|
Hey, it's us again, your friends at 404 Media in your inbox every Friday to round up stories of the week. On the podcast this week: AI-generated book ripoffs on Amazon and in libraries, a Y Combinator-supported startup that’s dehumanizing factory workers, and an apparent act of protest from inside the U.S. government. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. If you're going to SXSW, don't forget to RSVP for the 404 Media takeover on Monday, March 10 at The Speakeasy! We're doing a panel and Q&A with the help of our friends at Flipboard, and we hope you stick around for the afterparty, made possible by DeleteMe. Use code 404media for 20% off a DeleteMe subscription.
THE DEATH ALGOAn “error” in Instagram Reels caused its algorithm to show some users video after video of horrific violence, animal abuse, murders, dead bodies, and other gore, Meta told 404 Media. The company said “we apologize for the mistake.” Sometime in the last few days, this error caused people’s Reels algorithms to suddenly change. A 404 Media reader who reported it happening to them said, “I had never seen someone being eaten by a shark, followed by someone getting killed by a car crash, followed by someone getting shot.”
REALLY GOING FOR IT An AI-generated video of President Donald Trump sucking on Elon Musk’s feet, overlaid with the text “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING,” played on TV screens at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) headquarters in Washington, D.C. This came after Trump called himself a king in a social media post, and as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency enacts widespread, cruelly-handled layoffs of civil servants across the federal government. Bluesky later deleted the viral video, calling it “non-consensual explicit material,” but that’s a whole other story.
CLEAR YOUR HISTORY?A U.S. soldier who recently pleaded guilty to hacking AT&T and Verizon communicated with an email address that he believed belonged to a foreign country’s military intelligence service and attempted to sell the service stolen data, according to newly filed court records reviewed by 404 Media. The court document also says that the soldier searched for “U.S. military personnel defecting to Russia.” On Tuesday, Chinese tech giant Alibaba released a new “open” AI video generation model called Wan 2.1 and shared the software on Github, allowing anyone with the technical know-how and hardware to use and modify freely. It took about 24 hours for the model to be adopted by the AI porn hobbyist community, which has already shared dozens of short AI porn videos using Alibaba’s software. Elsewhere, in a community that’s dedicated to producing and sharing nonconsensual AI-generated intimate media of real people, users are already salivating over how advanced the model is. READ MOREReplying to AI Video of Trump Sucking Musk's Toes Blasted on Government Office TVs, Nick Miller writes: “This headline reminded me of one of the best parts of being a linguist: looking at a sentence and thinking ‘wow, I never imagined someone putting those particular words in that particular order’”
And replying to Flock Threatens Open Source Developer Mapping Its Surveillance Cameras, Matt writes: “So what they're saying is, get Deflock out of here? These surveillance idiots should go flock themselves.”
Got’em! 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 stunt blogging, Signal pains, and murderous Reels. EMANUEL: Yesterday Jason wrote about Instagram delivering users reels showing murder, gore, and extreme violence. It’s hard to say exactly how many people saw these videos, but judging by what users have said online, and the fact that Meta felt the need to publicly apologize for the videos, which the company said it served users because of an error, suggest that these were very widespread. I’ll admit that when Jason first flagged to us on Slack that this was happening it didn’t immediately strike me as a must do it immediately story. First, it’s kind of hard to suss out if what one or a handful of users say they see on Instagram is really a widespread problem or a very specific rabbit hole the algorithm put them in because of their particular Instagram habits. Second, I think that I’ve become numb to how terrible content on Meta platforms and Instagram in particular has become. Read the rest of Emanuel's Behind the Blog, as well as Joseph, Jason and Sam's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
|
