interview that Mark did on a podcast, and he basically just, like, talked for an hour and a half about like, gave, like, very whatever answers about a bunch of stuff. But the thing that went super viral from the podcast was he said that the average American has fewer than three friends fewer than three people that they would consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more. And this came the day after I published a story about AI chatbots on Instagram and Meta in general, especially, like, AI AI therapist chatbots.

Sam: 51:47

So, obviously, it's like Mark is creating the thing that's causing the problem and now is trying to solve the problem, which is, like, classic classic classic tech CEO. So no surprise there, but noteworthy because he he said it. He admitted. So yeah. So commenting on the story, Eric said Eric writes, Mark Zuckerberg owns one of the largest, most influential tech companies in the world, a company whose entire mission and charter is to connect people, and the best he and his army of nerds can come up with is to fake it, Christ on a fucking cracker, go hire a normal earth standard human and see what they can come up with.

Sam: 52:23

Because between virtual people with nothing going on below the belt and these asinine chatbots as substitutes for friends, I'm beginning to think Zuck doesn't really understand people. I just really liked Christ on a fucking cracker in our comment section. I enjoyed that a lot, so thank you, Eric, for contributing that. And, yeah, I mean, he's completely right. It's like, it's total detachment from, like, the reality of what people's lives are like.

Sam: 52:45

And even if it's true, which I couldn't find any I couldn't find the study that he was specifically pulling from talking about, the demand for more friends or, like, the only three friends theory, I found something close to it that was related to, like, male loneliness, of course. But he was like I don't know. It was just, like, pulling stats out of his ass as far as I'm concerned. It's like because I couldn't find anything to back this up, but maybe he has studies that I don't he just is, like, so just detached from what normal people consider connection because I don't think he has any real non sycophantic connection in his day to day life.

Emanuel: 53:27

So Definitely projection much?

Sam: 53:30

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's like he doesn't have a friend, so he has to make everything bend to his will to compensate for that, which every big tech CEO is this way.

Joseph: 53:41

Yeah. I think there's one last comment and then just an article you wanted to talk about quickly, Sam, I think. But well, the headline of this one is the man who wants AI to help you cheat on everything. This is written by our regular contributor, Matthew Gault. Who who added this one?

Joseph: 53:57

Was this you, Sam?

Sam: 53:58

Yeah. I added this because the article that came out today in New York Mag, It was about OpenAI and ChatGPT and college students cheating their way through college. They're cheating their way through yeah. It's really crazy. I haven't actually gotten to read the whole thing fully, but I keep seeing everyone talking about this one particular snippet from the story, so I'm just gonna read this one line.

Sam: 54:24

They're talking about this student named Wendy turning in papers that were written by ChatGPC, like writing essays. And the writer said, asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in. And when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic. Critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. It's just like, I don't know, man.

Sam: 54:48

I'm so we're kinda cooked. Like, this is crazy. It's

Jason: 54:53

like, what

Sam: 54:53

is the point of going to college? I think is one of the writer asked one of the students. He's like, why are you here if you're just gonna, like, fake your way through it? You're not actually gonna learn anything. And he was like, well, this is the best place to find your cofounder and your wife.

Sam: 55:06

I was like, just we're done. We're done.

Jason: 55:10

You can find your cofounders at at work later. No problem.

Sam: 55:13

You can find your wife there too. But like

Joseph: 55:15

Well,

Sam: 55:17

true. That's so true. Beside the point. But, yeah, it's just like it's such a, like, totally just sad view of moving through the world is that I just need to, like, get through this thing so that I can get this piece of paper and experience no part of it as actually meaningful. I don't know.

Sam: 55:33

I think it's pathetic, but it seems to be the way things are going. So maybe we're gonna be dinosaurs soon on that mindset.

Jason: 55:40

I do think that the cooking of our education system is, you know, which has happened via budget cuts, war on teachers, war on libraries, you know, chat GPTs, cell phones in school, social media, TikTok, blah blah blah. Some, like, amalgamation of all of that is, oh, COVID also, like, learning, blah blah blah. Very bad situation. Like, I think it will take a moment to show up in whatever underlying economic indicators will happen, but, like, really, really, really, really concerning and, you know, doesn't seem like a lot of effort is being put in right now to fixing it. And I need to mention the computer history museum because I haven't yet in this podcast and where I went there, but they had a wall of, like, a kids exhibit where it was like, what are you happy about technology for?

Jason: 56:44

And they had people, like, write it in. And first of all, most of the people couldn't write, you know, no handwriting skills whatsoever, which I my handwriting sucks too, so no judgment, I guess. But, like, almost all of them were like, ChatGPT does my homework. ChatGPT writes my essays. Thank god for ChatGPT.

Jason: 57:03

Not good.

Emanuel: 57:04

I think if you go to college now or you're in high school, whatever, and you don't use it and you just, like, do the reading and do the work and write your essays, I feel like you're probably gonna crush in life because everybody else will be, like, super atrophied and boring and not have ideas. And I don't know. That's just my that's my intuition tells me that it's like, yes, it sucks and surely more people, like, will phone in their education because it's available as an easy option, but it's a good time to, like, have a brain that gives you Dude, I had

Jason: 57:38

the same thought when I read the well, when I saw the New York Mag article because I was like, oh, you know how you get ahead in life? Read one book. Like, try like, read read one time, and you're, like, ahead of everyone else.

Joseph: 57:54

That's true. Alright. Should we leave that there? I looked up the email, and it is podcast@404media.co. I mean, look.

Joseph: 58:03

Still leave them in the comments because that's mostly what we respond to. But I don't know if you have a question that you feel like you'd like us to respond to on the pods, send email in, and maybe you don't wanna put it on the website for whatever reason. Email it, and and we'll try, to get to it. But I guess, apart from that, I'll play a really, really intense subscriber music. If I can find it again, here we go.