Technology

The team of 404 had to hide their content so it isn't easily used by content mills. The AI content mills are starting to become a very big thing. There is a podcast called Gadget Lab by WIRED, and last episode was about an interview made to a guy that owns several of these content mills. The guy claims he understands that what he is doing is bad, since he is churning out this kind of content that is likely to be full of mistakes and false information, and also claims that a team of people review the content before actually publishing it.

This is also being done via domain squatting, in which people buy old domains of blogs that were known, and start a new blog full of AI generated content in it.

Happy for them. Good journalism should be rewarded.

Some of their stories on privacy. Solid topic for pleb focused journalism IMHO.

There is deff space for covering on things that matter to w2 slaves.

This almost makes me want to give them my email address, or at least a throwaway, but I really don't want to encourage that behavior.

If a couple of decades and some change on the internet has taught me anything, it's that toxic, abuseable change is insidious. Subscription models for games seemed pretty harmless when it was just a handful of MMOs. Consolidating more user-directed social interactions into an algorithmic feed seemed like a pretty good idea in 2009.

But now, in 2024, when a company tries to get me to play along with something I try to think of what the wider implications would be of other companies adopting the same model. How many websites would start asking for email addresses? How long until they start doing shady things with them?

I know that I can send something off to a junk address that will expire or that I'll just never check, but for most users it's just a massive spam vector for what is likely to be their only email address. It's not really something I'd like to encourage.

Goofy name aside, they sound like a pretty alright company other than that. Love the idea of a journalist-owned outlet, but I'd be even more into the idea of a journalist-owned outlet that's more concerned with setting an example for the future health of the internet than with self-protectionism.

England's Private Eye magazine has been going for decades. They sell subscriptions to the paper magazine, put on events, and sell a small amount of print advertising. They've completely gone against going digital and by all accounts are profitable.

The future of journalism may well be going back to the origin of small publications.

I believe Ars Technica also has no office. All of their web presence is on AWS as well.

While I love that they are profitable, this sounds like a massive private investment from all involved which is not a good model as a whole

I love to see this, it's nice seeing independent media do well!