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• Podcast: Mark Zuckerberg’s 'Superintelligent' AI Future That No One Wants

  We start this week with Jason’s article about Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for Meta’s AI agents. They don't sound fun at all. After the break, Emanuel tells us how a company offering “100% human-written” medical research is actually all AI. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains why some cities are ditching Flock then immediately replacing those cameras with Axon ones. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this ep...

• Researchers Show How Meta's 'Pervert Glasses' Are Used to Harass Women

  Instagram is full of first-person videos of men harassing women in public. They follow a similar script: A man walks up to a woman or group of women in a store, sitting outside a cafe, or walking home from a bar, and delivers a pickup line. The women almost always nervously laugh, react with barely-veiled disgust, or say "fuck off" while he stalks her or refuses to walk away. The men recording these videos capture them with Meta's smart glasses, which are designed to discreetly cap...

• The Government is Monitoring Anti-Flock TikTok and Instagram Accounts

  Government surveillance centers are monitoring viral anti-Flock Instagram posts, warning local police about upcoming DeFlock events including one scheduled to start next week, and have told cops to “increase patrols around ALPR [automatic license plate readers]” as backlash to Flock grows, according to government intelligence bulletins obtained using public records requests. The documents also warn about devices “that could be used to identify the locations of Flock cameras.” Investigative jour...

• AI Generated 3D Models Flood Market, But Almost No One Is Buying Them

  CGTrader, an online marketplace for 3D assets, found that one in six models uploaded to the site these days is AI generated, but that AI generated assets account for only $1 out of $90 in revenue on the site. These numbers show that AI generated assets are quickly flooding the marketplace, but that most people are not interested in paying for them. “Buyers are voting with their wallets, and AI-generated content is struggling to compete,” CGTrader said in a press release about its 2026 market tr...

• This Tool Unmasks the Shadowy World of Ads that Track Your Location

  The advertising industry is simultaneously everywhere and incredibly difficult to investigate. Ads can power all sorts of surveillance, from the relatively mundane like inferring someone’s age or gender, right up to harvesting their precise location data and selling this to the government. But researching that omnipresent surveillance is, ironically, an uphill struggle because the relevant data is spread across the web, nestled in obscure files that most people never look at or even know to look...

• No Bosses: Ancient Engineering Marvel Was Built Without Rulers, Study Suggests

  🌘Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Ancient people of Colombia used collective labor to build a massive canal network that spans 2,000 square miles, a discovery that challenges the assumption that colossal works require top-down hierarchical social organization, reports a study published on Monday in Communications Sustainability. From the first century BC to the 11th century, Colombian peop...

• Company Offering ‘100% Human-Written, Never AI’ Medical Research Is Entirely AI

  Research Gold, a site that advertises services for medical researchers, including drafting peer-review ready manuscripts, systemic reviews and meta-analyses, claims that it’s “100% human-written, never AI,” and lists a number of PhD reviewers and professional methodologists on staff that carry out this meticulous, difficult work. The problem: The PhD reviewers Research Gold lists on its site are AI-generated and don’t exist. Other methodologists it lists are real, but are not aware their ident...

• Crab Odyssey: Crustacean Wandered the Seas in a Bottle for Months, Scientists Find

  Welcome back to another special edition of the Abstract! As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, I have saved up some of the most mind-boggling studies from 2026 so far to share while I’m out on vacation.   With that said, here are the studies this year that hit the bottle, went hog wild, slithered into prominence, and double-detonated. First, a tale of survival on the high seas from a trash-bound crab. Then: a hybrid emerges from radioactive fallout, a snake in the grass (and lots of other...

• Flock Pitched a Plan To Turn Uber and Lyft Drivers Into Roaming Surveillance Vehicles

  Flock planned to use dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers’ vehicles to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed, essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according to a Flock presentation shared with 404 Media. The document provides more details on Flock’s planned partnership with Nexar, a popular dashcam company. 404 Media first revealed the intended partnership last August when multiple sources provided inf...

• Software Giant SAP Stops Most Travel and Hiring Because of AI’s Soaring Cost

  SAP, one of the world’s biggest software companies, suspended most travel and hiring last month because of AI’s soaring cost, with exceptions only being made for AI-related travel or hires, according to an internal SAP email obtained by 404 Media.  Bloomberg reported on the email and the freezes in July, but a current SAP employee said the bans are still in effect. The employee said the company had a global employee meeting recently where this was brought up again. They added SAP is currently r...

