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PODCAST

The 404 Media Podcast

Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world. We bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL through investigative reporting, smart blogging, and breaking news. At 404 Media you’ll read, and hear, stories you can’t find anywhere else written by journalists who are leading

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All Episodes

54:48

How to Detect Phone Spying Tech (with Cooper Quintin)

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/03/02

Joseph speaks to Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Quintin is one of the people behind Rayhunter, an easy to install tool that can detect nearby IMSI-catchers. This tech, sometimes known as Stingrays, poses as a fake cellphone tower to track a phone’s location, intercept calls and texts, and can sometimes even deliver malware.Rayhunter GitHub: https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter YouTube:

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53:15

Ring Is Just Getting Started

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/25

This week we start with Jason’s follow up to Ring launching its ‘Search Party’ feature. It turns out, according to a leaked email he got, the feature is only starting with finding lost dogs. After the break, Emanuel explains why we’ve learned nothing about amplification when it comes to the recent looksmaxxing trend. In the subscribers-only section, Sam explains how Grok produced the real name of a sex worker who performs pseudonymously.1:11 - Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search

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44:50

Privacy Under Pressure (With Harlo Holmes)

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/23

In this week’s interview, Sam is joined by Harlo Holmes. Harlo is the Chief Security Programs Officer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. She’s a media scholar, software programmer, and activist. Harlo and Sam discuss the important work she does every day, and why it’s only becoming more crucial. They also get into how to fight back against privacy nihilism, digital security practices everyone can be implementing regardless of their threat model, and the recent arrests and raids of journalists in

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60:10

Inside an AI-Powered School

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/18

This week we start with Emanuel’s wild story about Alpha School, a very hyped AI-powered school. Emanuel got leaked documents and spoke to former employees. After the break, Sam tells us what happens when someone decides to make an AI nudify OnlyFans with your likeness. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph tells us about the agencies buying GeoSpy, an AI that can geolocate photos in seconds. 2:49 - Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire 5:47 - 'Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs:' Inside

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49:41

What It’s Like to Be a Data Labeler Training AI

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/16

I recently traveled to Kenya for a journalism and AI conference. While I was there, I really wanted to meet with Michael Geoffrey Asia, the secretary general of the Data Labelers Association. Data Labeling is a huge job in Kenya. Data labelers are the people who train AI, and who also work on ensuring the outputs are accurate. In some cases, data labelers are themselves pretending to be AI, in order to train AI. Often, data labelers don’t know exactly what they’re working on, because the work

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50:02

Ring Is Back and Scarier Than Ever

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/11

We start this week with exciting news: we bought a Super Bowl ad! For… $2,550. We explain how. After the break, Jason tells us about Ring’s recently launched Search Party feature, and gives us a very timely reminder of what Ring really is and how we got here. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down Lockdown Mode and how it kept the FBI out of a Washington Post reporter’s phone.Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 2:49 - Watch 404 Media’s Super Bowl Ad 27:29 - With Ring, American Consumers

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85:54

The Screen Time Panic Sets Parents Up to Fail

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/09

Patrick Klepek on the reality of parenting in the age of Roblox and YouTube. I listened to hours of podcasts about how screen time affects kids of all ages and how parents should manage screen time but I still felt completely unprepared for this challenge when I had a kid. I think the reason for that is that there’s a lot of reporting about how screens are impacting kids, and a lot of reporting about the research into this subject, but rarely did I encounter a conversation between parents

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55:00

The Latest Epstein Dump is a Disaster

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/04

We start this week with Sam and Emanuel’s article about the latest Epstein dump, and how it’s really a disaster in a lot of ways. After the break, Matthew runs us through Moltbot and its terrible security. After the break, Emanuel breaks down his two recent stories about a fundamental issue exposing a bunch of very sensitive data.Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 2:19 - DOJ Released Unredacted Nude Images in Epstein Files 25:08 - Silicon Valley’s Favorite New AI Agent Has Serious Security Flaws 34:55 -

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50:24

How Identity Literally Changes What You See (with...

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/02/02

This week Joseph talks to Samuel Bagg, assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. Bagg recently wrote a fascinating essay, linked below, about how the problem with lots of things might be knowledge-based (people believing stuff that’s wrong or dangerous) but the solution is not more knowledge. It’s all about social identity. This is an incredibly interesting discussion, and definitely check out more of Bagg’s writing.The Problem is Epistemic. The Solution is

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49:42

Creators Worry Porn Platform Is Falling Into ‘AI...

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/28

We start this week with Sam’s piece about ManyVids, and how some creators believe its CEO, and the person who controls their livelihood, may be experiencing ‘AI psychosis’. After the break, Jason gives us an update on some mysterious disappearing ICE footage. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Flock and what police are being told to do: not describe what they’re using the AI cameras for. Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 2:41 - Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is

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52:25

Exposing the People Behind Deepfake Porn Sites with...

