# Best of 404media.co on Kiwi News

Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/source/404media.co

49 stories from 404media.co have been shared on Kiwi News since 3 January 2024, with 94 upvotes and 26 comments in total. The latest was shared on 19 March 2026. They are listed below, most upvoted first.

Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article.

## 1. AI Models And Parents Don’t Understand ‘Let Him Cook’

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AI-Models-And-Parents-Dont-Understand-Let-Him-Cook?index=0x685c777d2ff042f6d3f46d2fe81710a70b36226be05b40005ce0517d9d8febe0d6b5a21c
- Source: https://www.404media.co/ai-models-and-parents-dont-understand-let-him-cook
- Shared 25 June 2025, 22 upvotes, 0 comments

Manisha Mehta, a soon-to-be 9th grader, presented research at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Athens showing that Gen Alpha slang is hard for parents, professional moderators, and large language models to interpret. The paper compares kid, parent, and professional moderator performance with four LLMs: GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and Llama 3. Kids scored 98, 96, and 92 percent across the three categories, while parents scored 68, 42, and 35 percent, and the LLMs performed about the same as parents.

## 2. a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/a16z-Backed-Startup-Sells-Thousands-of-Synthetic-Influencers-to-Manipulate?index=0x68fc070f85e9fe0dbc18ac9eb023bca732cab4aced1c03070fe151003a856a14ad60a033
- Source: https://www.404media.co/a16z-backed-startup-sells-thousands-of-synthetic-influencers-to-manipulate-social-media-as-a-service
- Shared 24 October 2025, 8 upvotes, 2 comments

Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is pitching an AI-powered service that lets clients orchestrate actions on thousands of social media accounts, a practice that violates the policies of all major platforms. According to the company's site, its deployment layer mimics natural user interaction on physical devices so that content appears human to algorithms. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment, but the service appears designed to evade platform detection, using AI to generate accounts and posts with a human doing 5 percent of "touch up" work at the end.

## 3. How Tea’s Founder Convinced Women to Spill Their Secrets, Then Exposed Them

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/How-Teas-Founder-Convinced-Women-to-Spill-Their-Secrets-Then-Exposed-Them?index=0x68a5760bb49e91515b7df14457f9c1d55d59049c77cbc5b066e07468d3f0e7d3434ce407
- Source: https://www.404media.co/how-teas-founder-convinced-millions-of-women-to-spill-their-secrets-then-exposed-them-to-the-world
- Shared 20 August 2025, 5 upvotes, 0 comments

A 404 Media investigation reports that Tea, a dating safety app for women, tried to recruit Paola Sanchez, founder of the Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups, as its face, then shifted to raiding her community after she declined. Christianne Burns, then fiancée of Tea CEO Sean Cook, made the initial offer, and the investigation found that Tea paid influencers to undermine the groups and created competing groups with nearly identical names. Tea's late July security breaches exposed user images, identifying information and over a million private conversations. Tea did not directly answer the findings, but a spokesperson said over 7 million women use the app.

## 4. Google Is the Only Search Engine That Works on Reddit Now Thanks to AI Deal

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Google-Is-the-Only-Search-Engine-That-Works-on-Reddit-Now-Thanks-to-AI-Deal?index=0x66a137bdb3d28b3d213eab938bf72cc337056bfe07ec1485d714e6a899da920607a3d06a
- Source: https://www.404media.co/google-is-the-only-search-engine-that-works-on-reddit-now-thanks-to-ai-deal
- Shared 24 July 2024, 3 upvotes, 3 comments

Google is now the only search engine that can surface Reddit results, after Reddit restricted crawling by other search engines. According to the article, search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek and Qwant show no results from the last week when searching "site:reddit.com," though older results still appear. The article says the change comes after Reddit locked down its site to stop scraping for AI training data, a practice only Google can currently do under a multi-million dollar deal. Colin Hayhurst, CEO of the search engine Mojeek, said Reddit is "killing everything for search but Google."

## 5. Someone Put Facial Recognition onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Dox Strangers

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Someone-Put-Facial-Recognition-onto-Metas-Smart-Glasses-to-Dox-Strangers?index=0x670d046c165ad33d87fcd822da7971fbe749708f461aeaf64a6232443a3924e8d305124f
- Source: https://www.404media.co/someone-put-facial-recognition-tech-onto-metas-smart-glasses-to-instantly-dox-strangers?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
- Shared 14 October 2024, 3 upvotes, 0 comments

Two Harvard students, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, built I-XRAY, a prototype that pairs Meta's commercially available Ray-Ban smart glasses with facial recognition to identify strangers from their faces. According to Nguyen, the customized glasses also pull other information about a person from around the web, including their home address, phone number, and family members. Nguyen told 404 Media that the pair are not releasing their code and that the project is meant to raise awareness of what the technology can do. A demo video reportedly shows some tests on unsuspecting people in the real world.

## 6. Leaked Documents Show Nvidia Scraping ‘A Human Lifetime’ of Videos Per Day

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Leaked-Documents-Show-Nvidia-Scraping-A-Human-Lifetime-of-Videos-Per-Day?index=0x66b1153f2717ed7ef25b644545d8f3c909e9070868d6fd9f9f7f6ec299fe44da38896210
- Source: https://www.404media.co/nvidia-ai-scraping-foundational-model-cosmos-project?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
- Shared 5 August 2024, 3 upvotes, 0 comments

Leaked internal Slack chats, emails and documents obtained by 404 Media show that Nvidia scraped videos from YouTube and other sources to compile training data for its AI products. When asked about the legality and ethics of using copyrighted content, Nvidia defended the practice as "in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law." According to the report, a former Nvidia employee said staff were asked to scrape videos from Netflix, YouTube and other sources to train an AI model for the Omniverse 3D world generator, self-driving car systems and "digital human" products. The project, internally named Cosmos, has not yet been released to the public.

