2026-02-28 00:27:13
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 wishes made, god complexes, and the point of it all.
SAM: This week I wrote about Amazon’s changing policy for wishlists. It’s allowing gifters to choose third-party sellers for items, which could expose recipients’ delivery addresses to the gifter. The notice Amazon sent wishlist holders is a basic example of CYA messaging: Amazon can’t guarantee what a third party seller will do with your address once they have it, including giving it to a gifter for tracking purposes.
Sex workers first flagged this change on social media because many use wishlists as an easy way to accept gifts, tributes, tips, etc instead of or in addition to actual funds. This is important because payment processors are wildly hostile and actively discriminatory toward the adult industry, and having alternative ways to get paid is crucial if you’re debanked or banned from the usual payment processors. I think most use it in a supplementary fashion, though.
2026-02-28 00:10:27
A group of more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers have demanded the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provide its definition of “domestic terrorist,” after the agency labelled U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti, which DHS officers killed, as such. The move also comes as DHS and its various components purchase and deploy a wide range of surveillance technologies and demand sensitive information from tech companies to unmask people criticizing ICE.
“You and your underlings appear to be labeling untold numbers of people as ‘domestic terrorists’ or individuals of concern at will without evidence, operating wildly invasive spy tools to identify targets—and then using such labels as an excuse for yet more surveillance,” the letter, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, reads. The office of Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, shared a copy of the letter with 404 Media.
“This self-reinforcing spiral of civil liberties violations ratchets in only one direction: toward an authoritarian surveillance state that punishes dissent and inflicts state violence,” the letter adds.
It then points to a long list of media reports, including 404 Media’s, about DHS’s increasing use of surveillance technologies and powers. Those include how DHS shared a memo with employees in Minneapolis telling them to capture images, license plates, and other information about protestors “so we can capture it all in one consolidated form”; 404 Media’s revelation that Palantir is working on a tool called ELITE for ICE that provides a confidence score on targets’ addresses; ICE’s purchase of smartphone location data; how ICE agents told legal observers they were identifying them with facial recognition technology; and several more examples.
“The Department’s opaque, mass expansion of spy tools and framing of protesters, photographers, political opponents, and passersby as enemies of the state leans into people’s worst fears of a surveillance state. Your weaponization of DHS undercuts decades of effort to develop a Department that responsibly balances security with privacy and civil liberties protections and transparency,” the letter reads.
It then includes a list of demands for information from DHS. Many of them are about the legal regime behind those surveillance powers, and the technical infrastructure and policies related to them. One asks DHS for “Documentation of the Department’s definition of the term ‘domestic terrorist,’ a copy of the policies in place that permit Departmental designations of United States persons as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ and a description of the consequences of such a designation.”
“Your actions are abhorrent, blatantly unconstitutional, and corrosive to the functioning of a peaceful society. They cannot stand. Accountability is coming,” the letter adds.
2026-02-27 01:02:16
Tea App Green Flags, a service that claims it can “protect your digital reputation,” will remove negative posts about men from private online groups where women share “red flags” about men they’ve dated in order to help other women.
The service is another escalation in the age of online dating, women attempting to protect each other from other men in the dating pool, and instances of men fighting against those efforts. It also shows how some of these allegedly private women’s groups, especially the Tea app, are regularly infiltrated and manipulated by men.
When I reached out to an email listed on Tea App Green Flags’s site, I got a call from a man behind the operation who identified only as Jay. He said he started the service about two years ago, and that he initially focused on the Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. For the past year, he’s been offering services specifically for the Tea app, a “dating safety” app for women that suffered a devastating breach last year, and which my investigation revealed, was founded by a man who wanted to monetize the Are We Dating the Same guy phenomenon. The site also claims it can remove posts from Tea app copycat for men TeaOnHer, as well as posts on Instagram.
Jay declined to say how much revenue the site generates, but claims he gets about 50 to 60 calls a day and currently has six employees. On its website, Tea App Green Flags claims it has removed more than 2,500 posts on the Tea app for 759 clients. Jay said that most of his clients are men, but that some are women who are trying to take down posts about their husbands or boyfriends.
Potential clients can pay $1.99 to report one account and up to $79.99 to report 25 accounts.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told me. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn't fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters. We've noticed that a lot of the individuals that come to us, almost all of them, come to us for little stupid things.”
Clients interested in Tea App Green Flags’s services go to the site and fill out a form with their information and information about the posts they want removed. The company reviews the case and then starts the “takedown process,” which can take between 21-30 days. Tea App Green Flags says it will then continue to monitor posts about the client and remove them for three months.
When I asked Jay how this “takedown process” works he said “I can’t give that info. That’s the business.”