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/26

This week, Sam is in conversation with Kolina Koltai. Kolina is an investigator, senior researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. Her investigations focus on the people and systems behind AI companies and platforms that peddle non-consensual deepfake explicit imagery. They discuss how she found herself in this field, her recent investigation uncovering the man behind two deepfake porn sites, and how it feels to watch these sites go down after exposing the people running them.YouTube Version:

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44:46

Here’s What Palantir Is Really Building

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/21

We start this week with Joseph’s article about ELITE, a tool Palantir is working on for ICE. After the break, Emanuel tells us how AI influencers are making fake sex tape-style photos with celebrities, who can’t be best pleased about it. In the subscribers-only section, Matthew breaks down Comic-Con’s ban of AI art. 0:00 - Intro 2:16 - ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid 22:45 - Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals Subscriber's

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54:37

How Wikipedia Will Survive in the Age of AI (With...

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/19

The Wikimedia Foundation’s chief technology and product officer explains how she helps manage one of the most visited sites in the world in the age of generative AI. Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, and it’s never been more important. The online, collectively created encyclopedia has been a cornerstone of the internet decades, but as generative AI started flooding every platform with AI-generated slop over the last couple of years, Wikipedia’s governance model, editing process, and

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42:47

The ICE Tool That Tracks Entire Neighborhoods

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/14

We start this week with Joseph’s article about Webloc, a tool ICE bought that can monitor phones in entire neighborhoods. After the break, Emanuel and Sam talk about their recent coverage of Grok. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how police inadvertently unmasked millions of their surveillance targets through a Flock redaction error.Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 2:50 - First Story 23:00 - Second Story YouTube version: https://youtu.be/rurJo6vPhUY Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor

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38:36

How Benn Jordan Discovered Flock's Cameras Were Left...

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/12

This week, Jason is talking to YouTuber Benn Jordan, who has done some of our favorite reporting on Flock, the automated license plate reader surveillance company. A couple months ago, he found vulnerabilities in some of Flock’s license plate reader cameras. I have been following Benn’s work for a while, and soon after that video came out, he reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock’s Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet. In this episode, we discuss how

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51:07

The People Tracking America's AI Data Centers

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/07

We start this week with Matthew’s story about an organization tracking the location of AI data centers around the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. After the break, Jason tells us all about what Grok got up to over the holiday break, and we ruminate on what the breakdown in the information ecosystem means. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about how we bought 404media.com!Timestamps: 1:38 - Researchers Are Hunting America for Hidden Datacenters 25:58 - Grok's AI CSAM

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56:54

REPLAY: Pornhub Exec Alexzandra Kekesi Discusses...

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2026/01/05

On this special guest episode of the 404 Media Podcast, Sam talks to Alexzandra Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Pornhub. Kekesi started in her current role in August 2023, after working for Pornhub and its parent company for more than a decade. She joined us from Montreal, where Pornhub is headquartered. They discuss the stigma facing the adult industry, Luigi Mangione porn, the trad wife to feet pics pipeline, and algorithms that shut you down for showing side boob. Kekesi also breaks down

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49:25

REPLAY: Signal's Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2025/12/31

This is a special interview episode with Meredith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation. I'm sure you all know, and maybe even use, the Signal messaging app. Here we sat down with Whittaker to talk all about the state of Signal today, the threat of AI to end-to-end encryption, what backdoors actually look like, and much more. This is a wide-ranging discussion where one of the few journalists who has revealed new details about backdoors (Joseph) gets to speak to one of the most important

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46:29

The Shifting World of OSINT (with Craig Silverman)

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2025/12/29

Joseph speaks to Craig Silverman, one of the co-founders of Indicator. Indicator is a new, independent media company that Craig runs with Alexios Mantzarlis. For years Craig has covered the world of ad fraud and disinformation using all sorts of open source intelligence (OSINT) techniques. Definitely check out Indicator at Indicator.media. The site publishes its own investigations but also tips and tricks you can use yourself.Indicator’s site: https://indicator.media Learn more about your ad

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53:43

We Tracked Ourselves with Exposed Flock Cameras

The 404 Media Podcast ·

2025/12/24

We start this week with Jason’s story about Flock exposing a bunch of AI-powered cameras. These cameras zoom in on people as they walk by, sometimes so closely you can read what’s on their phone screen. After the break, we talk about some of our biggest stories this year. In the subscribers-only section, we give some of our personal recommendations of games, other reporting, or just a more chill life.Timestamps:0:00 - Intro00:54 - Gift a 404 Media subscription2:27 - Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered

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