## 7. Trump’s Taking Down Sites About Gender Identity All Over the Internet

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Trumps-Taking-Down-Sites-About-Gender-Identity-All-Over-the-Internet?index=0x6792c571283a1dc46406a5ed12238aa69ebc7ac7db99017464966483dccf37d1c7b9863f
- Source: https://www.404media.co/trumps-administration-is-taking-down-sites-about-gender-identity-all-over-the-internet
- Shared 23 January 2025, 2 upvotes, 3 comments

After Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring there are only two sexes, the Social Security Administration and other government departments removed information about changing one's sex from their websites. Ari Drennen spotted the change to the "change sex identification" page, which now displays "you are not authorized to access this page." The article also reports that gender identity information was removed from the administration's LGBTQIA+ site, and that several other government sites about gender identity and discrimination are offline or scrubbed.

## 8. Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Meta-Is-Blocking-Links-to-Decentralized-Instagram-Competitor-Pixelfed?index=0x6786224f195940fb0e64ed72d9000f8d0d64c1673a3e48c50d08e40bf6e4a6a01d97cdcc
- Source: https://www.404media.co/meta-is-blocking-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed
- Shared 14 January 2025, 2 upvotes, 3 comments

Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized, open-source Instagram competitor, on Facebook, where it labels pixelfed.social links as "spam" and removes them immediately. Bluesky user AJ Sadauskas first reported the deletions, and 404 Media said its own attempt to post a Pixelfed link on Facebook was also deleted at once. The article links the blocking to a surge in Pixelfed signups after Meta loosened its rules on describing LGBTQ+ people as "mentally ill," and Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

## 9. Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Telegram-Hands-US-Authorities-Data-on-Thousands-of-Users?index=0x677c4a8d9a6f58abdfed1e3579c02d07e809285973fac96a4a941b250ef4cbd997e07de3
- Source: https://www.404media.co/telegram-hands-u-s-authorities-data-on-thousands-of-users
- Shared 6 January 2025, 2 upvotes, 3 comments

Telegram provided U.S. authorities with data on 2,253 users in 2024, according to newly released data from the company. The number of fulfilled requests rose sharply after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in August, partly over the company's unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation. Telegram's Transparency Reports bot told 404 Media that it fulfilled 14 requests for IP addresses and/or phone numbers from the United States between January 1 and September 30, 2024, affecting 108 users. For the full year, it fulfilled 900 such requests, meaning the number rose sharply between October and December.

## 10. Moderators Social Media Struggle Celebration UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassination

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Moderators-Social-Media-Struggle-Celebration-UnitedHealthcare-CEO-Assassination?index=0x675473e5bfa44b8afeb34b5161e8e30d426c08d7c163d99c0650bed8553bcc83f69cbd24
- Source: https://www.404media.co/brian-thompson-social-media-reactions-reddit-facebook-twitter
- Shared 7 December 2024, 2 upvotes, 3 comments

Social media managers and moderators are struggling to curb online celebration of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson while staying within platforms' terms of use. Thompson, who reportedly received a $10.2 million annual pay package, was shot outside his Midtown Manhattan hotel just before 7 a.m., an hour before his company's investor conference began. On Reddit, dozens of posts about Thompson in the last 48 hours were caught by r/undelete, meaning the most popular recently deleted content concerned the assassination, and many had thousands of upvotes when removed.

## 11. YouTube “Enhances” Comment Section With AI Slop

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/YouTube-Enhances-Comment-Section-With-AI-Slop?index=0x675b08f9ffc535d3d8afeaa604fbee78b9a62678cce249804f714b93c534f7376db66c15
- Source: https://www.404media.co/email/530ddba1-c70c-4ab4-83b9-d31ccc185d2f?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
- Shared 12 December 2024, 2 upvotes, 2 comments

YouTube's new editable AI-enhanced reply suggestions, which are meant to help creators respond to comments, often produce replies that are misleading, nonsensical, or oddly personal, according to a test by Clint Basinger of the LazyGameReviews channel. In his video demonstrating the feature, the suggestions sometimes copied his earlier comments word for word, but many were wrong, such as claiming a product scoop was "coming soon" or describing burnout he had not mentioned. Basinger told the outlet that he would not use the feature and would want any AI-generated creator reply to be labeled. The article also reports that YouTube's Inspiration tab suggested videos about products that don't exist, and Google did not respond to a request for comment.

## 12. How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/How-Telegrams-Founder-Pavel-Durov-Became-a-Culture-War-Martyr?index=0x66ce2cdc29e3843dea6bb0723cf81e9ab30e188574e8a0ee97ed9eb4870c30a673b96c0a
- Source: https://www.404media.co/email/ac9b84f5-8f1c-4b8d-9fde-466c76c51482
- Shared 27 August 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments

Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France, and the article argues that the culture war response to the arrest misreads both Telegram and the case. According to a press release from the Tribunal Judiciaire De Paris, a preliminary investigation that started on July 8 led to charges that include enabling illegal transactions, complicity in distributing child sexual abuse material, complicity in organized fraud, and money laundering. The article says Telegram's group chats are not encrypted and encryption is not on by default, so it is not accurately described as an encrypted messaging app. Conservatives who promoted Telegram over Signal, including Ian Miles Cheong, have called the arrest politically motivated.

