Internet Mysteries
'Celebrity Number Six' Internet Mystery Is Solved
Spanish model Leticia Sardá is Celebrity Number Six.
DIY
‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine
Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has made DIY medicine cheaper and more accessible to the masses.
LobbyMatic
Big Tech ‘Clients’ of Jacob Wohl’s Secret AI Lobbying Firm Say They've Never Heard of It
Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, and Lockheed Martin were all shown as "clients" of LobbyMatic. All of them say they haven't worked with the company.
Telegram
Podcast: Is the Arrest of Telegram Founder Pavel Durov an Attack on Encryption?
The 404 Media podcast discusses France's crackdown on Telegram.
Car Repair
Appliance and Tractor Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair
The U.S. military deals with the same repair monopolies consumers do.
Telegram
How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr
Conservatives have spent months championing Telegram as an app that more closely aligns with their values than Signal.
Court Watch
FBI Uses January 6 Rioter’s Self-Published Amazon Book as Evidence Against Him
The Kindle book has been taken down by Amazon but the author's children's books remain up.
Announcements
What We Learned In Our First Year of 404 Media
In August 2023, we launched 404 Media with a novel idea: pay journalists to do journalism. Here we are, a year later.
Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster Used Revolving Barcodes to Control Ticket Resale Market and Surveil Customers, DOJ Alleges
"We now not only know the person that bought the ticket, but we’re going to know those three people that you are taking to the show, which we have not known historically."
AI
Where Facebook's AI Slop Comes From
Facebook itself is paying creators in India, Vietnam, and the Philippines for bizarre AI spam that they are learning to make from YouTube influencers and guides sold on Telegram.
AI
AI Music Generator Suno Admits It Was Trained on ‘Essentially All Music Files on the Internet’
"Suno’s training data includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet."