The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:04

Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 40 4 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 4 04media.c0, as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.c0.

Joseph: 00:30

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

Sam: 00:36

Howdy.

Joseph: 00:37

Emmanuel Mayberg Hello. And Jason Kebler.

Jason: 00:42

Hello.

Joseph: 00:44

Alright. This is gonna be a slightly different episode. We're gonna usually, we talk about free stories, each week. Right? We're gonna open with 1, and then we're gonna talk about something that maybe Jason is still going to write about, but hasn't yet.

Joseph: 00:59

It's about the big migration to Blue Sky. So I guess are you are you writing about that, Jason?

Jason: 01:05

Yeah. Probably, it might be even be out by the time this is, this is published. Who knows?

Joseph: 01:10

Okay. I guess we'll see. And I'll let

Jason: 01:11

you know. We'll see. We'll see.

Joseph: 01:13

As for the first story, this is one I wrote. Apple quietly introduced iPhone reboot code, which is locking out cops. I guess I'll start with what Apple has done. And then, maybe Jason has some questions for me. But as the headline suggests, Apple has introduced this feature, an an undocumented feature, I'll say.

Joseph: 01:42

Like, there isn't, like, a blog post about it. There isn't anything really on Apple's website. But it appears to be called, inactivity reboot or something like that. And in essence, what happens is if an iPhone has not been unlocked for around 3 or 4 days, it will reboot itself. And now you may be thinking, okay.

Joseph: 02:11

Why the hell would I care about that? Also, I don't know. Maybe I had an have an alarm to go to the airport and it's gonna ruin my alarm or something like that. The point is, it seems, to make the phone more secure against forensic equipment, stuff like Gracy, stuff like celebrate.

Jason: 02:33

So I wanna talk about how cops get into phones, like, celebrate and Greg here, 2 of them, but there's 2 different modes. There's before first unlock and then after first unlock. Maybe that is, like, a good place to start here.

Joseph: 02:48

Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. So after first unlock, AFU, is as the name implies. Imagine a user has taken their iPhone.

Joseph: 03:00

They've powered it on as they would normally, and they've unlocked it at some point during the day. That puts the phone into an AFU, state. And, obviously, it's on a case by case basis. The operating system, the phone, also applies to Google Android handsets as well. But broadly speaking, that makes it a bit easier for tools like gray GreyKey or celebrate to get access to user data.

Joseph: 03:28

You then have b f u, before first unlock, which is basically when the user has not unlocked their phone. And you can imagine it's sort of the state of phone is in as soon as somebody turns it on. You know, if I turn on my iPad, for example, I can't use touch ID or anything like that to get into it. It always asks for the passcode. I haven't unencrypted that data or decrypted that data at any point.

Joseph: 03:55

So that is a BFU state. And if you're a forensic investigator, you don't want a phone to be in a b f u state because it's gonna be generally harder for you to actually get, data out of there. Does that answer your question?

Jason: 04:11

It does. I think, you've also reported recently on a few, like, leaked, I guess they're spreadsheets, but they're they're basically, like, what types of iPhones and what iOS can be unlocked before first unlock and after first unlock, and it's like some of these tools are able to, are are, like, not able to get into newer phones before first unlock if they're updated, or it takes longer, or or it's just, like, more difficult. Right?

Joseph: 04:47

Yeah. And, I mean, you're referring to some celebrate documents that we got a while ago.

Jason: 04:53

A few months ago. Yeah.

Joseph: 04:55

Yeah. This was back in July. And I think the documents were from a few months before that. I think they were dated April. And there it says stuff like, oh, unlocking iOS 17.4 at the time was in research.

Joseph: 05:10

And then, actually, shortly after we published that piece, some people leaked some other more updated celebrate documents. And they showed that Celebrate had caught up, and it was able to unlock IOS 17.4 in an AFU state, specifically. Like, you look at the spreadsheet, and it says, yes. We can do it, but only an after first unlock, which goes back to the point I said earlier about if you're a cop or forensic expert, you want in an AFU state. Because it seems, you know, at least with these leaked celebrate documents we reported on a while back and have seen the new newer ones, it's easier, basically, yeah, for them to do.

Jason: 05:51

Do you wanna talk a little bit about how you first, like, started reporting on this specific story? Because there's actually 2 articles, one based on a specific leaked cop document that you got, and then where they were sort of, like, theorizing what had happened, and then you figured it out and published the second story explaining the whole situation.

Joseph: 06:12

Yeah. So I'll put this one in the show notes as well. I just didn't wanna lead with it because it's not that we were wrong. It's that the cops were wrong. I was just reporting what they were saying.

Joseph: 06:22

But the headline was police freak out to iPhones mysteriously rebooting themselves, locking cops out. Okay. Sounds kinda straightforward. I got sent a document which is written by, it seems, law enforcement in Detroit. And they said that they had a bunch of iPhones ready to be forensically examined in their, you know, forensic laboratory or whatever.

Joseph: 06:47

And they go in to do that. And a bunch of them have, like, magically or mysteriously rebooted. And they're like, what the hell? The phones weren't like this, which is both in well, it's very interesting to us and very, very concerning, to them. They theorized that Apple had pushed an update to iOS 18 that was telling iOS 18 phones, like, sending them a message to nearby phones saying, oh, reboot yourself, almost like it was infecting or, like, poisoning other phones in the lab.

Joseph: 07:26

That is a very interesting theory. Multiple people I spoke to said, they didn't really put much weight into that theory. And then another leak I actually got later from somebody who works with Greaky, said they they doubt it as well. So it basically, the cops were, like, half right. They were they were right, obviously.

Joseph: 07:48

The phones are rebooting because they can see it right in front of them. They were just wrong about how and why exactly because it wasn't some sort of poisoning Ios 18 code that was infecting other devices. It was more there's basically a timer counting down, when a phone is, on the most recent Apple operating system. And I should say that I published that first piece, and then researchers very diligently, start digging through what updates may have happened. And one found the inactivity rebate.

Joseph: 08:26

I then spoke to a couple of others and then got a leak as well. And that's how we got to, the ultimate answer, this this undocumented feature. And I'll just clarify that, like, Apple hasn't given a statement on this. Obviously, I I'm talking to Apple. I'm trying to get a statement out of them, but they haven't confirmed it.

Joseph: 08:46

Instead, I've spoken to, you know, 3 or 4 people about it who independently verified it.

Jason: 08:53

Do you think that we could like, can you safely say that this feature was added for the express purpose of preventing tools like GreyKey and Cellebrite from breaking into phones, or is it a broader security mechanism? Like, obviously, we probably can't say for sure, but I think, like, does this seem like something that is targeted at the cops, or is it more of a broad security feature for its customers that has, like, other implications like anti theft and and things like that?

Joseph: 09:28

Yeah. Again, Apple isn't commenting, but I feel pretty confident in saying, at least in my own opinion, there's the latter. I think that Apple takes a much more general approach to security, and where they could they can introduce features that will impact lots of different parts or frets or that sort of thing. I mean, you can think about it sort of when they did that lockdown mode and that and that sort of restricts a lot of features on the phone. Some people will say that came in response to NSO malware being spread on iPhones and that sort of thing.

Joseph: 10:08

I don't think so. I think it's broadened that there's many more malware vendors and contractors. And I think it's sort of here in that having a phone reboot after a certain period of time will also potentially stop data being extracted from phones that have been stolen, for example, just by normal thieves on the street. I don't think they're necessarily specifically going out and being, like, we're gonna screw over Grachy or we're gonna screw over Celebrate. I mean, the consequences, they definitely are, but I don't think, at least in my opinion, that they're doing that specifically for that.

Joseph: 10:46

You know? And I think you can look back at some earlier features where they've they've introduced new stuff. Like, there was USB restrict restricted mode quite a few years ago at this point. And that made it so after a certain period of time, you couldn't sort of make the phone interact with a computer. It basically became like a dumb charging cable, so you couldn't plug it into these devices and that sort of thing.

Joseph: 11:12

I see a sort of that in in that context, you know.

Jason: 11:16

Yeah. I mean, the the cat and mouse game between Apple and, I guess, Google as well, but, and other phone manufacturers, but especially Apple and Google and law enforcement and the government and hackers more broadly is super interesting, and it's something that you've been covering for a really long time. It's also something that I mean, the big sort of flashpoint was the San Bernardino shooting a long time ago. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but that that was sort of a moment where there was a ton of pressure on Apple to put a backdoor into, you know, the the suspected shooter's phones. Well, they were the actual shooter's phones.

Jason: 11:56

And I feel like, this is just my opinion, but I I think that there's some truth to it. There was there was an ongoing court case between the Department of Justice and Apple, and it was headed toward this, like, very important or what would have probably been a pretty important, like, court decision. And what happened instead is the Department of Justice and the FBI found another way to get into that phone, and I believe we still don't know, at least, like, on the record who did it.

Joseph: 12:25

Well, the FBI never confirmed it, but it's Asimov Security, which is I had one source. I could never I could I covered about Asimov Security with our former colleague, Lorenzo, years ago, and they're a super important, very, very small hacking shop that works with 5 Eyes Intelligence Agencies and Law Enforcement. And then The Washington Post reported later that it was them that basically broke the San Bernardino phone. Yeah.

Jason: 12:49

Yeah. I I guess I I bring it up because Apple is actually like, there's kind of a symbiotic relationship between Apple and companies like Azimuth and Cellebrite and Grayshift where Apple will update iOS to not, be as hackable, then they update their hacking tools to break into them. And in some ways, this keeps some of the pressure off of Apple to have a formal backdoor into iOS or into the iPhone where Apple probably doesn't like the existence of these companies, but the fact that they do exist has taken a lot of pressure off of of them, in my opinion. Like, can you talk a little bit about that?

Joseph: 13:35

I mean, I think that's a really, really good way of pulling it. It's similar to I gave a talk recently at Defcon, and, like, there's the the free options when you get data from companies. Right? There's the front door, and you send a a search warrant or a court order to Discord, and it gives the user messages or something like that. At least when it comes to encrypted messaging services like Signal, you don't really want them doing with that.

Joseph: 13:58

Right? That would kinda suck. The other one is a backdoor, which you also don't really want for signal. And to your point, you don't really want a backdoor in the iPhone because there's gonna be all sorts of unintended consequences. Because can that backdoor be protected?

Joseph: 14:14

Would it be abused? Is it gonna be available to non Western law enforcement? All of that sort of thing. And the third option is basically what we have, which is hacking goes on, Apple and others try to stop it. The hacking companies get better and get workarounds, and the cycle continues.

Joseph: 14:32

And it's expensive and it's labor intensive, but that's better than having a backdoor. You know? And I think the way you put it, Jason, was really interesting in that. The taking pressure off Apple, I haven't really thought about it that way before. That's, that's really, really interesting.