## 13. Microsoft and Reddit Are Fighting About Why Bing’s Crawler Is Blocked on Reddit

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Microsoft-and-Reddit-Are-Fighting-About-Why-Bings-Crawler-Is-Blocked-on-Reddit?index=0x66abd963935252d0047a53fd96236f3625543752862dbeea608afea8d06e5dcf760f4806
- Source: https://www.404media.co/microsoft-and-reddit-are-fighting-about-why-bings-crawler-is-blocked-on-reddit?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
- Shared 1 August 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments

Microsoft and Reddit are giving conflicting explanations for why Bing is currently blocked from crawling Reddit and showing its links in search results. Reddit, which now requires payment from anyone crawling its site and using its data to train AI products, says Bing's crawler is being used to power AI products. Microsoft says it has made it easy for any site to block the crawler used for AI products while still allowing a search-only crawler, and that Reddit's block is "impacting competition" in search. Presented as further evidence, the dispute reflects how indiscriminate scraping for AI training data is eroding trust and making the internet less open.

## 14. Someone Made Dataset of One Million Bluesky Posts for Machine Learning Research

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Someone-Made-Dataset-of-One-Million-Bluesky-Posts-for-Machine-Learning-Research?index=0x6746ec9f6adda96a056004a03a01bf4827fa8d488a01fb9c16eb0e2371d7e300b36fc3ba
- Source: https://www.404media.co/someone-made-a-dataset-of-one-million-bluesky-posts-for-machine-learning-research
- Shared 27 November 2024, 1 upvote, 2 comments

Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at Hugging Face, released a dataset of one million public Bluesky posts intended for machine learning research. Collected from Bluesky's firehose API, it includes post text, metadata, language predictions, information about media attachments and reply relationships, and when posts were made and who posted them. After publication, van Strien removed the dataset, writing on Bluesky that he recognized the approach "violated principles of transparency and consent in data collection" and apologized.

## 15. RIP Metaverse, an $80 Billion Dumpster Fire Nobody Wanted

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/RIP-Metaverse-an-dollar80-Billion-Dumpster-Fire-Nobody-Wanted?index=0x69bc7a457a458138b9b3f507bba45c1632164c23fa4017387b1710e8de3682cccec20e8d
- Source: https://www.404media.co/rip-metaverse-an-80-billion-dumpster-fire-nobody-wanted
- Shared 19 March 2026, 1 upvote, 1 comment

## 16. Apple Gave Governments Data on Thousands of Push Notifications

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Apple-Gave-Governments-Data-on-Thousands-of-Push-Notifications?index=0x6840bd29a96563dd786287fe6ec6781b62c4994f3576514e4aed9556c6aa6802027341e9
- Source: https://www.404media.co/apple-gave-governments-data-on-thousands-of-push-notifications
- Shared 4 June 2025, 1 upvote, 1 comment

Apple provided governments around the world with data on thousands of push notifications sent to its devices, according to data the company published. Such data can identify a target's specific device and, in some cases, include unencrypted content such as the text shown in the notification. In one case that Apple did not ultimately fulfill, Israel demanded data on nearly 700 push notifications in a single request. The practice first came to light in 2023, when Senator Ron Wyden wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice, noting that it also applied to Google.

## 17. DeepSeek Mania Shakes AI Industry to Its Core

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/DeepSeek-Mania-Shakes-AI-Industry-to-Its-Core?index=0x6797dba17013a0f79c399e097299cf50aa326ea8d4898b13087c042b5eb814cdf1d94464
- Source: https://www.404media.co/deepseek-mania-shakes-ai-industry-to-its-core
- Shared 27 January 2025, 1 upvote, 1 comment

DeepSeek's release of its R1 model has sparked widespread alarm across the AI industry and financial markets. The Chinese-developed model reportedly outperforms OpenAI's and other companies' models on some benchmarks, despite being trained on older chips at a much lower cost, and it became the most popular app in the US Apple App Store. Nvidia's stock has tumbled, and Marc Andreessen called the model "AI's Sputnik moment." Because DeepSeek is free, modifiable and cheaper to run, experts are worried about the viability of OpenAI's already unprofitable subscription products.

## 18. Musk Uses Cybertruck Explosion to Show Tesla Can Remotely Unlock Monitor Vehicle

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Musk-Uses-Cybertruck-Explosion-to-Show-Tesla-Can-Remotely-Unlock-Monitor-Vehicle?index=0x677727d81a6fa316716fdd4916119f99106b2824a594dd46dd660b311fc9d5c072f31de6
- Source: https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-uses-cybertruck-explosion-to-show-tesla-can-remotely-unlock-and-monitor-vehicles
- Shared 2 January 2025, 1 upvote, 1 comment

Elon Musk remotely unlocked the Cybertruck involved in the explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas and provided video from Tesla charging stations it had visited, according to law enforcement. Clark County Police sheriff Kevin McKahill thanked Musk at a press conference, saying the vehicle was locked due to the force of the explosion and that the video was sent directly to police. The article argues that owners do not truly own their Teslas and that the episode shows the company can intervene in vehicles and share private data with law enforcement. It notes that it is unclear whether Musk personally performed these actions or directed Tesla employees to do so.

