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Happy anniversary to us! It’s been one year since we launched 404 Media, if you can believe it. We wrote about what we’ve done and learned in the last 365 days. On the podcast this week: we talk about how Taylor Swift could sue Donald Trump for posting a series of fake, AI-generated images that made it look like Swifties endorsed him for president, and how the U.S. has been quietly using hacked messages from an encrypted phone company to prosecute alleged cocaine traffickers. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about a lawsuit against Nvidia for scraping YouTube. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch episodes on YouTube. Here’s what we got up to this week:  Photo credit: Sharon Attia HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO USIn August 2023, we launched 404 Media with a novel idea: pay journalists to do journalism. Here we are, a year later, and we are very proud and humbled to report that, because of your support, it’s working. Our business is sustainable, we are happy, and we aren’t going anywhere. Read more about the journey, here.  Images via 404 Media I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME“Walking through the hallways of Las Vegas casinos, sitting in the city’s taxis, and speaking to the staff of various businesses, there was a distinct feeling throughout this year’s DEF CON hacking conference: paranoia,” Joseph wrote in his trip report for this year’s hacking conference. Daily room searches, hassled attendees, and hostile casinos made this year a major vibe shift from the past. “Hackers were no longer seen as a novelty coming into town. They were seen as a threat to peoples’ peace and livelihoods,” Joseph wrote. There’s a podcast for supporters coming soon from DEF CON; sign up now at the supporter level to get access when it’s out.  Screenshots via Truth Social HE DID SOMETHING BADLast weekend, Trump posted four AI-generated images of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts and an AI-generated Swift in an Uncle Sam-style outfit, with the text “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump captioned his post, “I accept!” I wrote about how, under a recently-enacted Tennessee law, these images could be illegal.  Screenshot via Ticketmaster TICKET TO A LAWSUITTicketmaster’s revolving barcode technology, which has led to the rise of “untransferable tickets,” was primarily introduced to gain market share over competitors like StubHub and SeatGeek and to learn more about who its customers were bringing to concerts, a federal government’s antitrust lawsuit against the company alleges. Jason broke down the lawsuit, in which the DOJ says Ticketmaster’s technology “makes it harder for fans to use rivals’ secondary ticketing platforms to resell tickets, pushing them instead to the Ticketmaster resale platform.”  Collage via 404 Media GET THIS DUPEChinese fast fashion giant Shein claims other Chinese fast fashion giant Temu should be held accountable for running “an unlawful enterprise built on counterfeiting, theft of trade secrets, infringement of intellectual property rights, and fraud as they seek to infiltrate the U.S. with their platform,” and accuses Temu of masquerading “as a legitimate e-commerce ‘marketplace’” in a new lawsuit. I wrote about Shein’s spicy claims, including that Temu “is not actually a ‘marketplace’ platform at all.”  Collage via 404 Media THAT’S LITERAL TONS OF COCAINEU.S. agencies are increasingly accessing parts of a half-billion encrypted chat message haul that has rocked the global organized crime underground, using the chats as part of multiple drug trafficking prosecutions, according to court records. Joseph wrote about how authorities are using the chat messages to prosecute alleged maritime drug smugglers who traffic cocaine using speedboats and commercial ships. I can’t pick one comment I liked the best from our one year post so just go read them all. Responding to “The Golden Age of Hackers in Vegas Is Over,” David writes, “Surprise room searches during Defcon have been an issue for a few years now for a variety of rationales. I prefer to stay off-strip and take the bus up partially for this reason. It's also cheaper and there's better coffee and food options.”
Pro-tips. And Seth Goldstein said, “I can't say I'm surprised. After being a target these hotels are not going to be as welcoming. Why should they? Time to find a smaller town to host it, maybe?”
To which Noah Meyerhans replied, “A smaller town is going to have a hard time absorbing 26,000 attendees, though. When you reach a certain size, your venue options become very limited.”
Become a supporter to read comments and join the convo. Jason is trying to turn the one-year comment section into an Orioles message board, and I might have to intervene soon. 
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss running 404 Media for a whole year, public speaking, and meetings. SAM: I keep thinking “when I have time, I’ll write down some coherent thoughts about the last year” and then I never have time, or when I do have time I’m trying to smooth my brain out, not type more about work. The reality is, I will never actually sit down and reflect, short of what I do once a week in this venue, which is how we do things around here: write, publish, and keep it pushing. The guys will go into this more in their own entries today. Something I do occasionally ponder for more than a few hurried minutes once a week is how we couldn’t have done any of this without a lot of help. From the outside, I’m sure it seems like we’re four people running a pretty decent website and that’s all there is to it. But in the first few months of launching, we relied very heavily on our networks—former Vice colleagues, old friends from past jobs, other indie media publications who paved the way—to help us get set up in the least chaotic way possible. There are a handful of these people listed in our anniversary post, but that’s an incomplete list. Read the rest of Sam's Behind the Blog, as well as Jason, Emanuel, and Joseph's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
Okay, I gotta do some online shopping. See you next week.
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