Jason: 14:50

Yeah. I mean, I I guess it's just like if these tools didn't exist, we would probably be having the encryption debate constantly in the United States. And it hasn't gone away entirely, but I think the fact that law enforcement can get into these into most phones has made it so that there's not as much political pressure on Apple to introduce a full backdoor into into the iPhone, because that was something they were obsessed with for a while. There's, like, a huge, you know, history of going dark and just, like, this tension between law enforcement and technology creators and encryption providers. And you still have some of that, especially worldwide, like, there's there's been some attempts to force Apple and other companies to to put a backdoor in, but it feels like the US government has at least kind of pulled off of that for a while.

Jason: 15:44

Anyways, what do you think happens next? Like, what is what is the ultimate impact of this new feature that you found?

Joseph: 15:53

Yeah. Usually, I would say, well, they'll just continue. The cycle of life carries on. And people find exploits, and they hack into iPhones, and that sort of thing. And I do think that's the case, and I do think that will continue.

Joseph: 16:06

That being said, having a 4 day timer in the iPhone to reboot, to go into a state where the cops can't get in, that is dramatic, for sure. You know? And I think what will happen practically is that I mean, of course, maybe the Grey Keys and the Celebrites of the world will try to find more technical solutions to get around that. I think it will probably change policy. I don't know.

Joseph: 16:38

Local, state, federal, forensic laboratories where they say, like, we have 3 or 4 days to get into this phone, and we need it to be stores correctly. We need to get it we need to get it into a AFU state. We need to unlock it, something like that. Technically, again, you're gonna need the tools to do that potentially. Maybe there'll be then be more pressure to, on the individual suspects.

Joseph: 17:08

Like, you have a time you have a deadline to unlock this phone for us. And if you don't, there's gonna be a problem. You know? Because it even got to the point where they started introducing face ID and touch ID. Right?

Joseph: 17:20

You then have in the search warrants new not new now, but at the time, boilerplate language saying, we can force you to put your finger on here, like, legally. You know? And I don't know. Maybe they introduce more language that could, do something about the timeline. You know?

Jason: 17:36

I think before we end this section, do we have a sense of how long it takes to break into a phone with a strong password that is updated. Like, this isn't necessarily, like, a 10 second process, like

Joseph: 17:52

That's as

Jason: 17:53

we understand.

Joseph: 17:54

That's a fair point, actually. I don't have, like, modern or recent, data on, like, how long it would take. But it's interesting in that, if that 4 day timer is counting down since it was unlocked before, if your brute forcing attempt or your unlocking attempt is gonna take more than 4 days, are you just, like, also screwed there as well? It's not like, oh, we can just keep the phone alive. It's like, no.

Joseph: 18:21

You have to basically get in there. I don't know. Yeah. It really depends on the passcode, you know, that sort of thing.

Jason: 18:28

Yeah. It's just because you can alter not alter, but there's an option on the iPhone to instead of using a 4 or 6 number passcode, you can have an alphanumeric password. And if it's a really long one, that is by definition gonna take longer to brute force. If if that is how these tools are currently working, which, you know, it's it's kind of hard to say, but that's an interesting that's, like, a question I have, essentially.

Joseph: 18:55

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, hopefully, we can get some clarity on that as well. Alright.

Joseph: 19:00

We'll leave that there. And then when we come back after the break, we're gonna talk about Blue Sky. We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back.

Joseph: 19:23

We're gonna call this section the big Blue Sky migration. So what happened? What happened to Blue Sky over the weekend? Did everybody get more followers? Is is that what happened?

Jason: 19:34

Did

Sam: 19:34

anything happen in the last week? Like, anything big that would make something happen with social media? I don't know.

Jason: 19:41

I mean,

Joseph: 19:42

you could layout if you want. I mean, do you wanna layout the timeline? It's it's a very short timeline. But

Jason: 19:48

I think

Sam: 19:49

I'll let Jason do it because I think he maybe has a different perspective. I mean, obviously, Trump won, and Elon owns Twitter is kind of the very short version.

Joseph: 19:56

Sure.

Sam: 19:57

So but, yeah, I have that sort of thing. To me

Jason: 20:00

is I haven't seen, like, a specific, like, call to action in the way that I have seen in the past when people have migrated off of Twitter to other platforms. I mean, I I feel like it was kind of just like a some sort of, like, shared holy shit moment, after Trump was elected, sort of, like, with the help of Elon Musk, but I don't know. Like, I don't I didn't see some, like, amazing blog post that said, like, everyone needs to move to Blue Sky now. It just seemed like people started doing it. And, like, now everyone is talking about it.

Jason: 20:37

But over the weekend, I was trying to figure out why people are moving to Blue Sky. And, I mean, I the reason is Trump elect Trump's election, Elon Musk's, like, dominance over Twitter. I think also people are starting to get annoyed with threads for reasons we can possibly talk about, but it seemed like people were just, like, moving over very quickly over the weekend. And I I got, like, 6,000 followers in 2 days over the weekend, 2 and a half days, something like that. I was getting, like, hundreds of followers an hour, and I wasn't even doing anything.

Jason: 21:14

Like, I don't know. I just, like, was refreshing blue sky and, you know, I don't say that to to brag, although I do like

Joseph: 21:23

my serotonin. It sounds like

Jason: 21:24

you're My serotonin go go way way up, dopamine, etcetera, because I I was like, wow. People following me. But it was more like, there it feels like there's a critical mass on this social media network for, like, maybe the first time, but I don't know. Did anyone else was anyone else even excited about this, or is everyone just very mad at me for talking about it endlessly?

Sam: 21:48

I'm, like, begrudgingly back posting again on Blue Sky. I just I'm so tired of thinking about, like, which social network is the right one to be on, and I don't wanna add another one to my list of things to check. Like, I have to stay on Twitter because we're journalists. We kinda need to be there. But now, I guess, everybody's on Blue Sky.