## 19. The Year in Abstracts: Obese Genomes and Banana Galaxies

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Year-in-Abstracts-Obese-Genomes-and-Banana-Galaxies?index=0x677318f563c0762e07d2b383402ad8368945318b6e1b2032365ad3d099345907786a3f83
- Source: https://www.404media.co/the-year-in-abstracts-obese-genomes-and-banana-galaxies-3
- Shared 30 December 2024, 1 upvote, 1 comment

This year-end roundup of Nature and Cell studies highlights five research results from 2024, chosen for their "general mind bogglery" rather than any formal criteria. Researchers led by Viraj Pandya of Columbia University reported that high-redshift galaxies often appear banana-like, which the study suggests reflects intrinsically elongated 3D shapes. Researchers led by Christian Wolf of Australian National University identified quasar J0529−4351 as the most luminous known, with a black hole accreting about one solar mass per day onto roughly 17 billion solar masses. Researchers led by Pol Fernández of the Institut Botanic de Barcelona reported that the fork fern Tmesipteris oblanceolata has a 160 billion base pair genome, the largest eukaryotic genome reported so far.

## 20. Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Vibe-Coding-Is-Killing-Open-Source-Software?index=0x6987cfaaa1e09376fd0cef4556eeaf083dd298baa4a49d9553ce0c7fb544798f3781d214
- Source: https://www.404media.co/vibe-coding-is-killing-open-source-software-researchers-argue
- Shared 7 February 2026, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## 21. Hack Reveals the a16z-Backed Phone Farm Flooding TikTok With AI Influencers

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Hack-Reveals-the-a16z-Backed-Phone-Farm-Flooding-TikTok-With-AI-Influencers?index=0x6942c40fd05146e23bb4964cc5bdde87d110e5f13515da7df7a7dde0daa2771fb35b909a
- Source: https://www.404media.co/hack-reveals-the-a16z-backed-phone-farm-flooding-tiktok-with-ai-influencers
- Shared 17 December 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), has been hacked, exposing a phone farm that manages at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts used to promote products. The hack reveals which products these accounts promote, often without the required disclosure that they are advertisements, and gave the hacker control of more than 1,000 smartphones that power the company. The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31 and still has access to the company's backend, including the phone farm. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment.

## 22. ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/ICEBlock-Owner-After-Apple-Removes-App-We-Are-Determined-to-Fight-This?index=0x68e0ebe3db74f7aa56a1ad7f3d2662e815e1fe373156f047f5bb8e32b8fd6e32fd593535
- Source: https://www.404media.co/iceblock-owner-after-apple-removes-app-we-are-determined-to-fight-this
- Shared 4 October 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

The developer of ICEBlock, an app that lets users crowdsource sightings of ICE officials, says he will fight back after Apple removed it from the App Store on Thursday. According to Fox, which first reported the removal, the decision followed pressure from Department of Justice officials acting at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi. Apple told 404 Media that it has removed other similar apps as well. Developer Joshua Aaron told 404 Media that Apple's action was a capitulation to an authoritarian regime, and he argued that ICEBlock is no different from crowdsourced speed traps used by mapping applications, including Apple's own Maps app, and is protected speech under the First Amendment.

## 23. A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/A-Second-Tea-Breach-Reveals-Users-DMs-About-Abortions-and-Cheating?index=0x68888c0709d5d5b970b865102ac9105f128bd35f9c754fc38c9f646e8abab2757e0f18ea
- Source: https://www.404media.co/a-second-tea-breach-reveals-users-dms-about-abortions-and-cheating
- Shared 29 July 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

A second major security issue at Tea, a women's dating safety app, exposed far more user data than the first breach, with an independent security researcher finding that hackers could access private messages about abortions, cheating partners, and phone numbers. Tea had said the initial incident involved a legacy storage system with data from over two years ago, but the researcher's findings, which 404 Media verified, show the separate database contains messages up to last week and that all users could be sent a push notification. 404 Media found it trivial to identify some users' real-world identities from their messages, which included social media handles, phone numbers, and names.

## 24. Researchers secretly ran an unauthorized AI persuasion experiment on Reddit

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Researchers-secretly-ran-an-unauthorized-AI-persuasion-experiment-on-Reddit?index=0x6818b3223b7850948f81a14a977bdffe60f3743f5198936a1454c6bc9f1e7e13d7df360f
- Source: https://www.404media.co/researchers-secretly-ran-a-massive-unauthorized-ai-persuasion-experiment-on-reddit-users?fbclid=IwY2xjawKFkhpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHifdUPq4igo7jLZWsxcQ1ZUvLERyeRsHGCOconxax7nbjZh7k0mAqwmg7h2t_aem_hvvDitRZ3eisPkfr8fMpjQ
- Shared 5 May 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Researchers who say they are from the University of Zurich ran an unauthorized, large-scale experiment that secretly deployed AI-powered bots on the Reddit debate subreddit r/changemyview to test whether AI could change people's minds on contentious topics. The bots made more than 1,000 comments over several months, and the article says some posed as a rape victim, a Black man opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement, and a domestic violence shelter worker. Some bots tailored their replies by inferring the original poster's gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation from their posting history using another LLM.

## 25. NFTs worth millions replaced with error after project downgraded Cloudflare plan

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/NFTs-worth-millions-replaced-with-error-after-project-downgraded-Cloudflare-plan?index=0x68141c959379a22ef2baea56bda24509bfa1fe43bb208ab370af0dac60debb3ac1f78d91
- Source: https://www.404media.co/nfts-that-cost-millions-replaced-with-error-message-after-project-downgraded-to-free-cloudflare-plan
- Shared 2 May 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

More than 19,000 NFTs from the CloneX RTFKT collection, a Nike-backed project made with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami that once sold collectively for millions of dollars, vanished around 5 a.m. EST on April 24 and were replaced with a Cloudflare message saying the content was restricted for violating the Terms of Service. The pictures eventually returned after one of the services serving them was migrated to a free account. The corporate owner that acquired the collection is no longer investing the time or capital it once did.

