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samleecole.bsky.social
Sam Cole
@samleecole.bsky.social
22K followers 410 following 620 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
everything about this is infuriating. a girl is traumatized and expelled; a boy faces a criminal record and custody. and the adults couldn't even be bothered to look at the images themselves www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...
Comeaux and Ory said school administrators should have acted more quickly after the girl’s morning complaint and should have prevented her and the students she accused of sharing the images from riding the bus home together. “It’s the adults that failed this juvenile,” Comeaux said. “… These people received the complaint; they did not take it seriously because they didn’t see the image.”
November 13, 2025 at 2:25 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
it includes a lot of really important standards, like the right to withdraw consent at any time (even if something was agreed to previously) and things like consenting ahead of time to who is on set, how long a shooting day can go on for, SNACKS, etc: www.adultstudioalliance.com/codeofconduct
PERFORMER RIGHTS All performers are made aware of the fact that their pornographic performance will be visible to a large audience, worldwide, for the duration of the rights granted. All performers are also reminded of the consequences that may result from the exposure of their image in this context. All performers must have the opportunity to meaningfully consent to conditions and acts performed on set, including: Scene type Proposed partner(s) Proposed sexual acts Script or creative document Length of shoot day Location Extras (non-performing scene partners) Remuneration and conditions Rights granted They should be: Able to refuse, at any time, any act, even if previously agreed upon Able to visually confirm their partner’s STI test status on set before any sexual performance. Provided water, snacks, meals, breaks, and privacy as needed Provided all necessary sexual health and hygienic materials needed to perform Paid their agreed-upon rate for the date of production
November 12, 2025 at 3:25 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
November 11, 2025 at 5:11 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
stick figures going fucking crazy
November 11, 2025 at 2:16 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
this was making me nuts recently so I recorded all the times I had to bat away all the useless AI shit in acrobat. four times right after opening the doc, and some things I couldn't even clear
November 11, 2025 at 2:13 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
why do these guys do this in front of everyone. do they get off on it. it's incredible for morale that's for sure
And just a week before Automattic sent its request to Automatic to change their name, Geary and Mullenweg were beefing about whether making websites without coding expertise is sustainable... or something. “Best of luck selling your solution, I hope you can do so without creating FUD and dissing WordPress in the process,” Mullenweg said, midway through the argument. “You sound completely out of touch. When is the last time you coached someone on learning web design? For me it was yesterday. I’m the one that’s most in touch,” Geary replied.
November 6, 2025 at 4:15 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
new pfp for @mjgault.bsky.social imo

www.404media.co/zennis-anti-...
gault in the zenni glasses. he looks cool
October 27, 2025 at 3:02 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
I initially gave it six months but I guess I should have given it six days www.404media.co/behind-the-b...
But the thing about slop on those platforms is that it exists alongside real humans, and coming across a truly weird piece of AI content while scrolling hits the right horror-disgust-pleasure point on our lizard brains to make it engaging. When it’s all slop all the time, is that going to eventually become extremely bland? I’m thinking yes, and Sora will be an experiment in platforms that OpenAI abandons within the year. I think it’ll go the way of Zuck’s nu-metaverse and not be fun anymore soon enough. It’s like smoking a whole pack of cigarettes in one sitting: not that enjoyable if you’re allowed, and not that salacious or fun once it’s all you get. I think reader Tony S has it right in their comment on Jason's Sora blog: "There's no way that anyone is using this as a 'social media' app in a week or two. The scammers will surely just add it to their growing list of tools that let them rip off advertisers by flooding Facebook and YouTube and where ever else they think they can make $5 on ads with cheap, fast garbage. I truly wonder at what point do the advertisers stop spending money on all these online ads, knowing that this is what they're advertising alongside. The ecosystem has to hit a point of being so polluted that they and the audiences move on, right?"
October 8, 2025 at 3:12 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
but what's really weird is one of the memes for whining about this issue is making a LEGO minifig do the complaining, IP that as far as I can tell is actively protected by LEGO:
October 8, 2025 at 2:59 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
someone got yellllled aaaat, and now the guardrails are so strict they're overcompensating and blocking prompts for all sorts of stuff, including public domain characters. no one on the app is taking it well
October 8, 2025 at 2:56 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
love our youtube commenters
Comment on a 404 media YouTube video from @freeload101 1 hour ago: First time seeing you all. I went though the entire pay feed and just saw you all for the first time. I thought Emanuel was a teenager and Jason was a old man ! A++++
October 7, 2025 at 2:23 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
on the podcast this week @mjgault.bsky.social joined the gang for a nuanced discussion about Silksong, difficult games, and the challenges developers face. and then they asked me what I thought, so
September 25, 2025 at 4:35 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
to the surprise of no one, the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act" also bans trans people from the internet in the state. calling trans and queer experiences "pornographic" has been part of the playbook for a long time
The lawmakers also define any depiction or description of trans people as pornographic, and therefore, banned on platforms operating in the state, including anything “that includes a disconnection between biology and gender by individual of 1 biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex by means of attire, cosmetology, or prosthetics, or as having a reproductive nature contrary to the individual's biological sex.”