Sam: 22:11

Like, it just feels like another thing to check. So, like, that's that's why I have an attitude about it that people may be picking up on, that Jason has definitely picked up on because I've told him upfront, fuck Blue Sky. But, you know, it's like, it's not anything against the people moving there. It's just like, god, here we go again. And it's happened it happened in, you know every time there's, like, a major thing that pisses people off on Twitter, people are like, I'm goodbye to the hell site.

Sam: 22:37

And it's like, okay. See you in 3 days. Like, I don't know.

Joseph: 22:39

But this feels different. It definitely feels different in that the last time there was the well, there was an attempt to a big migration was a at least as I can remember, was when Musk originally bought Twitter. Right? And then and then there were the blog posts and there were the articles about it's time to leave. We're gonna leave it.

Joseph: 22:57

And, you know, nothing wrong with writing those. And I agree broadly broadly with all of their points. It's just that sort of what you were getting at, Jason, this one felt more organic and that people weren't, like, talking about doing it. They just did it. And that's interesting.

Joseph: 23:14

You know? Emmanuel, did you notice any uptick and and sort of were you already there or not?

Emanuel: 23:21

I am there, and I definitely noticed the uptick. I think, one reason that this wave seems to, hold more than other ones, and definitely the reason I'm noticing it is the lists that people use now to kind of get up to speed are very useful. Right? Like, I I I mean, the most annoying thing for me about migrating to a new social network is reconstructing your feed and getting all the the follows you want. And somebody many people have just created, like, list of people you should follow, and you can follow all of them with one click.

Joseph: 23:58

Nice. And I think the starter packs.

Emanuel: 23:59

Yeah. Yeah. The starter packs. And I think the reason we're seeing, like, so many like, I've gotten a few 1,000 follows as well, and that's probably because I'm on, like, a couple of lists. And I think that's probably true for all of us.

Emanuel: 24:10

So that makes it that makes it easy to get up to speed, and it makes it very useful. Just personally, I think maybe I don't know. 2 years ago or around when Elon bought Twitter, there were a lot of takes. And I think there was maybe 1 on motherboard about how it's the end of the social media age. And just from, like, the perspective of an individual user, that's where I'm at.

Emanuel: 24:39

I'm on all the networks, and I look at all of them looking for stories. And that's something we were talking about this week. Like, okay. How do I get, like, an interesting feed so I can find cool stories on blue sky? But I am not, I think, ever going to again be a person who is just, like, tweeting or skidding my thoughts and feelings of what I'm doing throughout the day.

Emanuel: 25:06

Like, I think that I'm done with that forever.

Jason: 25:09

Yep.

Emanuel: 25:09

I share my stories, which I know is a very boring feed, so I I don't be rude to anyone for not following me. And I I go and I read as much as I can always. I'm on I'm on there all day looking for stuff, but I'm I'm not interested in interacting that way. And I thought, like, we as a society were kind of moving away from that. And if anything I mean, whatever.

Emanuel: 25:34

People should go wherever they're happy and and, like, do whatever they want. I don't judge you for for for tweeting or skidding, but, I I thought I thought we were moving towards, like, group chats and Discord channels and, comments on subscription websites like 44 Media. Like, I'm I love interacting there. If you email me, I'll email you back. If you comment on a story, I will I will respond to the comment.

Emanuel: 26:00

We love reading, you know, emails and comments you you you send us here on on the podcast, but just like tweeting into the void. No. Thank you. I don't care I don't care where you're doing it. Yeah.

Jason: 26:12

So there was, in the aftermath of the election, there was, like, this really widespread take that the left needs a version of Joe Rogan, which I won't get into here, but it feels to me like this is that. But for social media where people are saying, like, the the left needs a version of Twitter now that Twitter is expressly owned by someone who may work in the Trump administration, who actively, you know, campaign for Trump. You have also things like Truth Social and Parler and Rumble and Gab, which are these specific right wing social media networks that, to be honest, I have more or less discounted over the last few years. You know, there was this whole time when people were saying, like, you know, don't amplify Nazis or don't amplify the far right, blah blah blah. And, like, the effect of that was they form their own social media networks, and there's something called, like, Donald dot win, which was is, like, a Reddit replacement that happened after Reddit banned The Donald.

Jason: 27:30

And I think it's really hard to say what the impact of those specifically, like, right wing social media platforms are, but I did read or hear a take that I kind of agreed with where you have places like Gab and Truth Social where, like, absolutely batshit things happen, and then you have, like, a right wing media ecosystem that picks and chooses things that, like, resonate there and then, like, brings them into something that's, like, more mainstream, and then it's sort of, like, filtered through into, like, the public consciousness. And I'm not saying that blue sky is, like, is going to be that. I have no idea, but I do think something very interesting and extremely cringey happened, which is, AOC was like, hey. I'm back on Blue Sky. And she tweeted something, and then CNN was like, here's what AOC said on Blue Sky, and it, like, filtered out of this specific, like, smaller social media network into, like, a larger context.

Jason: 28:39

And I don't know if that matters at all, But I think that the idea that I've seen where it's like social media is fractured in a big way, and if you're just posting on these smaller platforms, it doesn't matter, and you're just, like, talking to yourselves. I don't know if that's actually gonna be true. I think that it does have the ability to, like, form larger talking points because that's that's what conservatives have done for a long time, and they've done it very successfully. I'm curious what you think about that.

Joseph: 29:09

I mean, I think that makes sense. Yeah. I think that it's probably gonna branch out, you know. And you said this all fractured and decentralized, and I guess blue sky is the one of one at the moment. You, Jason, specifically, previously for that Mastodon was the one of the moment.