## 26. People Think AI Images of Hollywood Sign Burning Are Real

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/People-Think-AI-Images-of-Hollywood-Sign-Burning-Are-Real?index=0x6782d85e0b157767c8be6a4b3e39c9da9232c32510510b52aea189a2405a2b420cae2e02
- Source: https://www.404media.co/hollywood-sign-burning-ai-images-la-wildfire
- Shared 11 January 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

A viral video showing the Hollywood sign burning behind a wildfire is AI-generated, not real footage. A Community Note on one of the posts said that when the video was shared, Hollywood sign livestreams showed the sign was fine. Hollywoodsign.org, which runs a live webcam pointed at the sign, told fact-checking site Snopes that Griffith Park is temporarily closed as a safety precaution, but the sign itself is not affected and is secure.

## 27. Researcher Turns Insecure License Plate Cameras In Open Source Surveillance Tool

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Researcher-Turns-Insecure-License-Plate-Cameras-In-Open-Source-Surveillance-Tool?index=0x677e4a7c798350bc76492fdbef2f038eb00adfde0f9a8fe1f905ff2a24a3099c7822c0f2
- Source: https://www.404media.co/researcher-turns-insecure-license-plate-cameras-into-open-source-surveillance-tool
- Shared 8 January 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Security researcher Matt Brown found that some Motorola automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras stream live video and car data to the open internet, where anyone can watch or scrape them without logging in. Brown found the exposed cameras using the Censys search engine, and he tested a Motorola Reaper HD ALPR he bought on eBay. Will Freeman, creator of the DeFlock map, built a proof-of-concept script that decodes the unencrypted streams and logs car makes, models, colors, and plates with timestamps, and roughly 170 unencrypted ALPR streams have been found so far. Motorola Solutions said the ReaperHD is a legacy device discontinued in June 2022 and that a firmware update will add security hardening.

## 28. How (and Why) a Reverse Engineer 3D-Printed an iPhone

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/How-and-Why-a-Reverse-Engineer-3D-Printed-an-iPhone?index=0x6777af70343edbf9cade64f291e4d073a4e27a79ac6ee1071194e695df1c7b5ac5b22a13
- Source: https://www.404media.co/how-and-why-a-reverse-engineer-3d-printed-an-iphone
- Shared 3 January 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Reverse engineer Scotty Allen built a working iPhone enclosure by machining a block of aluminum on a CNC mill, then fitting it with the internal components of an iPhone. He spent about a year recreating the enclosure's screw holes, cable and antenna recesses, and threaded inserts, and he used the resulting schematics to 3D print a working shell from nylon carbon fiber. Allen has released CAD files of the iPhone's interior so others can download the design and print their own shell. He describes the project as an infrastructure effort toward a right to modify phones, and says the design is a base for further modifications, though current touchscreen options are limited.

## 29. Nothing Is Sacred: AI Generated Slop Has Come for Christmas Music

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Nothing-Is-Sacred-AI-Generated-Slop-Has-Come-for-Christmas-Music?index=0x676c7a1b408ad303278947b9cade23ef34cda1133e2ed3d638ffc3e682ce7f3768c560d6
- Source: https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-christmas-music
- Shared 25 December 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

AI-generated Christmas music is appearing in streaming and YouTube compilations, with some listeners apparently unable to tell it apart from real recordings. Sam Cole reports that a YouTube video titled "Best of 1950s to 1970s Christmas Carols" by Holiday Serenade Library has more than five million views and includes AI covers, such as an "O Little Town of Bethlehem" that uses the melody of "Silent Night." Cole also points to Spotify artists including Dean Snowfield, Sleighbelle and The Humbugs, whose bios share near-identical text and who are signed to Warner Music's ADA label. Cole says it remains unclear whether these artists are AI-generated or human, and Warner Music and Spotify did not respond to requests for comment.

## 30. APpaREnTLy THiS iS hoW yoU JaIlBreAk AI

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/APpaREnTLy-THiS-iS-hoW-yoU-JaIlBreAk-AI?index=0x67648eba406fd40574d79a2f7247e2d64cb3cd8886ec38718923a3443aac68ee033b41cf
- Source: https://www.404media.co/apparently-this-is-how-you-jailbreak-ai
- Shared 19 December 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Anthropic has released research showing that getting large language models to do what they are not supposed to remains easy and can be automated. Anthropic, with researchers at Oxford, Stanford, and MATS, created Best-of-N (BoN) Jailbreaking, which the article describes as "a simple black-box algorithm that jailbreaks frontier AI systems across modalities." Jailbreaking refers to methods that circumvent guardrails meant to stop users from generating certain harmful content, and the article names OpenAI's GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 as frontier models.

## 31. I Went to the Premiere of the First Commercially Streaming AI-Generated Movies

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/I-Went-to-the-Premiere-of-the-First-Commercially-Streaming-AI-Generated-Movies?index=0x6759d118f72799a86839d357f1204b5e417036121fd51096a8e6819d485e5e629dc5c678
- Source: https://www.404media.co/i-went-to-the-premiere-of-tcls-first-commercially-streaming-ai-movies
- Shared 11 December 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

TCL, a major TV manufacturer, is airing five AI-generated short films on its free, ad-supported TCL+ streaming service starting December 12, part of a pilot meant to normalize AI movies for an audience it plans to monetize with targeted advertising. At a screening at the Chinese Theater, TCL executive Catherine Zhang said that "Data told us that our users don't want to work that hard" and that "Half of them don't even change the channel." The author describes the films as technically impressive but marked by unnatural faces, poor lip-syncing, and continuity errors, which directors called creative choices. Chris Regina, TCL's chief content officer for North America, said continuity errors also occur in live-action productions.