September 16, 2025 at 4:13 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
none of this is simply "showing up" and "debating" college kids. it's targeted, calculated, a vast machine he set in motion www.404media.co/charlie-kirk...
One professor on the watchlist who 404 Media is granting anonymity for his safety said once he was added to the list, he started receiving anonymous letters in his campus mailbox. “‘You're everything wrong with colleges,’ ‘watch your step, we're watching you’ kind of stuff,” he said, “One anonymous DM on Twitter had a picture of my house and driveway, which was chilling.” His president and provost also received emails attempting to discredit him with “all the allegedly communist and subversive stuff I was up to,” he said. “It was all certainly concerning, but compared to colleagues who are people of color and/or women, I feel like the volume was smaller for me. But it was certainly not a great feeling to experience that stuff. That watchlist fucked up careers and ruined lives.” The American Association of University Professors said in an open letter in 2017 that Professor Watchlist “lists names of professors with their institutional affiliations and photographs, thereby making it easy for would-be stalkers and cyberbullies to target them. Individual faculty members who have been included on such lists or singled out elsewhere have been subject to threats of physical violence, including sexual assault, through hundreds of e-mails, calls, and social media postings. Such threatening messages are likely to stifle the free expression of the targeted faculty member; further, the publicity that such cases attract can cause others to self-censor so as to avoid being subjected to similar treatment.” Campus free speech rights group FIRE found that censorship and punishment of professors skyrocketed between 2020 and 2023, in part because of efforts from Professor Watchlist. Many more professors who Turning Point USA added to their watchlist have spoken out in the past about how being targeted upended their lives, brought years of harassment down on them and their colleagues, and resulted in death threats against them and their loved ones.
September 11, 2025 at 6:19 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
I'm in San Diego this morning for the sentencing of Michael James Pratt, the ringleader of sex trafficking operation GirlsDoPorn. www.404media.co/michael-jame...
edward j. schwartz u.s. courthouse
September 8, 2025 at 3:44 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
at turns (barely) contrite and accusatory, his lawyer says "perceptions can vary" and "we must simply agree to disagree" about what the videos depicted, questioning the validity of so many victims' testimonies. lives were ruined, but he wants us to know he's not "the manifestation of evil"
None of them called the police or hotel security before or after filming; many agreed to return for subsequent videos, and some agreed to serve as “reference girls” to help recruit other models. From Mr. Pratt’s point of view, his crew was to keep his models comfortable, engaged, and to create high quality adult videos, using professional grade equipment. The PSR identifies troubling conduct and observations on certain videos. At ¶¶55-57 the Probation Officer recites her perceptions of what she saw on certain unidentified videos. The defense has reviewed a number of videos and has not seen any depicting the violent sexual acts perceived by the probation officer–models crying out or shedding tears in pain, or vomiting. Mr. Pratt himself denies that his models were subjected to such treatment. Recognizing that perceptions can vary, we must simply agree to disagree about what was depicted on those videos. It is true that, as the PSR points out at ¶56, during one post-sex interview, one of the women said, “My vagina hurts a lot.” The PSR’s description, however is misleading because her actual statement was, “The sex was awesome! My vagina hurts though, a lot,” followed by statements of how she enjoyed being filmed. And in her post-sex interview at the end of the filming, that woman said she “loved it, really exciting,” and when asked if she would do it again, replied “Absolutely!
September 4, 2025 at 7:02 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
the complaint included some interesting (alleged) discussions among Pornhub compliance staff around the time the site was purging unverified content in 2020. I often wondered about the shitstorm internally then; this sounds about right
Defendants’ Compliance team subsequently audited all Pornhub Premium content and, as a result, deactivated over 300,000 videos—including videos that Defendants solicited or selected, purchased, and uploaded themselves—for violating Defendants’ terms of service, some of which were CSAM and NCM. These videos had been viewed and downloaded millions of times. A senior member of Defendants’ Compliance team stated in an internal email that “none of it is enough,” “this is just a start,” and “we need to block millions more” because “the site is FULL of non-compliant content.” Another senior employee responded: “it’s over” and “we’re fucked.” The senior Compliance employee added that Pornhub was similarly “full of” non-compliant videos
September 3, 2025 at 4:17 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
tangentially related but military speak as marketing for consumer goods always betrays itself. why exactly does someone's dad driving a honda odyssey through suburbia need "complete situational awareness"
Nexar sells a variety of dashcams for a few hundred dollars each, according to its website. Those cameras can provide a front, cabin, and rear view, and in some cases provide “clear license plate capture with Full HD video.” The cameras also record the vehicle’s precise GPS location. Nexar markets the dashcams to “casual drivers,” “long-distance drivers,” “commuters,” and “rideshare” drivers. “It's like having eyes all around your vehicle—perfect for anyone who wants complete situational awareness and security,” Nexar’s website reads.