Joseph: 29:30

What was the article you wrote a while back? And Will You Roam?

Jason: 29:35

Yeah. It was over a year ago. The title was Mastodon is the good one, and I have a whole, like, spiel about it, which is I still post on Mastodon. I think Mastodon is is good. I think the fediverse is, like, interesting and, like, we are on it, and I think that it's good to have decentralized social media that's portable.

Jason: 29:57

It obviously uses, like, you know, the Fediverse platform, whereas Blue Sky uses something called the AT protocol. And for a while, they were not interoperable in any way. And now they interoperable in any way. And now they are kind of interoperable, which I think is notable. But I guess I'll say is that, the the thing that should not win is threads.

Jason: 30:21

It's just like it's owned by Mark Zuckerberg. It is like a disastrous like, like, Meta is a disastrous company for many of the same reasons that Twitter is a disastrous company, in my opinion. It, like, spreads disinformation in the same way. It, you know, it deprioritizes links. It, like, doesn't want politics or news, and yet there's many, many people sort of defending threads as an alternative to Twitter, and I think that's, like, so stupid.

Jason: 30:51

I think it's, like, one of the stupidest things. I just I'd have no questions for it.

Joseph: 30:56

Is it is it Fred's super aggressive moderation where we post one of our articles and it has, a nipple in it and people get scared and it gets removed from Fred's and they'd, like, go home crying? Or is it, like, the its user base numbers are entirely inflated because there's just ports all over from Instagram and they say, look how many hundreds of millions of users we got. Yeah. Because you copied and pasted them. What is it exactly?

Jason: 31:21

Dude, it's all of those things. It's that it's I mean, it's the fact that it's, like, many of the people are, like, brain poison Silicon Valley, like, rank and file defenders of, like, meta's practices and stuff. It's like the algorithm is super broken. It's not real time in any way, shape, or form. I don't know.

Joseph: 31:42

Use as well.

Jason: 31:42

It's like Sam has the most interesting threads feeds, like, that I've ever heard about, and it's like maybe, Sam, you can talk about, like, what you get on threads. Yeah. I mean

Sam: 31:54

yeah. There's gotta be a middle ground because threads is because threads is like you're kind of on threads if you're on Instagram in a way. It's like I think it's they're kind of, like, almost because it's meta. But on Instagram, I can see threads posts on my feed. So that's how I consume my my threads intake.

Sam: 32:14

But the threads algorithm is so aggressively, like, for what it thinks my demographic is, which is middle aged white women who may or may not have children who are dealing with some kind of, like, serious mental or physical illness, and that's just all I see on my timeline. Emmanuel's laughing really hard. It's like that's, I mean, that's definitely, like, an algorithmic niche that is very valuable to these social networks. So that's what I get all the time. So people who are, like, having, like, real serious crises with their children involved, and I'm like, go to the hospital or the police, get off threads, and then you get to the end of the the story the the story time they're doing, and it's like it was kind of like the whole time, it was like a really boring story, and I'm like, my heart rate's up reading it.

Sam: 33:10

So threads has an algorithm that's, like, very much attacking me. And then Blue Sky has, like, no algorithm. Right? So the chronological timeline, and just, like, not having it feed me anything that's, like, specifically relevant to me is just, like, here's everyone you follow in a row, what they've said is also very chaotic to me and not, not a useful way for me to look at, like, what's going on because people are just posting about, like, what they had for breakfast or, like, whatever thought, whatever Margaret Atwood quote comes into their mind. It's like, okay.

Sam: 33:46

That's not really, like, something I wanna use either. I kinda wanna know what's, like, popular right now or, I guess, there's a popular tab, but I wanna know what's, like, kind of popping above the feed and, like, getting attention as it's getting attention and not just, like, happening in the moment. I don't know. It's, like, maybe I just need to spend more time with Blue Sky and, like, unplug my mind from the algorithm. Maybe I'm just, like, getting out of the matrix.

Sam: 34:07

I don't know.

Jason: 34:07

Well, so when I was I I wrote my behind the blog last week saying, like, I had no way of following the election because I, like, could not find a good, like, real time ish feed. It's like threads was useless. There wasn't that much happening on blue sky, and that was probably my fault because I wasn't following enough people on blue sky. But I guess, like, what I would say is in the last few days, blue sky feels very usable to me as, like, a feed of news, because I've added all these things and because people are, like, actively posting there, in a way that Twitter did used to feel like for me a long time ago. And I think Emmanuel is right that, like, the the social media age is is kind of coming to an end.

Jason: 34:49

But I and I also think that something Joseph said is is very smart where you said, it's like threads is adding a 1000000 people a day, nominally. It's the number one app in the App Store. But it is, like, not clear to me that threads has anything happening there. And what I mean by that is you're, like, forced to look at it on Instagram. It'll, like, it will inject threads post, and then if you wanna look at them, you have to download the app.

Jason: 35:16

And so, like, how many people are actually using that app? How many people are actually posting? How many are, like, international in nature, but, like, not posting? Like, I think I don't I think that threads is popularity or quote, unquote popularity is fake. And, like, Katie Natopoulos has written about this a few times.

Jason: 35:37

Like, Max Max Reed has written about this a few times. They have, both articles that you you should check out. But, like, what's happening on Blue Sky right now feels, like, more real to me than what I have seen from threads, which feels like forced Facebook engagement in the same way that, like, if you go on Facebook right now, there are tons and tons and tons of, like, Facebook stories. People, like, normally, like, using the stories function or the reels function because it will just, like, automatically cross post from Instagram or something. It's like the Facebook ecosystem automatically shares your posts across, like, all of the apps that they have, and that is not, like, real in my opinion.