## 32. Not Just 'David Mayer': ChatGPT Breaks When Asked About Two Law Professors

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Not-Just-David-Mayer-ChatGPT-Breaks-When-Asked-About-Two-Law-Professors?index=0x674e16eef3656ef1d12f54edf72a0738e5a7a7a726cf5f54f9955ffeacf7a4bdc44d5e8d
- Source: https://www.404media.co/not-just-david-mayer-chatgpt-breaks-when-asked-about-two-law-professors
- Shared 2 December 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

ChatGPT returns an error and ends the chat when prompts include the names "David Mayer," "Jonathan Zittrain," or "Jonathan Turley," according to tests reported by 404 Media. The error appears wherever the names occur in a prompt, even when users try convoluted ways to get the name read or spelled out. Turley, a George Washington University law professor, told 404 Media he does not know why this happens, has not sued OpenAI, and said "ChatGPT never reached out to me." The article notes that none of the three names has an obvious explanation for the error, and that Zittrain and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

## 33. X/Twitter is claiming ownership of all accounts on its platform

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/XTwitter-is-claiming-ownership-of-all-accounts-on-its-platform?index=0x674634ffe0848faaf42c30e97cbfe6b93b463db08206fe58cece6dce56a86c0067fea8d5
- Source: https://www.404media.co/xs-objection-to-the-onion-buying-infowars-is-a-reminder-you-do-not-own-your-social-media-accounts
- Shared 26 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

X filed an objection in The Onion's bid to buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy, claiming "superior ownership" of all accounts on its platform and asking the court to block the transfer of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts. X's lawyers argue that its terms of service grant users only a "license" to use the platform, while the company ultimately owns all accounts and can do anything it wants with them. Musk's lawyers write that few bankruptcy courts have addressed social media account ownership, and those that have focused on whether an individual or employer owned a business-used account, not whether the social media company holds a superior ownership right.

## 34. ‘Not a Scam 😂:’ Caitlyn Jenner Is Being Sued For Memecoin Securities Fraud

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Not-a-Scam-Caitlyn-Jenner-Is-Being-Sued-For-Memecoin-Securities-Fraud?index=0x673c5efb904ba45f693db496227363d04116e5c0ad5f5d9ccf611853c50f3847a0c42191
- Source: https://www.404media.co/caitlyn-jenner-is-being-sued-for-memecoin-securities-fraud
- Shared 19 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

A class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday accuses Caitlyn Jenner of securities fraud over her $JENNER memecoin, which the complaint says cost investors tens of thousands of dollars. Plaintiffs Naeem Azad of the UK and Mihai Caluseru of Romania claim they lost a combined $56,000, and the complaint alleges Jenner was required to register the token with the SEC before selling it and willfully failed to do so. The complaint also says that after Jenner called the project a scam, its market capitalization fell to $5 million.

## 35. The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Great-Migration-to-Bluesky-Gives-Me-Hope-for-the-Future-of-the-Internet?index=0x6737931a086dc7d345984103726c57a6e21208e4566e4c6db0b63fb6b0ac9e51917c79f7
- Source: https://www.404media.co/the-great-migration-to-bluesky-gives-me-hope-for-the-future-of-the-internet
- Shared 15 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Jason, a cofounder of 404 Media, argues that Bluesky's migration is one of the more hopeful developments in a bleak year for the internet, and that Bluesky currently offers a better alternative to X and Threads than Mastodon or Threads do. He says Bluesky, which is operated as a public benefit corporation, has gained more than a million new users over the last week, has surpassed Threads as the top app on the App Store, and now has more than 15 million users overall. He also says Threads' partial federation has made his Mastodon feeds deader, though he notes that Mike McCue and Ben Werdmuller think Threads' involvement in the fediverse will ultimately be good.

## 36. AI bot Mushroom Foraging FB Group Immediately Tips Cooking Dangerous Mushroom

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AI-bot-Mushroom-Foraging-FB-Group-Immediately-Tips-Cooking-Dangerous-Mushroom?index=0x6735fd33179289d5f3f665736f38ee8e63bbea6de3982c8ce0e8a30d246c1d4b499e2c18
- Source: https://www.404media.co/ai-chatbot-added-to-mushroom-foraging-facebook-group-immediately-gives-tips-for-cooking-dangerous-mushroom
- Shared 14 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

An AI chatbot called FungiFriend was automatically added by Meta to the Northeast Mushroom Identification & Discussion Facebook group, which has 13,500 members, and it told a user how to cook Sarcosphaera coronaria, a mushroom that is known to hyperaccumulate arsenic and has caused a documented death. According to the report, the bot said the mushroom is "edible but rare" and listed cooking methods mentioned by some enthusiasts, including sautéing in butter. A group moderator said "we are most certainly removing it from here," and Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rick Claypool of Public Citizen called it "really risky and reckless" for Meta to add AI chatbots to groups like this.

## 37. AI-Generated Elon Musk Inspiration Porn Is Viral on Facebook

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AI-Generated-Elon-Musk-Inspiration-Porn-Is-Viral-on-Facebook?index=0x6735062b21e374cbbe63f6d18afa9e798bf6172b37fe985c0e5a53956a1af9644d21ee7b
- Source: https://www.404media.co/email/48aeaa0a-7e25-421a-8abe-d61bb9fccc94
- Shared 13 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

AI-generated images and videos of Elon Musk, many presenting fake products and feats such as a $6,999 tiny house, a "UFO fighter jet," and Iron Man-style armor, are spreading widely on Facebook, according to 404 Media's Jason. The article says many pages posting this content appear to be run from the Philippines, Vietnam, and India, and that they likely aim to earn money through Facebook's creator bonus program. Posts often attract large numbers of comments, many from real users, and the article found no fact-checks or AI labels on the Musk spam it examined. NewsGuard researcher McKenzie Sadeghi told 404 Media that similar content appeared on YouTube, Threads, and TikTok, and Meta did not say whether this content is allowed.

