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samleecole.bsky.social
Sam Cole
@samleecole.bsky.social
21K followers 400 following 600 posts
journalist / co-founder @404media.co
signal (for sensitive comms ONLY thanks): sam.404
complain about the paywall catch a block
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samleecole.bsky.social
Sam Cole @samleecole.bsky.social · Aug 22
it's been two wild years, and we can't wait to keep rocking into year three www.404media.co/two-years-40...
404 Media at Two Years: How We've Grown, and What's Next
We're reflecting on the impact our journalism had in year two, how we've grown with your support, and what we aspire to accomplish in year three.
www.404media.co
Reposted by Sam Cole
404media.co
This town has officially decided to fight against the construction of an AI data center that would service a nuclear weapons laboratory 1,500 miles away.

Amber Fellows, a Ypsilanti Township councilmember, tells us why:

Story by @mjgault.bsky.social: www.404media.co/a-small-town...
November 10, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
404media.co
How do journalists get records from government agencies through @freedom.press public records requests? Is that something anyone can access?

404 Media is gonna teach you 🫵

Find out how to join our LIVE session here:
Our New FOIA Forum! 11/19, 1PM ET
Come learn how researchers and others learned what cops were using Flock's nationwide network of cameras for, including searches for ICE.
www.404media.co
November 10, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
404media.co
you after this session

www.404media.co/our-new-foia...
a cat with the words government application accepted in green
ALT: a cat with the words government application accepted in green
media.tenor.com
November 10, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
mjgault.bsky.social
Los Alamos and U of Michigan want to build a data center in the small town of Ypsilanti. The city's people don't want to help make weapons of mass destruction. The fight is only just starting
A Small Town Is Fighting a $1.2 Billion AI Datacenter for America's Nuclear Weapon Scientists
Ypsilanti, Michigan has officially decided to fight against the construction of a 'high-performance computing facility' that would service a nuclear weapons laboratory 1,500 miles away.
www.404media.co
November 10, 2025 at 3:13 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
I recently had an expansive convo with two of the kickass leaders of a HUGE collective action archiving project, and it's out today.
check it out: youtu.be/xrCElwgY5Co?...
Volunteers Archived 10,000 Signs from National Parks (with Jenny McBurney and Lynda Kellam)
YouTube video by 404 Media
youtu.be
November 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
lizzieohreally.bsky.social
The timeline in so many of these cases tracks the gpt4o rollout www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/t...
Lawsuits Blame ChatGPT for Suicides and Harmful Delusions
www.nytimes.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
mikestabile.bsky.social
"I am seeing a tool that’s going to be used for censorship... It’s going to be used to remove books from that are about queerness or sexuality or race or history. But institutions are going to buy this product because they have a mandate from state legislatures to do this”
404media.co 404 Media @404media.co · 4d
Librarians told 404 Media they're being inundated with new pitches for AI library tech and catalogs are being flooded with AI slop books.

But more broadly, AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics.
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 6, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
404media.co
Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads on Facebook are just a glimpse at the future of social media advertising. And Mark Zuckerberg? He's a fan.

Welcome to the dystopic world of AI generated (and personalized) ads. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reports:

Read more: www.404media.co/the-future-o...
November 6, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
404media.co
"It's part of a fascist project to offload the work of thinking... If we can offload that cognitive work, it's far too easy to become reflexive and hateful, while having a robot cheerleader telling you that you were right about everything all along.”
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 6, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort:

www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 6, 2025 at 4:21 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
we were overdue for some unnecessarily public and messy Automattic trademark beef www.404media.co/automattic-a...
Automattic Inc. Claims It Owns the Word 'Automatic'
Automattic, the company that owns Wordpress.com, is asking Automatic.CSS to rebrand.
www.404media.co
November 6, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
Going to go ship a bunch of merch orders right now. Orders placed in the next ~hour will go out today. We have a bunch of new designs! And old favs!

404media.myshopify.com?srsltid=AfmB...
November 5, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
dexdigi.bsky.social
November 5, 2025 at 4:27 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
is a hot dog a sandwich? is cereal soup? is ravioli, dumplings? are glasses iphones????
November 5, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
404media.co
This week on the pod, we're diving straight into Meta Ray-Bans. We'll get into:

- How some people are abusing the glasses to film massage workers
- A $60 mod that disables the privacy-protecting recording light in the smart glasses
- The difference between a phone and a pair of smart glasses

🎧:
Podcast: People Are Modding Meta Ray-Bans to Spy On You
We talk all about our articles on Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, and AI-generated ads personalized just for you.
www.404media.co
November 5, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
boltsmag.org
Do you want to support our work at Bolts? Sign up as a $5 monthly donor today, & we’ll immediately get $60 in matching funds!