Jason: 36:25

Yeah. So

Sam: 36:26

Also, threads was, like, originally, like, so many brands. Do you remember this? It was all brands talking to each other.

Joseph: 36:31

At the start. Yeah.

Sam: 36:32

At the start? Yeah. And Blue Sky has, like I haven't really seen any, like, brands

Joseph: 36:37

Well, we're trying.

Sam: 36:37

Blue Sky. Well, we're trying. Yeah.

Joseph: 36:39

Well We don't count. We're not. We're not out of brand. For for the no. That's that's true.

Joseph: 36:43

But for those who haven't noticed, we we are doing more social media posting from our main accounts. Like, we have some help on that. So you've made some there's some change there. And it's just funny that, you know, we we're doing that on Twitter and Blue Sky and Fred's, and they all have their own idiosyncrasies. And I don't think the particular news outlet idiosyncrasies of Blue Sky have really been established yet because nobody's done it yet.

Joseph: 37:10

Right? Because we're now doing the big migration, and we're gonna figure out how news fits in there beyond, you know, individual reporters and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Jason: 37:19

I wanna say one more thing. I know I feel I feel like you're about to be like and that's our show. To go back, it's like Blue Sky is part of a broader decentralization thing. It is not owned by billionaires. It is like a portable platform.

Jason: 37:34

And so when I wrote, like, Mastodon is a good one, it's like I now Blue Sky can also be the good one. It's like it's the same vibe in terms of, like, portability and being part of, like, a broader fediverse and, like, owning your audience and stuff like that. So, I don't regret it. Was correct the whole time.

Joseph: 37:53

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Jason: 37:56

Okay. But it's it, like, embodies the sorts of things that I think that we have, like, largely championed. And so, like, if if Blue Sky ends up being some sort of winner and, like, if it has some staying power, then I think that that's a good thing. That that's just the point that I wanted to make that it's not owned by a billionaire. Jack Dorsey is no longer involved, was, like, bullied off of the platform as far as I know.

Joseph: 38:19

There's a lot of good bullying. I'll give it that. You know, if someone turns up and they don't like it, they get them the fuck off there. That's that's refreshing. Super briefly, just because I do think it is relevant.

Joseph: 38:29

Sam, you've been using RSS more. Right? Can you just talk about why you because is that in response to all of this decentralization social platforms? Or

Sam: 38:39

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's like I I used Feedly for a long time and, like, Feedly I don't know if I'm using it wrong or it's it's not, like, what I needed, but, I saw someone posting, like, RSS, like a what is it? Like, OML, like, one of those files where you can just kinda, like, populate your whole entire RSS in one go with somebody else's followings. So I did that, and I was like, yeah.

Sam: 39:09

Maybe this is, like, how I can, like, consume information without having to deal with, like, everyone's opinions and, like, their every thought that crosses their mind. Because that's I mean, I just, like, I'm trying to find a way out of the noise and into, like, what's actually going on. It's just so much, chaos right now in particular that I was just like, I need to, like, get off of these social media apps, that I'm looking at all day long one way or the other. So, yeah, that was kind of that's where that came from. I don't know.

Sam: 39:41

I mean, I just I just started using InnoReader, like, 3 days ago, and it's been okay. I don't know.

Joseph: 39:48

I kinda miss

Sam: 39:48

the opinions.

Joseph: 39:50

I've tried that. I should get back into it. And that's just a reminder that if you are a paying for a full media subscriber, you actually get a full text RSS feed of our site. So you could read our articles without even our opinions as well, you know, if you wanna entirely get rid of all of that. We will leave that there.

Joseph: 40:08

If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I will now play us out. But if you are a paying 4 zero four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about this article we published in the wake of the election about what we're doing, what we did in 2016, why we're staying. I I guess I'll leave it at that. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. We'll be right back after this.

Joseph: 40:47

Alright. And we are back in the subscribers only section. This one's a little bit different because, you know, it's not really news, I guess. Right? It's this article we wrote called why the work still matters, and we'll get into that.

Joseph: 41:02

But, Emmanuel, you handle, like, a lot of our customer support, that sort of thing. And I guess this isn't customer support. But you you look at the emails of, when people unsubscribe or they have issues or something like that, and we did have an uptick in people unsubscribing in the wake of the US presidential election. What were people saying? Why were they unsubscribing?

Emanuel: 41:29

So I don't wanna quote directly, but, when you unsubscribe from the site, we invite you to give us a reason why. That's useful feedback for us. And after the election, we got a bunch of messages, to the tune of nothing matters anymore or I can't bear looking at the news or what's the point, and stuff like this. Just people who are very upset checking out essentially. And I mean,

Joseph: 42:00

I don't blame people for wanting to check out, basically. But then that that that spurred this piece. And I think, Jason, you probably took the lead on it, and then we all we all chimed in. I mean, how do how do you wanna talk about this, Jason? Do you wanna talk about what we did the first time as a Trump presidency, or, like, what's the deal?

Jason: 42:22

Yeah. I mean, I I guess I'll first say that if you're listening to this, thank you. Like, thank you. Thank you, because you're a paying subscriber. So, this is not super directed at you because clear I I think it will be useful for you to hear our thought process, but at the same time, I think that you agree with us that this work is important and you are supporting us.

Jason: 42:42

So thank you. But I think that when Trump won in 2016, there was it was such a shock for many people in the media, I think. It was definitely a shock for me at least. I I was much younger. I hadn't worked that much, and I I, like, it was I didn't know what was going to happen, and I think that there was this sense that was sometimes stated and sometimes not, across, like, the entire media that it was, like, we are now the resistance.