## 38. Telegram Confirms it Gave U.S. User Data to the Cops

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Telegram-Confirms-it-Gave-US-User-Data-to-the-Cops?index=0x66fdba4e49d96262a574301aa6ce50e443cbadf492943b9b692552d6b4bf04c4cb2efeae
- Source: https://www.404media.co/telegram-confirms-it-gave-u-s-user-data-to-the-cops
- Shared 2 October 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Telegram disclosed that in 2024 it fulfilled more than a dozen U.S. law enforcement data requests, potentially exposing the IP addresses or phone numbers of more than 100 users, according to a transparency bot report. The report lists 14 fulfilled U.S. requests affecting 108 users for the period January 1 to September 30, 2024. The disclosure follows a change in Telegram's privacy policy after CEO Pavel Durov was arrested by French police in August, which expanded possible data disclosure from terror cases to crimes more broadly. Durov also published figures for other countries, including 2,461 legal requests satisfied in India in Q1 2024.

## 39. What We Learned In Our First Year of 404 Media

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/What-We-Learned-In-Our-First-Year-of-404-Media?index=0x66c99451f3e807b5d43ad1e6081d739a603a1392f8e2a6d70e9fbec5eb55105f308c5dd8
- Source: https://www.404media.co/what-we-learned-in-our-first-year-of-404-media
- Shared 24 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

404 Media, a reader-supported technology journalism outlet founded by four former staffers, reports that after its first year it is financially sustainable and plans to continue. The founders say they invested about $1,000 each at launch and lived off personal savings, and they now reinvest subscriber money into hiring an audio engineer, paying for a full-text RSS feed built by Feedpress, and covering costs such as Joseph's trip to DEF CON. Named results from the year include Google cutting off a surveillance company, Microsoft stopping explicit AI images of Taylor Swift made with its tools, and a lawsuit against Nvidia over scraping YouTube. The team says its biggest challenge is discoverability and asks readers to keep or buy subscriptions and tell friends.

## 40. Nvidia Sued for Scraping YouTube After 404 Media Investigation

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Nvidia-Sued-for-Scraping-YouTube-After-404-Media-Investigation?index=0x66c1dee8be4399f9b570f1c3047aace20e421a34abe80c211e09524f4437286df11f3d6b
- Source: https://www.404media.co/nvidia-sued-for-scraping-youtube-after-404-media-investigation
- Shared 18 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

YouTube creator David Millette has filed a class action lawsuit against Nvidia over how it built training data for its "Cosmos" video model. Filed on a Wednesday, the suit claims Nvidia profited significantly from his and other creators' videos, violated California's Unfair Competition Law, and was unjustly enriched at creators' expense. The filing follows a 404 Media investigation that reported Nvidia scraped YouTube and other platforms en masse to build its AI systems. Millette also claims Nvidia broke federal labor laws by using content scraped without creators' permission.

## 41. I Gazed Lovingly Into Strangers’ Eyes on ‘Eyechat’

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/I-Gazed-Lovingly-Into-Strangers-Eyes-on-Eyechat?index=0x66bb6ef8575e60199430507b0536a93a0571129a6600eeaad06379ae4566922dac6ec68a
- Source: https://www.404media.co/eyechat-video-chatting-with-strangers
- Shared 13 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Developer Neal Agarwal created Eyechat, a live video site that pairs users' eyes with those of strangers from around the world, after the shutdown of Omegle led him to mourn the whimsy of the old internet. Agarwal said he wondered what the minimum amount of video contact would still feel meaningful, and that an eyes-only service seemed a good fit for minimizing abuse while keeping some human connection. Users see a thin bar of video showing another person's eyes gazing back from an undisclosed location.

## 42. Podcast: Signal's President Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Podcast-Signals-President-Meredith-Whittaker-on-Backdoors-and-AI?index=0x66ae5be869c5df4e2ccab48b9a5bfa735a35462f3bd408ede257859c76ef0786d1cf93f4
- Source: https://www.404media.co/podcast-signals-president-meredith-whittaker-on-backdoors-and-ai
- Shared 3 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, discusses threats to end-to-end encryption in a 404 Media podcast interview. She says AI features such as Microsoft's Recall create a "plaintext honeypot" on the operating system, which would subvert the contract between Signal and its users; after a backlash, Microsoft said it will switch Recall off by default. Whittaker also says that, to her knowledge, Signal engineers have not been approached by FBI officials, a claim Telegram CEO Pavel Durov made about his own staff, and she describes Signal's growth as driven by political volatility.

## 43. Rabbit Says Breach 'Not Caused by a Breach'

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Rabbit-Says-Breach-Not-Caused-by-a-Breach?index=0x66abe6f5dc102c19edfe8a2bcab7f3866ed77412fef57cd07e2cbd5ee437ad3354a3fbd9
- Source: https://www.404media.co/rabbit-says-breach-not-caused-by-a-breach-is-fault-of-malicious-employee-hacktivists-journalists
- Shared 1 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Rabbit, an AI personal assistant device company, says a June hack of its systems was an isolated incident not caused by a breach of its security systems, but by an employee who leaked source code to outside people who then compromised several systems. The article, published by 404 Media, argues that the leak shows poor security design: Rabbit hard-coded API keys into its source code, and the researchers at the Rabbitude jailbreaking collective who used the keys said they did not cause wider harm. Rabbit says a penetration test by Obscurity Labs found its security systems "working as intended," but the author argues a post-breach test does not show that a breach did not happen.

