404 Media 🕸️

Why it's more important than ever to have decentralized social networks; the geolocation AI tool being marketed to cops; and Nokia's newly discovered archive of whacky ideas.

The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.

Some Facebook users were shocked to see Trump in their feeds yesterday, but that’s likely because they were already following official administration accounts.

A security researcher made a tool that let them quickly check which of Cloudflare's data centers had cached an image, which allowed them to figure out what city a Discord, Signal, or Twitter/X user might be in.

For months members of the public have been using GeoSpy, a tool trained on millions of images that can find the location a photo was taken based on soil, architecture, and more. It's GeoGuesser at scale.

That’s my secret Captain…I’m always traumatized.

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 joylessness in the AI industry and the TikTok ban.

On Wednesday, Google pushed various Gemini capabilities to business and enterprise customers, including the ability to summarize the contents of emails.

A TikTok ban is a massive prize that Zuckerberg has been laying the groundwork on for years. Will Trump let him have it?

The Nokia Design Archive contains thousands of designs, pitch decks, presentations and prototypes from the turn of the millennium.

Multiple experts drew comparisons between Meta's recent changes around immigration and what happened in Myanmar in 2017, where Facebook contributed to a genocide by allowing the spread of hate.

Justice Alito should watch this Pornhub video about calculus.

Deere "has illegally restricted the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combines."

Porn workers joined hospitality workers to march down the Las Vegas strip, as the adult industry prepares for its biggest event of the year.

Employees inside Meta threatening to quit over the recent speech policy changes; thousands of apps hijacked to steal your location data; and lots of stories around the LA fires.

A service for creating AI-generated nude images of real people is running circles around Meta’s moderation efforts.

Come learn how to pry government records from the new Trump administration.

Pixelfed said it is "seeing unprecedented levels of traffic."

"I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

Amazon drivers have continued delivering packages in some areas of Los Angeles affected by ongoing wildfires in a constantly changing situation.