Jason: 43:21

And if we write a story that is good enough, like, Trump will have to resign. I don't think I ever thought that, and it's like, maybe maybe other media outlets did not think that, but there were certainly, like, some people who were like, if I do a good enough blog, the president of the United States is going to, like, resign or be impeached or something like that.

Joseph: 43:48

And Or a big enough leak or something to to because that's on one side. Then on the

Jason: 43:53

other side was like Russiagate was a big one, obviously, and it's like, I don't even know enough about Russiagate to, like, get into it, but there was that. There was coverage of, like, the there was coverage of the Muslim ban and the protests surrounding it. And I feel like there was a moment where it was like, oh, so many people protested that, like, he's not gonna be actually, like, allowed to do this because there was, like, a protest and because people wrote good articles about it. And I that that was obviously, like, misguided because he was allowed to do a lot of very bad things. And I know I know I don't haven't gotten to a point yet, but I guess it's like we did the bulk of our most important work at Motherboard during the Trump presidency.

Jason: 44:40

Like, I think that is sort of, like, when we all were working at Motherboard. I don't know when everyone joined, but it's like we were there the whole time. We did really, really important work and, like, things got better because of our work. And, like, it didn't cause the president to resign, but it did, like, result in bad companies getting shut down. It resulted in, like, big fines.

Jason: 45:05

It resulted in legislation being passed, and it resulted in, like, a lot of, like, really good things happening as a direct result of our work. And I guess that's why I think we probably wanna do the story is just, like, you can't set your sights at, like, we're gonna we're gonna stop fascism in the United States with our blog post. It's like a bigger project than that.

Joseph: 45:30

Yeah. And I think you phrased it well in the article where you say that we cannot and will not make false promises to you about the power of journalism, especially it's a small publication, to stop the country's knowing much into authoritarianism. But we can explain our approach to the work, and we can demonstrate to you why it matters. Yeah. I mean, we're 4 people with a website.

Joseph: 45:52

Like, you know, we're not gonna do anything that massive, but we do generate impact. We do make a change. And even though it is for many people a very, very depressing time, it is still possible and there is still room to make that change. You know? And we'll see what that looks like, when it comes to it.

Joseph: 46:14

But, yeah, the work does still matter. I'm curious what you all think about how in 2016 and the years after, you know, there was a big sort of boost to media. I mean, in in literal subscription revenue. Right? Like, people wanted to digest so much news.

Joseph: 46:34

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that, you know, Washington Post and Your Times, all of that, they got a wave of subscriptions over the years. Right? Do we think that's gonna happen again? Because I know we don't really have representative data. We have a very, very small dataset of the emails that Emmanuel reads and it people being very, very depressed.

Joseph: 46:56

But, like, do you think we're gonna get a wave again, Emmanuel? Or do you think, like, maybe more people do unsubscribe to the media in general? You mentioned people tuning out. You know?

Jason: 47:10

I

Emanuel: 47:10

don't know what it looks like overall. Like, if you look at the numbers across all of media, is it going up or is it going down? I don't know. I know that there will be different winners and losers. Right?

Emanuel: 47:21

I think I don't we haven't discussed this before. We started recording, but I don't think we mind saying the reaction to this blog was very positive, and we got a lot of new subscribers and we're very grateful for that. So, I mean, we've seen a boost. And, I know, for example, that The Guardian saw a boost, but then you have The New York Times and The Washington Post and The LA Times, saw a huge decline. So I think there will be different winners and losers.

Emanuel: 47:53

Overall, it's like the population consuming more or less news. I don't know. I suspect, and I said this before I saw these comments. I saw it. I I felt this way when I kinda was processing my own feelings about the elections.

Emanuel: 48:09

I suspect that a lot of people would tune out. They're just, like, don't have the energy to to to put up with another 4 years of of madness, especially after following it so closely last time. So I suspect there will be quite a fair bit of people tuning out, but I'm I'm more bullish than ever on on the future of our company.

Joseph: 48:28

Mhmm. Yeah. The Guardian got something like 2.456 or whatever, 1,000,000 in donations and and that sort of thing, which I mean is a positive sign. Right? As you said, Jason, we covered a lot of stuff in the Trump administration, and during the, the Biden administration as well.

Joseph: 48:51

But I did a ton of stuff on surveillance. That's when I did a lot of my coverage on location, data. I think there was also CBP flying predator drones over US cities to monitor protests, all that sort of thing. I think there will absolutely be room to cover, more of that as things happen. And I mean, just to stress, it's not like we've been kicking our feet up for 4 years and doing nothing.

Joseph: 49:25

I've never fucking worked harder in my life than we have been in the past 4 years. You know what I mean? It's just like, oh, the political situation is gonna change, and maybe there's, I don't know, an emphasis in our reporting or or or there is to be honest, I actually don't think our coverage is gonna change that much. I just the news will be different and we'll respond to it, but I don't think we're gonna change. You know?

Jason: 49:47

I I

Emanuel: 49:47

don't know. I I suspect it's not an original thought. I'm sure people said this across newsrooms, in 2016, but I remember coming in that first day after the election and are then I think Derek Mead was still editor in chief, and we had some sort of meeting. And he was very cool and collected. He usually is.

Emanuel: 50:07

And he was like, well, you know, it just like we're just gonna dig in and do the reporting, and that's exactly what we would have done if Hillary won. And that's exactly what we did after Biden won. Right? Like, all of Joseph's reporting about government surveillance, a lot of those huge stories, they all happen under Biden. And it's just like I mean, I guess if you're listening to this, I just want you to know that, we don't discuss politics, I think, at all, really.