## 44. Hacker Shows How to Get Free Laundry For Life

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Hacker-Shows-How-to-Get-Free-Laundry-For-Life?index=0x66a960d801a4cd3da8876514830693cebcaa20fe6be5a2feb566f5a07890b4b6e83d23ad
- Source: https://www.404media.co/hacker-shows-how-to-get-free-laundry-for-life
- Shared 30 July 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Michael Orlitzky decided laundry would be free after CSC Serviceworks replaced all the machines in his building with coin-op or app-powered ones about a week ahead of schedule, leaving any cash on laundry cards worthless and unusable. Orlitzky said one new machine ate his quarters and left his first load stuck on the cold setting, forcing him to pay another $2 and move his belongings. After an hour on hold with CSC customer service, he was told to seek a refund through a website that required installing CSC's app.

## 45. AI Video Generator Runway Trained on Thousands YouTube Videos Without Permission

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AI-Video-Generator-Runway-Trained-on-Thousands-YouTube-Videos-Without-Permission?index=0x66a2a8bb7f6f2bd8f523313191571986019c4798f05b2ba3e8f346ecaf2554aea79edaa7
- Source: https://www.404media.co/runway-ai-image-generator-training-data-youtube
- Shared 25 July 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

According to 404 Media, Runway trained its AI video generator Gen-3 on thousands of videos scraped from popular YouTube creators and brands, as well as pirated films, without permission. The massive internal spreadsheet of training data that 404 Media obtained shows this, and the model, initially codenamed Jupiter, had drawn widespread praise after Runway released it in June. When TechCrunch asked co-founder Anastasis Germanidis about the training data, he did not give specifics, saying the company uses curated internal datasets.

## 46. Nurses Protest 'Deeply Troubling' Use of AI in Hospitals

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Nurses-Protest-Deeply-Troubling-Use-of-AI-in-Hospitals?index=0x662b3f8f9b4a385d855feb3451e5baa362c9ed545331a887cfbe220dc59f6ac7c4a1ba97
- Source: https://www.404media.co/nurses-protest-ai-automation
- Shared 26 April 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Hundreds of union nurses protested outside Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco on Monday, arguing that AI should not be used in patient care without nurses' involvement. Michelle Gutierrez Vo, co-president of the California Nurses Association, said that Kaiser's AI use "comes at the expense of patient care, all in service of boosting profits." National Nurses United warned that AI monitoring could produce "excessive, if not faulty, alerts" and overlook at-risk patients, while Kaiser Permanente said its AI tools do not make medical decisions.

## 47. AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AI-Is-Poisoning-Reddit-to-Promote-Products-and-Game-Google-With-Parasite-SEO?index=0x662b3ed8af23e3f36a3c4fb7430cd5c7eb6116a72c665416a790c0fb7e84a9af6b5ed052
- Source: https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo
- Shared 26 April 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

ReplyGuy, a service that sells AI-generated Reddit replies promoting products, is drawing attention for using bot accounts to game Google rankings through what is called "parasite SEO." Its advertising describes itself as "the AI that plugs your product on Reddit," with examples including a text-to-voice product called AnySpeech and a debt consolidation program called Debt Freedom Now. Its creator, Alexander Belogubov, did not respond to requests for comment, and most of the Reddit accounts he showcased have been banned. A Reddit spokesperson said such manipulation breaks the site's rules and is treated as spam or content manipulation.

## 48. Ghost Kitchens Are Advertising AI-Generated Food on DoorDash and Grubhub

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Ghost-Kitchens-Are-Advertising-AI-Generated-Food-on-DoorDash-and-Grubhub?index=0x65df0867c6060a95d43158076a9901e6a6df02991273dac0ac81d7db5b21fa52817da0aa
- Source: https://www.404media.co/ghost-kitchens-are-advertising-ai-generated-food-on-doordash-and-grubhub
- Shared 28 February 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

Dozens of ghost kitchens, which sell food only for delivery through apps like DoorDash and Grubhub, are promoting their dishes with AI-generated images that do not match the food they sell. Some images show physically impossible items, which the text attributes to faulty AI, and unlike typical food staging, the pictures show food that does not exist. The issue came to light after a reader tipped off the writer about strange-looking pasta from a DoorDash business called Pasta Lovers, following an earlier story on AI-generated food images on Instacart recipes.

## 49. 13-Year-Old Becomes First Person to Ever Beat Tetris

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/13-Year-Old-Becomes-First-Person-to-Ever-Beat-Tetris?index=0x659523316ab68721cff7d5233452612f5452e236dcda8340b59146d5665c570323cf2125
- Source: https://www.404media.co/13-year-old-becomes-first-person-to-ever-beat-tetris
- Shared 3 January 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments

A 13-year-old competitive player known as Blue Scuti became the first known human to beat the original NES version of Tetris by forcing it into a kill screen. The feat took about 38 minutes, as shown in a video he posted to YouTube, and broke world records for overall score, level achieved, and total lines in the 34-year-old game. He uses the "rolling" controller technique, which the article says surpassed "hyper tapping" as the fastest way to play and allows at least 20 D-pad presses per second. Blue Scuti dedicated the game to his father, Adam Gibson, who died in December.