• Scientists Designed a Virtual Alien Lifeform to Hunt for Extraterrestrials

  🌘Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have designed a virtual model of an alien cell and dropped it onto a hypothetical exoplanet to see how it behaves, an approach that could help astronomers recognize signs of extraterrestrial life on distant worlds, according to a recent study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The results revealed new insights about...

• Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers

  A handful of cities across the U.S. have ditched Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and immediately replaced them with equivalent systems from law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to local media reports and government documents from around the country. Axon, for example, advertises AI-powered cameras that attach to an existing streetlamp and are designed to completely blend in with their surroundings, and also collects license plate data with cameras installed ins...

• Podcast: This Man Might Go to Prison for Wiping His Phone

  We start this week with Joseph’s article about Samuel Tunick, the man charged with allegedly wiping his phone before DHS officials could search it. It’s a wild case with a lot to unpack. After the break, Jason tells us all about a TikTok Shop scheme powered by AI. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about possibly the dumbest AI tool ever made. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content an...

• Apple's ‘Private Relay’ Is Exposing Users’ Real IP Addresses

  A series of issues in Apple’s web browser engine — the tech underlying all browsers on iOS — means that Apple’s iCloud Private Relay tool, which is supposed to hide a user’s IP address, in many cases doesn’t actually work. Instead, the issues mean a malicious attacker can set up a website to learn a Private Relay user’s real IP address, or that many websites have also already collected this information incidentally. The issues also impact OnionBrowser, an iOS app for browsing the web through the...

• The SCREEN Act is a Christian Nationalist Nightmare

  On Wednesday morning, Ted Cruz’s Senate Commerce Committee will convene on five bills aimed at age verification and “child safety.” The bills each have their own issues when it comes to privacy, data collection, parental rights, and free speech. But one bill, the partisan Republican SCREEN Act, is a Christian nationalist nightmare. Utah Senator Mike Lee introduced the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act in February 2025, alongside exclusively Republi...

• ‘DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE’: How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock

  When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don’t want them to know. A usage policy for the automated license plate reader cameras in the county tells police, in no uncertain terms, to keep them a secret: “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE,” the policy document reads. “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.”  The police guidance document is unusual in how clearly it tells police not to mention their Floc...

• ‘Own the Narrative’: Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech

  404 Media has obtained a coaching guide that Flock surveillance gives to police about “how to speak to city councils about public safety technology.” The handbook highlights how Flock and police team up to convince cities to buy and keep its automated license plate reader technology, even when there is widespread public opposition to it, and encourages police to “own the narrative before someone else does” by championing the technology before citizens can oppose it during public comment periods....

• We Need to Quarantine Aliens on the Moon, Scientists Propose

  Welcome to a special edition of the Abstract! I’m out on vacation for the next two weeks, which means it’s time to break out all of the weird and wild studies that have come out so far in 2026, but that slipped through the cracks for one reason or another. I’ve been saving these gems up for a special occasion and hope you enjoy the roundups this week and next! So without further delay, here are the studies this year that put aliens on lockdown, bedazzled their axes, undulated spermily, and capt...

• Behind the Blog: Silent Retreat

  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 going into the woods, a "he admit it" moment, and a tofu sandwich. JOSEPH: Thank you to everyone who came to Thursday’s FOIA Forum. It was a great turnout with a ton of really good questions. We spoke mostly about mining city council meetings for tips or context you can then use to fuel your public records requests. I’ll upload the...

• YouTube Bans Popular ASMR Artists, Accusing Them of Making 'Sexually Gratifying' Content

  YouTube banned a wave of ASMR artists this week for violating the platforms’ rules against “sexually gratifying” content, leaving creators confused and angry. Several creators received the same notice from YouTube about their channels being removed on Wednesday and Thursday. “We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our sex and nudity policy. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube,” the email said.  So far, YouTube creators affected by the wa...

• Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage

  Following 404 Media’s reporting that book database company ISBNdb claimed to source printed books to then sell to AI companies for AI training, the company deleted the part of its website offering the service and walked back claims that it would train AI models, and instead called it “a test of market interest.”  On July 30, nine days after 404 Media’s reporting, ISBNdb added a note to its homepage and an update on its news page about the change. “We've seen the recent coverage about a mark...

• A Hidden 'Dark Dimension' Could Rewrite Our Understanding of the Universe

  Scientists have proposed the existence of a fifth “dark dimension” that governs the behavior of both dark energy and dark matter—and which may be observationally detected in the near future, according to a recent preprint study.  The dark dimension hypothesis could potentially provide an elegant solution to some of the biggest mysteries in science, including the nature of dark matter, an unidentified substance that makes up most mass in the universe, and dark energy, the term for whatever is ca...

• Podcast: Flock Came to My Town. Here’s What I Did

  We start this week with Matthew’s experience of what happened when Flock came to his small town. It’s a microcosm of what is happening all across the United States. After the break, Sam tells us about a bunch of no phone Luddite events. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains why anti-Flock influencers making up BS are bad, actually. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to pow...

• ‘The Government Hopes To Set a Precedent’: An Interview With the Man Charged for Allegedly Wiping His GrapheneOS Phone

  In charging a man for allegedly typing in a duress password which wiped his privacy-focused GrapheneOS phone, the U.S. government is trying to intimidate other activists from protecting their data and participating in social movements, Samuel Tunick, the man charged, told 404 Media in an interview on Tuesday. The case of Tunick, who participated in the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, has resonated across privacy and civil liberties circles. 404 Media first broke news of the case in December....

• Substackers Say New AI Detection Tool Is a ‘Witch Hunt’

  Substack contributors are rejecting the company’s decision to flag AI generated writing on the newsletter publishing platform, with several creators saying the new AI detection features are a “witch hunt.” Some Substack users who use AI to help them write or edit articles say the new policy unfairly discriminates against them, while other users who don’t use AI in their writing at all are worried that Substack will mistakenly flag their writing as being AI generated and tarnish their reputation....

• Apple’s iMessage Scanning Flagged a Video of My Friend's Dog as Nudity

  In a video my friend’s dog is laying on her back, her little paws in the air, while my friend rubs the dog’s chest. You can see most of the dog — who I’m not naming for very important privacy reasons — from her head to her belly. On closer inspection, you’ll notice the picture includes some dog nipples.  Apple’s iMessage thought this video was so inappropriate that it flagged the video as potentially containing nudity and blurred it. When someone else received the video over iMessage, the app d...

• Wikimedia Will Not Voluntarily Recognize Union a Supermajority of Its Workers Want

  The Wikimedia Foundation waited until the days following its largest worldwide conference to issue a statement saying it would not voluntarily recognize a union of its workers. Last week, Wiki Workers United, which is organized through the Communication Workers Union and represents U.S. workers at the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, requested voluntary recognition of their union. Wiki Workers United said that it had secured a “supermajority of union-eligible workers who have signed union author...

• This Man Bought Phone Location Data from Around the World (with Mike Yeagley)

  This week Joseph talks to Mike Yeagley. As you’ll hear, he is a very interesting guy. He introduced parts of the government to the whole idea of commercially sourced location data. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying the data, and showing what could be done with it. It’s a fascinating conversation. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you becom...

• Spotify's AI Problem Is So Bad Random People Are Stepping In to Track the Slop

  Slime Dot, a young R&B artist from Las Vegas, currently has over 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. In an interview with GQ in May, after sharing an image of herself posing with Drake on Instagram, Slime Dot directly denied accusations that she was an “AI artist,” saying “The truth doesn’t matter these days. People are always gonna try to explain something they don’t fully understand and believe what they want.” GQ originally credulously published the interview and said it was “debunking...

• Being a Luddite Is Fun Again

  I’m marching across Lower Manhattan in the middle of a heatwave with a friendly mob of Luddite gnomes, and there isn’t a phone in sight. It’s Fourth of July weekend in New York City, and the brutal temperatures haven’t stopped a hundred-or-so people from donning pointy hats and dancing in the streets while chanting anti-Big Tech slogans. “Fuck, fuck, fuck AI,” the Luddite gnomes – people in colorful, pointy homemade hats – chant as we march, urging the confused spectators recording us to put aw...