2026-02-20 03:23:27
Police in Claremore, Oklahoma arrested a local man after he went slightly over his time giving public remarks during a city council meeting opposing a proposed data center. Darren Blanchard showed up at a Claremore City Council meeting on Tuesday to talk about public records and the data center. When he went over his allotted 3 minutes by a few seconds, the city had him arrested and charged with trespassing.
The subject of the city council meeting was Project Mustang, a proposed data center that would be located within a local industrial park. In a mirror of fights playing out across the United States, developer Beale Infrastructure is attempting to build a large data center in a small town and the residents are concerned about water rights, spiking electricity bills, and noise.
2026-02-20 01:38:18
Almost a decade ago Jason and I sat in the roof garden in VICE’s Brooklyn office to talk to Whitney Phillips, a professor and expert on digital communications and ethics. The media, academics, and political pundits were still trying to wrap their minds around the fact that Donald Trump won his first presidential election, and Phillips was talking to us for a postmortem she was writing about how the media mostly failed in covering the new, far right, and extremely online politics that had taken over the culture in the years leading up to the 2016 election.
Politics in the United States and globally careening to the far right over the last 10 years is not a problem that can be blamed entirely on technology, the internet, or the media. It is a complicated, multifaceted, multi generational issue that spans economics, geopolitics, demographics, and more. But the problem, broadly speaking, which Phillips identified and named her research after, was the concept of “amplification.”
The idea, as laid out in her paper, The Oxygen of Amplification, is that many media outlets of all sizes and across the political spectrum, interviewed and covered people, most of them young white men, in the rising movement that at the time was often referred to as the “alt right.” The issue was that this coverage amplified their message even if it didn’t explicitly endorse it, and without framing their politics as inherently evil and detrimental to people and society.
Since Phillips’ report was published and often cited as one good explanation for how 4chan’s tiny political vanguard was able to seize such an outsized role in culture and politics, “amplification” has become a widely bandied about accusation. Initially this happened against media coverage that still “platformed” bad people, but eventually and erroneously, accusations of “amplification” got lobbed against pretty much any type of coverage someone didn’t like. For example, when we cover bad actors we often get criticized for amplifying them, even when that coverage leads to internet platforms enforcing their policies and those bad actors being banned.
But despite the concept of amplification being widely cited and adopted by the media and media knowers, it has been eight years since Phillips published her report, Trump is president again, and many Americans are too nihilistic or busy trying to prevent their neighbors from being deported to care that we are in the middle of an amplification renaissance.
There is no better example of this than the current obsession with Braden Peters, a so-called “looksmaxxer” who streams on Kick as Clavicular. I’ve known about the looksmaxxing community for years because it neighbors other online Superfund sites like 4chan and watering holes for self described involuntary celibates. Peters entered the mainstream media bloodstream by attaching himself to more famous racists and misogynists like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, who livestreamed themselves hitting the club scene in Miami with Peters. This group in turn attached itself to the only racist who could rival Trump in terms of fame, Kanye West, when it sang along and Sieg Heiled to his Nazi anthem “Heil Hitler.”
Who is this other, square jawed racist in the sprinter van next to these other, well established and by now boring racists? you might ask yourself if you saw one of the clips of this group Miami making the rounds online. The answer came from the New York Times, Piers Morgan, GQ, The Adam Friedland Show, and others.
When you get past the novelty of Clavicular’s fresh face and lingo, the answer is profoundly uninteresting. Clavicular floated to the surface of the cesspool which is the looksmaxxing community. Primarily, it’s a forum where a bunch of young men who can’t get laid riled themselves up and created a theory of the world which views romantic life as a zero sum game they are losing. Sex with women is a fungible commodity that is most easily accessed by achieving an arbitrary definition of physical attractiveness, which by extension makes life better and easier in every way imaginable. Jobs are easier to get, consequences can be avoided, and other men can be “mogged” into submission by sheer aesthetic superiority. These looksmaxxers will stop at nothing to improve their appearance, including hitting themselves in the face with a hammer to change the shape of their face, taking various steroids, and doing DIY surgery.
As Werner Herzog said when he intensely stared into the eyes of a chicken, when I view an interview with Peters, I am overwhelmed by the enormity and stupidity of his flat brain. In a recent interview for his podcast, Adam Friedland ironically needled Peters and got him to proudly admit that he only lasts a minute in bed; the moment was funny but also revealing of how pathetic Peters is.
