Notices by 404 Media (404mediaco@mastodon.social), page 3

As of today, Pornhub is now blocked in almost all of the American South. The only place where it is still freely available is Georgia, where it will be blocked in July

https://www.404media.co/pornhub-is-now-blocked-in-almost-all-of-the-u-s-south/

nEw StuDY RePORtS thAt ThiS Is hOW YoU JaILBrEAK Ai

https://www.404media.co/apparently-this-is-how-you-jailbreak-ai/

Luigi Mangione fan art, merch, and photos are getting hit with bogus copyright takedown requests all over the internet. Artists and journalists affected. Very difficult to tell who is doing it, but one company says they received a request from United Healthcare:

https://www.404media.co/copyright-abuse-is-getting-luigi-mangione-merch-removed-from-the-internet/

New: At least 11 passenger planes were targeted with lasers above New Jersey last night amid drone panic, according to an analysis by @lemonodor and Air Traffic control audio we downloaded. Some audio snippets in article

https://www.404media.co/we-are-getting-lasered-nearly-a-dozen-planes-lasered-last-night-during-new-jersey-drone-panic/

good stuff out of wordpress, which is a very serious place

https://www.404media.co/wordpress-login-pineapple-on-pizza/

Artist makes website that lets you take selfies through NYC's network of traffic cameras. NYC Department of Transportation sends cease and desist. Artist nails cease and desist to a very very very long pole & holds it up to one of the cameras to take a photo of it

https://www.404media.co/traffic-cam-photobooth-cease-and-desist/

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg changed his Slack name to "Gone💀" and posted that he didn't want to work on WordPress anymore after a court injunction in the WP-Engine case

https://www.404media.co/wordpress-wp-engine-preliminary-injunction/

New: Texas AG Ken Paxton has subpoenaed 404 Media for confidential reporting about an internal Google privacy incident database we published in June. If Paxton wants the database, he can get it directly from Google. Our lawyers have formally objected to the subpoena:

https://www.404media.co/404-media-objects-to-texas-attorney-general-ken-paxtons-subpoena-to-access-our-reporting/

In the aftermath of an LGBT hate incident, the then-CEO of cloud computing giant Digital Ocean told upset staff his mentor was a member of the KKK as an attempt to explain why they must bend their values because "we love the company"

https://www.404media.co/ceo-attempted-to-navigate-anti-lgbt-hate-incident-by-telling-employees-his-mentor-was-a-kkk-member/

Many major health insurance companies have purged or deleted the pages where they show executive names and bios in the last 24 hours:

https://www.404media.co/multiple-major-health-insurance-companies-take-down-leadership-pages-following-murder-of-united-healthcare-ceo/

Pretty big deal: The FTC has banned one of the biggest companies powering the cell phone location tracking surveillance ecosystem from selling huge swaths of sensitive data and has ordered it to delete lots of data it has collected https://www.404media.co/ftc-bans-location-data-company-that-powers-the-surveillance-ecosystem/

X's legal filing in the InfoWars bankruptcy case is both batshit crazy and also what you'd expect. It asserts that X owns every account, can do whatever it wants with them, and can inject itself into legal proceedings that have nothing to do with it.

This is why it's incredibly important that people invest in platforms that they own, and move toward federated/decentralized/portable, noncorporate social media as rapidly as possible

https://www.404media.co/xs-objection-to-the-onion-buying-infowars-is-a-reminder-you-do-not-own-your-social-media-accounts/

Pokemon Go players have been training an AI model of the world for its parent company, Niantic. These models may be sold to the military, an exec said at a conference. Said it would be "an issue" if they were used in active war

https://www.404media.co/pokemon-go-data-adding-amplitude-to-war-is-obviously-an-issue-niantic-exec-says/

New: An open-source project called DeFlock has mapped thousands of license plate reader surveillance cameras all over the world. See if they're in your city. They also need help mapping more

https://www.404media.co/the-open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world/

FOIA docs obtained by @josephcox show the Secret Service talking about how they don't need a warrant to track phone locations because people "willingly" gave it away by agreeing to long terms of service docs for random apps

https://www.404media.co/fyi-a-warrant-isnt-needed-secret-service-says-you-agreed-to-be-tracked-with-location-data/

New: A leaked training presentation from a NY's largest hospital system shows how doctors are being encouraged to use AI for everything from writing emails to summarizing clinical evaluations to "diagnosing pancreatic cancer" and "parse" health records

https://www.404media.co/northwell-health-ai-hub-tool-chatgpt-doctors/

Years after Microsoft said it was killing its "gender detection" facial recognition AI, which has been shown over and over again to be inaccurate and weaponized against trans people, it turns out that, actually, it was still available and being used:

https://www.404media.co/microsoft-provided-gender-detection-ai-on-accident/

AI slop is being weaponized by the internet's worst grifters, who do not care that it's not real as long as it helps them further their political agenda

https://www.404media.co/hurricane-helene-and-the-fuck-it-era-of-ai-generated-slop/

Massive e-learning platform Udemy is training its AI on instructors' classes. It gave them a short "opt-out" window to reject this. Instructors are surprised to learn that time has passed.

https://www.404media.co/massive-e-learning-platform-udemy-gave-teachers-a-gen-ai-opt-out-window-its-already-over/

New: Steam has eliminated its forced arbitration clause, meaning gamers can now sue Valve over disputes. Seemingly this has happened bc a class action of gamers won a binding arbitration hearing arguing that forced arbitration is not enforceable

https://www.404media.co/steam-removes-forced-arbitration-clause-gamers-can-now-sue-valve/