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IT'S FRIDAY, I'M TOLD? Let's do this. On the podcast this week: How Trump’s tariffs are impacting everything from LEGO to cameras to sex toys, and how misfired DMCA complaints designed to help adult creators are targeting other sites, including ours. In the section for subscribers at the supporter level, we do a wrap-up of a bunch of recent ChatGPT stories about suicide and murder. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. The podcast we recorded live in LA at our hackerspace party is also up for supporters now; find it wherever you get your podcasts.
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Alright, here's what happened this week: PIRATES RUINING EVERYTHING The internet is becoming harder to use because of unintended consequences in the battle between adult content creators who are trying to protect their livelihoods and the people who pirate their content. Porn piracy, like all forms of content piracy, has existed for as long as the internet. But as more individual creators make their living on services like OnlyFans, many of them have hired companies to send Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices against companies that steal their content. As some of those services turn to automation in order to handle the workload, completely unrelated content is getting flagged as violating their copyrights and is being deindexed from Google search. The process exposes bigger problems with how copyright violations are handled on the internet, with automated systems filing takedown requests that are reviewed by other automated systems, leading to unintended consequences.  Screenshot via Shein / Internet Archive FREE LUIGI'S SHEIN LISTINGA listing on ultra-fast-fashion e-commerce site Shein used an AI-generated image of Luigi Mangione to sell a floral button-down t-shirt. Mangione—the prime suspect in the December 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson—is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, last I checked, and is not modeling for Shein. "The image in question was provided by a third-party vendor and was removed immediately upon discovery," Shein told Newsweek in a statement. "We have stringent standards for all listings on our platform. We are conducting a thorough investigation, strengthening our monitoring processes, and will take appropriate action against the vendor in line with our policies." Shein provided the same comment to 404 Media.  Images via 404 Media BACKSEAT DRIVINGA hacker has broken into Nexar, a popular dashcam company that pitches its users’ dashcams as “virtual CCTV cameras” around the world that other people can buy images from, and accessed a database of terabytes of video recordings taken from cameras in drivers’ cars. The videos obtained by the hacker and shared with 404 Media capture people clearly unaware that a third party may be watching or listening in. A parent in a car soothing a baby. A man whistling along to the radio. Another person on a Facetime call. One appears to show a driver heading towards the entrance of the CIA’s headquarters. Other images, which are publicly available in a map that Nexar publishes online, show drivers around sensitive Department of Defense locations.  Screenshot via YouTube “FEEEEEEEE"AI-generated history videos are part of a sophisticated and growing AI slop content ecosystem that is flooding YouTube, drowning out human-made content created by real anthropologists and historians who spend weeks or months researching, fact-checking, scripting, recording, and editing their videos, and quite literally rewriting history with surface-level, automated drek that the YouTube algorithm delivers to people. YouTube has said it will demonetize or otherwise crack down on “mass produced” videos, but it is not clear whether that has had any sort of impact on the proliferation of AI-generated videos on the platform, and none of the people 404 Media spoke to for this article have noticed any change.  Image: Achille Jouberton/ISTA ICY ANOMOLIESScientists have long been puzzled by the sturdy glaciers of the mountains of central Asia, which have inexplicably remained intact even as other glaciers around the world rapidly recede due to human-driven climate change. This mysterious resilience may be coming to an end, however. The glaciers in this mountainous region—nicknamed the “Third Pole” because it boasts more ice than any place outside of the Arctic and Antarctic polar caps— have passed a tipping point that could set them on a path to accelerated mass loss, according to a new study. The end of this unusual glacial resilience, known as the Pamir-Karakoram Anomaly, would have major implications for the people who rely on the glaciers for water. If you’re into this, make sure you’re subscribed to The Abstract, our Saturday newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. READ MOREReplying to Google AI Falsely Says YouTuber Visited Israel, Forcing Him to Deal With Backlash, Joe writes: ‘The vast majority of AI Overviews are factual’ is an inadequate defense: fact doesn't exist on a spectrum. The AI Overview in this story got so many facts right! Like 95% of them! It just messed up the one.
And responding to AI Generated 'Boring History' Videos Are Flooding YouTube and Drowning Out Real History, Michelle writes: “I use YouTube a lot in teaching and so I often will just search to see what's there. I was looking to see if I could find anything on the topic of sexual violence during slavery in the US and was beyond horrified to find a bunch of gross AI generated fetish material. (and like, there's so much of it that I couldn't find anything useful). I'm so irritated that all the tools I have used to teach are becoming worse.”
If you have more weird wild examples of AI slop on YouTube, email us: jason@404media.co BEHIND THE BLOGThis 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 slop in history, five-alarm fires, and AI art (not) at Dragon Con. EMANUEL: We published about a dozen stories this week and I only wrote one of them. I’ve already talked about it at length on this week’s podcast so I suggest you read the article and then listen to that if you’re interested in OnlyFans piracy, bad DMCA takedown request processes, and our continued overreliance on Google search for navigating the internet. Read the rest of Emanuel's Behind the Blog, as well as Sam and Jason's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
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