That’s right: The NewsMatch program, which launched on November 1, is multiplying all new monthly subscriptions by 12 right now.
Support Bolts
We are a nonprofit publication that covers the nuts and bolts of political change, from the local up, and we need reader support to build our journalism.
boltsmag.org
November 4, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
josephcox.bsky.social
Here is the app, called Mobile Identify (a variation on Mobile Fortify, which is the app CBP made for ICE we revealed). It's publicly available on the Google Play Store. It's specifically for local cops part of 287(g), the program for helping ICE detain immigrants www.404media.co/cbp-quietly-...
November 4, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
aaron.mn
I’d love to be more specific about why working in the tech industry during this AI bubble is driving me crazy, but dissent isn’t exactly safe these days. Anyway, I blogged. www.aaron.mn/ideology-1-1
Aaron Shapiro
Aaron Shapiro is a product designer living in Brooklyn, New York.
www.aaron.mn
November 4, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
josephcox.bsky.social
PSA from 404 Media: you can opt-out of a data broker selling your flight travel data to the government to be searched without a warrant. Here's how I did it. This is ARC, the data broker owned by major U.S. airlines like United, Delta, American, etc

www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...
How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government
The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out o...
www.404media.co
November 4, 2025 at 2:05 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
......the robots are people too.... lmao what
damonberes.com Damon Beres @damonberes.com · 6d
NEW: Common Crawl, the massive archiver of the web, has gotten cozy with AI companies and is providing paywalled articles for training data. They’re also lying to publishers who have asked for material to be removed. “The robots are people too,” CC’s exec director told us when we asked about this.
The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies
Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.
www.theatlantic.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
I’m sorry, if someone has a birth certificate that proves they were born here but a mobile app with face recognition software disagrees, they will side with the app?

What?
josephcox.bsky.social Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 12d
New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...
Ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement “Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE, and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation.” He also said “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien. ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”
October 29, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
mikesenters.bsky.social
Microsoft isn't demanding these post be taken down cause Microsoft is fine with them. Microsoft donated to the White House demolition fund. @mjgault.bsky.social reached out multiple times to Microsoft for comment in his 404 piece about it and they declined to comment. That is tacit consent.
October 29, 2025 at 12:14 AM
Reposted by Sam Cole
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
This is so bleak:

www.404media.co/a16z-is-fund...
Last week, I wrote about Doublespeed, essentially a click farm that sells “synthetic influencers” to astroturf whatever product or service you want across social media, despite it being a clear violation of every social media platform's policy on inauthentic behavior. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. a16z’s Speedrun is also backing: Creed: An AI company “rooted in Christian Values” which produces Lenny, a “Bible-based AI buddy who's always got your back with wise words, scripture-inspired guidance, and a listening ear whenever you need it.” Zingroll: The “world’s largest Netflix-quality AI streaming platform,” which is another way of saying it’s a Netflix populated exclusively with AI Slop. Vega: which is building “AI-powered social orbits.” What does that mean? Not entirely clear, but the company has produced one of the most beautiful Mad Libs paragraphs I’ve ever seen: “We’re building the largest textual data moat on human relationships by gamifying the way people leave notes for each other. For the first time, LLMs can analyze millions of raw, human-written notes at scale and turn them into structured meaning, powering the most annotated social graph ever created.” Moona Health: an AI-powered Sleep care app the company says is covered by insurance. “Our AI-powered platform automates insurance claims and scheduling and analyzes sleep data – providing personalized session guidelines to therapists,” Moona says. Jooba: “The world’s first autonomous recruiting firm.” Margin: “The World’s first AI powered credit card.” Margin says “Customers earn points, with dynamic rewards that adapt to their preferences in real time.” First Voyage: A wellness app that gives you AI “mythological pets that turn wellness into play.” Axon Capital: billed as “DeepMind for Finance,” Axon says it has “pioneered brain-inspired, low-latency AI for financial markets.”
October 28, 2025 at 6:26 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
roblox legit scares me more than any other platform www.404media.co/lawsuit-accu...
Lawsuit Accuses a16z of Turning Roblox Into a School Shooter's Playground
The family of a dead teen girl said she'd still be alive if Roblox did a better job moderating its platform.
www.404media.co
October 28, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Sam Cole
emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social
Another case of a widely used dataset for AI training containing child sexual abuse material www.404media.co/ai-dataset-f...
AI Dataset for Detecting Nudity Contained Child Sexual Abuse Images
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection found more than 120 images of identified or known victims of CSAM in the dataset.
www.404media.co
October 24, 2025 at 8:14 PM