Emanuel: 50:39

Like, we're really busy doing the work. And, you know, this story that Joseph published last week about, these iPhones that we just talked about, it just like I think our audience like, the facts in that article are valuable enough and unpartisan enough that it it just like we're we're focused on reporting. And, obviously, we have our politics and we have our bias even. We're not pretending like we we have a view from nowhere, but, there's plenty of just, like, nuts and bolts work to do every day without, you know I don't know. We don't we don't do op eds.

Emanuel: 51:20

You're not gonna I don't think you're gonna read a bunch of op eds from us about how to resist Trump and stuff. It's like we we we have, I think, more important things to do, about how stuff works, what you should worry about. Yeah.

Jason: 51:38

Yeah. I mean, I I think that that is a part of why we wrote this article last week also is that I think I think a big mistake and, you know, they'll never ever ever listen to me, but it's like the New York Times and The Washington Post and all of these and CNN and all of these big platforms, like, they try to do the view from nowhere. We have no opinion about anything. We have no perspective whatsoever journalism. And I think that that is part of why many of these publications are so insufferable.

Jason: 52:14

It's like they they don't, like, understand the stakes of anything. They don't try to, like, contextualize it in some way. And I think that here, it's not I don't think that it would be behoove us to have, like, an extreme left or an extreme right perspective on our website. Like, I think that is an easy way to turn people off. But I do think that our perspective is very clear and that we talk about how technology impacts humans, and it's sort of like a populist message and that it's like, you know, big tech uses its power to make things worse very often to, like, deploy a surveillance state to, you know, influence the government to shove AI down your throats, blah blah blah.

Jason: 53:03

And it's, like, I think it's important for us to be somewhat transparent about that perspective. I don't even consider it a bias really because it's like a pro human bias, but it's not like a total view from nowhere. It's like, is this type of technology helping people or hurting people? And I think that that is like a that's the perspective we've always had across all of our work, and we'll continue to have that work that perspective, and it works under Donald Trump. It worked under Joe Biden.

Jason: 53:39

It worked under Obama. It's like all the Edward Snowden leaks happened under Obama. We did very good reporting on that, so on and so forth. So I don't know. I think that, yeah, our coverage probably won't change that much, although we're gonna continue to, like, hold the administration and big tech to account the same way that we have with Biden in the same way that we do with Obama, blah blah blah.

Joseph: 54:02

Yeah. I'll give one concrete example, which is that I mean, as you say, our bias, quote, unquote, is being pro human. And, look, simply by deciding to write about something, you're making a choice. Right? Like, you're deciding, well, this is in the public interest.

Joseph: 54:21

I'm gonna spend some time and resources and effort covering that. Sometimes it might just be a stupid blog post and whatever. But, like, it doesn't all have to be super, super serious stuff. But, like, one example is the locate x tool that we got a leak of a couple of weeks ago that shows, again, the true the warrantless tracking of mobile phones, around the world and in the US. This was given to a bunch of journalists.

Joseph: 54:50

And, you know, some journalists focus more on sort of the data supply chain and and the tech stuff. And, like, I'd already done that, so I don't really do that. And then maybe, you know, one of the journalists will focus on maybe the the sort of arms embargo around it or the exporting of this technology from certain places, all that sort of thing. What I personally focused on is that this can be used to track people who visit abortion clinics. That is a deliberate choice.

Joseph: 55:21

It's it's me deciding. I think there's a public interest in knowing this. People care about this issue because we published it just a few weeks before the election, as well. And I think that gives vital context to the power of this technology and how it can or will or might be used. Right?

Joseph: 55:42

Like, do you have people who say they just want the facts? And, sure, I'll just list in a bullet point, format all of the capabilities of locate x. It's fucking boring. Nobody's gonna read that. Nobody's gonna get the context around it.

Joseph: 55:56

Nobody's gonna understand how it can actually harm humans or benefit humans depending what it is. And I know. I think a lot of the people who ask for, quote, unquote, objective news, which is a ridiculous term, don't actually want that. They just don't like it when it actually fits their their subjective opinions as well. But, yeah, we all have, biases or leanings.

Joseph: 56:17

And I think all you do is you, identify them. You acknowledge them. You address them if you really need to, but, like, you probably don't need to. And at the end of the day, as long as you're fair and accurate, it's okay. Like, it's okay to highlight the abortion clinic stuff over I don't know.

Joseph: 56:37

Oh, you could use that Locatex tool to track military bases or something like that. That's also interesting. But you have to make a choice. Rallies. Well, somebody actually did that.

Joseph: 56:49

Years ago, the New York Times did the location data dates, data story. They got a leak as well. And I think they used it to identify January 6, rioters. So, I mean, everything I just said, I stand by. But But sometimes at the end of the day, well, somebody else already did it.

Joseph: 57:06

So I'm not gonna do the same thing again, you know. Alright. I think we're probably done on that, but the work still matters. We'll still be here. As a paying subscriber, you're able to hear this.

Joseph: 57:22

If you're a long time subscriber, really appreciate it. If you're one of the new people here as well, really appreciate that. And I hope you can get a feel for, what we're all about. But, yeah, we're not going anywhere, and we're gonna keep fucking doing all the reporting we can. Alright.

Joseph: 57:40

I will play us out. As a reminder, 4 zero four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 4 zero four Media and directly support our work, please go to 4 zero four media dot c o. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week.

Joseph: 58:05

This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a 5 star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really does help us out. Go ahead and do that if you haven't already. This has been 4 reform media.

Joseph: 58:19

We will see you again next week.