But let me be clear because much of the coverage of Peters hasn’t been about this particular point: Peters is a bad person to wield any cultural capital because the lifestyle he’s promoting is deeply misogynistic, racist, and dangerous. Looksmaxxing is a strategy that emerged among “incels,” who themselves emerged out of the pick up artist (PUA) community. All of these philosophies are founded on a resentment of women, which they view as having easier lives because they think they have easier access to sex, and that they hate because they think women deny them that sex. Peters has claimed looksmaxxing transcends politics, but this foundational discrimination against women is inherently regressive and right wing, which is why Peters is being boosted by the likes of Nick Fuentes, who doesn’t believe women should have the right to vote. This philosophy is maybe somewhat normalized by a broader obsession in Silicon Valley and beyond to optimize the human body with supplements, peptides, and figures like Bryan Johnson who aims to live forever.
The good news is that these looksmaxxing people are freaks and losers. They are a tiny and insignificant group that has no power in numbers. The bad news is that the entire point of amplification is that it can give a tiny group of people incredible power by shaping culture. It is fine and fair to document the freak show, and it’s important to explain why it is bad, but even if we start by doing it ironically, adopting the vocabulary of “mogging,” “looksmaxxing,” “jestering,” “cortisol spikes,” etc, allows the small freak show to shape our world in its image. We’ve already lost such battles around terms like “sigma,” which emerged from the same misogynistic culture, and is now so acceptable even Dora the Explorer is saying it.
As Phillips wrote in her report on amplification:
“No matter the specific framing, stories should avoid deferring to manipulators’ chosen language, explanations, or justifications. Joel Stein’s TIME magazine interview with avowed neo-Nazi and serial online abuser Andrew Auernheimer, discussed in Part One of the report, provides one example. Not only did Stein frame his subject as a ‘troll’ throughout (thereby minimizing the embodied impact of Auernheimer’s targeted attacks), he explicitly described him as ‘probably the biggest troll in history,’ a tag line Auernheimer could have written himself.”
And as I told Phillips at the time:
“Beyond this specific example, employing manipulators’ framings has the effect [...] of allowing manipulators to set the narrative and linguistic agenda, carve the world up into categories of their choosing, and appear to wield much more influence than they actually do. They don’t have the numbers to steer the cultural conversation on their own, and they should not be given any assistance, inadvertent or otherwise, in these efforts.”
2026-02-20 00:01:50
Porn performer Siri Dahl’s personal information, including her full legal name and birthday, was publicly exposed earlier this month by xAI’s Grok chatbot. Almost instantly, harassers started opening Facebook accounts in her name and posting stolen porn clips with her real name on sites for leaking OnlyFans content.
Dahl has used the name — a nod to her Scandinavian heritage — since the beginning of her career in the adult industry in 2012. Now, Grok is revealing her legal name and all personal information it can find to whoever happens to ask.
Dahl told 404 Media she wanted to reclaim the situation, and her name, and asked that it be published in this piece as part of that goal.
2026-02-19 22:24:44
Pinterest has gone all in on artificial intelligence and users say it's destroying the site. Since 2009, the image sharing social media site has been a place for people to share their art, recipes, home renovation inspiration, corny motivational quotes, and more, but in the last year users, especially artists, say the site has gotten worse. AI-powered mods are pulling down posts and banning accounts, AI-generated art is filling feeds, and hand drawn art is labeled as AI modified.
“I feel like, increasingly, it's impossible to talk to a single human [at Pinterest],” artist and Pinterest user Tiana Oreglia told 404 Media. “Along with being filled with AI images that have been completely ruining the platform, Pinterest has implemented terrible AI moderation that the community is up in arms about. It's banning people randomly and I keep getting takedown notices for pins.”
Oreglia’s Pinterest account is where she keeps reference material for her work, including human anatomy photos. In the past few months, she’s noticed an uptick in seemingly innocuous photos of women being flagged by Pinterest’s AI moderators. Oreglia told 404 Media there’s been a clear pattern to the reference material the site has a problem with. “Female figures in particular, even if completely clothed, get taken down and I have to keep appealing those decisions,” she said. This pattern is common on many social media platforms, and predates the advent of generative AI.
“We publish clear guidelines on adult sexual content and nudity and use a combination of AI and human review for enforcement,” Pinterest told 404 Media. “We have an appeals process where a human reviews the content and reactivates it when we’ve made a mistake.” It also confirmed that the site uses both humans and automated systems for moderation.
Oreglia shared some of the works Pinterest flagged including a photo of a muscular woman in a bikini holding knives, a painting of two clothed women in an intimate embrace, and a stock photo of a man holding a gun on a telephone that was flagged for “self-harm.” In most cases, Oreglia can appeal and get a decision reversed, but that eats up time. Time she could be spending making art.
And those appeals aren’t always approved. “The worst case scenario for this stuff is that you get your account banned,” Oreglia said.
r/Pinterest is awash in users complaining about AI-related issues on the site. “Pinterest keeps automatically adding the ‘AI modified’ tag to my Pins...every time I appeal, Pinterest reviews it and removes the AI label. But then… the same thing happens again on new Pins and new artwork. So I’m stuck in this endless loop of appealing → label removed → new Pin gets tagged again,” read a post on r/Pinterest.
The redditor told 404 Media that this has happened three times so far and it takes between 24 to 48 hours to sort out.
“I actively promote my work as 100% hand-drawn and ‘no AI,’” they said. “On Etsy, I clearly position my brand around original illustration. So when a Pinterest Pin is labeled ‘Hand Drawn’ but simultaneously marked as ‘AI modified,’ it creates confusion and undermines that positioning.”
Artist Min Zakuga told 404 Media that they’ve seen a lot of their art on Pinterest get labeled as “AI modified” despite being older than image generation tech. “There is no way to take their auto-labeling off, other than going through a horribly long process where you have to prove it was not AI, which still may get rejected,” she said. “Even artwork from 10-13 years ago will still be labeled by Pinterest as AI, with them knowing full well something from 10 years ago could not possibly be AI.”
Other users are tired of seeing a constant flood of AI-generated art in their feeds. “I can't even scroll through 100 pins without 95 out of them being some AI slop or theft, let alone very talented artists tend to be sucked down and are being unrecognized by the sheer amount of it,” said another post. “I don't want to triple check my sources every single time I look at a pin, but I refuse to use any of that soulless garbage. However, Pinterest has been infested. Made obsolete.”
Artist Eva Toorenent told 404 Media that she’s been able to cull most of the AI-generated content from her board, but that it took a lot of time. Whenever she saw what she thought was an AI-generated image, she told Pinterest she didn’t want to see it and eventually the algorithm learned. But, like Oreglia fighting auto-moderation and Zakuga fighting to get the “AI modified” label taken off her work, training Pinterest’s algorithm to stop serving you AI-generated images eats up precious time.
AI boosters often talk about how much time these systems will save everyone. They’re pitched as productivity boosters. Earlier this month, Pinterest laid off 15 percent of its work force as part of a push to prioritize AI. In a post on LinkedIn, one of the former employees shared part of the email CEO Bill Ready sent out after the lay offs. “We’re doubling down on an AI-forward approach—prioritizing AI-focused roles, teams, and ways of working.”
Toorenent removed all her own art from her Pinterest account after hearing the news that the site would use public pins to train Pinterest Canvas, the company’s proprietary text-to-image AI. But she has no control over other users uploading her artwork. “I have already caught a few of my images still on Pinterest that I did not upload myself…that makes me incredibly mad,” she told 404 Media. “It used to be a great way to get your work seen among other people, but it’s being used to train their internal AI.”
Oreglia told 404 Media that the flood of AI has changed her relationship to a site she once used to prize. “It's definitely affected how I search things and I'm always now very critical about where something came from... although I've always been overly pedantic about research,” she said. “It does make you do your due diligence but it sucks to constantly have to question and check if something is authentic or synthetic.”
She’s thought about leaving the platform, but feels stuck. “I just want to be able to take all my references with me. I've been on the platform for about ten years and have very carefully curated it. It's really nice to be able to just go to my page and search for something I saved instead of having to save everything to folders although I also do that,” she said. “More and more I'm trying to curate and collect physical references too but some of that can take up space I don't have so it can be difficult. Having a physical reference library just seems more and more necessary these days…artists have to be adaptable to this kind of thing these days. It's annoying but not unmanageable.”
Ready has been vocal and proud about the company’s commitment to forcing AI into every aspect of the user experience. “At Pinterest…we’re deploying AI to flip the script on social media, using it to more aggressively promote user well being rather than the alternative formula of triggering engagement by enragement,” Ready said in a January column at Fortune. “Social media platforms like Pinterest live and die by users’ willingness to share creative and original ideas.”
2026-02-19 01:42:59
In its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Palantir says that increased regulation of immigration may impact the company’s ability to hire the talent it needs. At the same time, Palantir provides the technological infrastructure for the Trump administration’s mass deportation mission.
As 404 Media has shown, Palantir considers Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a “mature” partner, and is working on a tool called ELITE that ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid.
2026-02-18 22:37:34
Ring’s controversial, AI-powered “Search Party” feature isn’t intended to always be limited only to dogs, the company’s founder, Jamie Siminoff, told Ring employees in an internal email obtained by 404 Media.
In October, Ring launched Search Party, an on-by-default feature that links together Ring cameras in a neighborhood and uses AI to search for specific lost dogs, essentially creating a networked, automated surveillance system. The feature got some attention at the time, but faced extreme backlash after Ring and Siminoff promoted Search Party during a Super Bowl ad. 404 Media obtained an email that Siminoff sent to all Ring employees in early October, soon after the feature’s launch, which said the feature was introduced “first for finding dogs,” but that it or features like it would be expanded to “zero out crime in neighborhoods.”