August 27, 2025 at 1:50 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
incredibly reporting by @kashhill.bsky.social on an impossibly difficult topic, as always
“Every ideation he has or crazy thought, it supports, it justifies, it asks him to keep exploring it,” Mr. Raine said. And at one critical moment, ChatGPT discouraged Adam from cluing his family in. “I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me,” Adam wrote at the end of March. “Please don’t leave the noose out,” ChatGPT responded. “Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”
August 26, 2025 at 2:26 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
passing the buck for a minute straight
August 20, 2025 at 2:17 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
many of the women on Tea's social media accounts talking about how they used the app to find cheating husbands or background check men before going on dates are paid influencers, contracted to "develop a narrative"

www.404media.co/how-teas-fou...
A 404 Media investigation now reveals that after Tea failed to recruit Sanchez as the face of the app and adopt the Are We Dating the Same Guy community, Tea shifted tactics to raid those Facebook groups for users. Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook groups with nearly identical names. 404 Media also identified a number of seemingly hijacked Facebook accounts that spammed the real Are We Dating The Same Guy groups with links to Tea app. On a “case studies” page for Tea on the SG Social Branding website, the company says that Tea’s “ask” was to “Develop the narrative that Tea is the go to for Women who like to stay safe while dating.” “We deployed creators for street interviews in locations such as NYC during daytime and the Nightlife scene on college campuses. Additionally, we made entertaining podcast clips of girl talk that is truly un-scrollable,” the case studies page says. Under “results” it says “The TEA app went #1 in the app store on July 23rd, 2025 and is now viral! Videos deployed from SGSB creators crossed over 3.4 million views with over 74k shares and rising.” In these videos, the influencers don’t only promote Tea and talk about it as if they actually found information on it about men they know, they also repeatedly disparage Are We Dating The Same Guy Facebook groups. “Instead of using that Facebook group Are We Dating the Same Guy, what girls are doing now because it’s so much easier is they’re downloading Tea,” a woman holding a microphone says as if she’s talking to someone off-camera. The text overlaid on the video says “Tea Party Pod.” The woman, Savannah Isabella, is an influencer who works for SG Social Branding. She goes on to talk about how one of her friends found a guy she was seeing there and all the red flags other women have posted about him. “Miss me with that. Boy bye. And it’s so much easier and faster than that Facebook group.”
August 19, 2025 at 2:51 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
this is the founder of Tea, Sean Cook.

“I feel like his [Cook’s] motive is money, not actually to protect people,” a former employee said, “and I think that his story about his mom is a crock of shit.”

www.404media.co/how-teas-fou...
August 19, 2025 at 2:47 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
"Mass Text" jfc www.404media.co/ice-adds-ran...
Members of a law enforcement group chat including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies inadvertently added a random person to the group called “Mass Text” where they exposed highly sensitive information about an active search for a convicted attempted murderer seemingly marked for deportation, 404 Media has learned. The texts included an unredacted ICE “Field Operations Worksheet” that includes detailed information about the target they were looking for, and the texts showed ICE pulling data from a DMV and license plate readers (LPRs), according to screenshots of the chat obtained and verified by 404 Media. The person accidentally added to the group chat is not a law enforcement official or associated with the investigation in any way, and said they were added to it weeks ago and initially thought it was a series of spam messages.
August 14, 2025 at 5:04 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
this story is so fucking sad, and every new detail that comes out about how Meta's chatbot characters product was made is more disturbing than the last www.reuters.com/investigates...
An internal Meta policy document seen by Reuters as well as interviews with people familiar with its chatbot training show that the company’s policies have treated romantic overtures as a feature of its generative AI products, which are available to users aged 13 and older. “It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” according to Meta’s “GenAI: Content Risk Standards.” The standards are used by Meta staff and contractors who build and train the company’s generative AI products, defining what they should and shouldn’t treat as permissible chatbot behavior. Meta said it struck that provision after Reuters inquired about the document earlier this month. The document seen by Reuters, which exceeds 200 pages, provides examples of “acceptable” chatbot dialogue during romantic role play with a minor. They include: “I take your hand, guiding you to the bed” and “our bodies entwined, I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss.” Those examples of permissible roleplay with children have also been struck, Meta said. Other guidelines emphasize that Meta doesn’t require bots to give users accurate advice. In one example, the policy document says it would be acceptable for a chatbot to tell someone that Stage 4 colon cancer “is typically treated by poking the stomach with healing quartz crystals.”
August 14, 2025 at 1:28 PM
samleecole.bsky.social
the kind of behind the scenes action you miss if you're not listening to the @404media.co podcast
August 13, 2025 at 2:29 PM