Jay told me that he would not work with clients who have been accused of sexual assault by multiple people on the Tea app, or by one person in one of the Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups who used their real name and face in a profile picture.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they're very bad,” Jay said. “So we say, we're not doing this. We can't take a rap for that. We're ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Jay told me he understands why Facebook groups like Are We Dating the Same Guy are necessary and thinks they are a good idea, but the anonymous nature of the Tea app "causes a cesspool of defamation.”
When I asked Jay what he thinks about the fact that some women don’t feel safe sharing information about some dangerous men unless they can do so anonymously, he said it would be better if women showed their face, or if the Tea app at least gave women that option.
“I have a Tea app account. I'm a dude. All my reps have Tea app accounts. They're men,” Jay said. “How much can you trust these people and what they're doing?”
One reason the Tea app hack was so dangerous is because the app used to ask women to upload a picture of their face in order to verify that they are women. Those images were posted all over the internet because of the hack, putting those women at risk and leading to more harassment.
Tea App Green Flags is far from the first attempt from men trying to fight back against these types of groups. In 2024, for example, we wrote about a man who tried to sue women who posted about him in Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His first case was dismissed, and he refiled days later as a class action lawsuit; later that year, he was sent to prison for tax fraud.
Tea did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
2026-02-26 23:48:40
It might look like something from the early days of the internet, with its aggressively grey color scheme and rectangles nested inside rectangles, but FPDS.gov is one of the most important resources for keeping tabs on what powerful spying tools U.S. government agencies are buying. It includes everything from phone hacking technology, to masses of location data, to more Palantir installations.
Or rather, it was an incredible tool and the basis for countless of my own investigations and others. Because on Wednesday, the government shut it down. Its replacement, another site called SAM.gov with Uncle Sam branding, frankly sucks, and makes it demonstrably harder to reliably find out what agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are spending tax payers dollars on.
2026-02-26 23:45:29
The Islamic State’s online warriors are still posting. It’s been almost a decade since the group lost the Battle of Raqqa and saw its IRL territorial ambitions thwarted. Unable to hold territory in the real world, the group renewed its focus on posting and has started using AI to resurrect dead leaders. And, because social media platforms have gutted their content moderation operations, the terror group’s strategy is working.
The Islamic State’s online success is detailed in a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an independent research institution that studies extremist movements. For the study, researchers tracked IS accounts on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Element, and SimpleX. It found videos posted in Discord channels dedicated to video games and tracked how the groups have modified old content to fit on new platforms.
Like many others posting online in 2026, the Islamic State has found success by talking about the Epstein Files, using AI to create new videos of dead leaders, and has begun taking its message to video games like Minecraft and Roblox.
“They are very adept at exploiting platforms [and] spreading messages,” Moustafa Ayad, a researcher at ISD and author of this study, told 404 Media. He noted that the group has been active online for 10 years and that part of their success is a willingness to experiment.
Ayad said that Facebook remains a central hub for IS, despite its push into new spaces. His research discovered 350 IS accounts on Facebook that generated tens of thousands of views. One video of an IS fighter talking to camera had more than 77,000 views and 101 shares. The Islamic State branding is blurred to defeat the site’s auto-moderation.
According to Ayad, Islamic State’s engagement numbers are up across the board. “Trust and safety teams have been rolled back over the past few years…a lot of this is outsourced to third party companies who aren’t necessarily experts in understanding if a piece of content came from the Islamic State,” he said.
Social media companies like Meta used the election of Donald Trump as an excuse to cut back on moderating their platforms. Meta said this would mean “more speech and fewer mistakes.” No policies around terrorism have changed, but broadly speaking the largest social media platforms are doing a worse job at moderating their sites. In practice it’s turned Facebook into a place where a group like the Islamic State can spread its message without falling afoul of content moderation teams. Even three years ago, IS influencers wouldn’t have lasted long on the site.
This rollback of moderation has coincided with a spike in views for IS accounts, the report argues. “Individual IS ‘influencer’ accounts are experiencing higher engagement rates on terrorist content than previously recorded by ISD analysts,” the report said. “It is unclear if this uptick is due to moderation gaps, platform mechanics or specific tactical adjustments by IS supporters and support outlets and groups.”
“We’re not talking about content where there’s a gray area,” Ayad said. “It’s very clearly branded Islamic State…supports violence, supports the killing of minorities, the celebration of bombings, the pillaging that is happening in Sub Saharan Africa.”
Something new is the adoption of AI systems to resurrect dead leaders. Ayad described a video where the deceased IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivered speeches again.
“It’s a sanctioned version of using AI for a ‘beloved leader’ or taking him out of context and placing him in a meadow, surrounded by beautiful flowers, paying homage,” he said. “Some of these circles are strange.”
Another popular topic in current IS propaganda is the Epstein Files. According to Ayad, an AI-generated photo of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton canoodling in bed makes frequent appearances on IS accounts across platforms. The picture is, supposedly, pulled from the Epstein files but it’s a popular fake. Ayad said Epstein has been a perfect springboard for IS to talk about “western degeneracy.”
Ayad has also seen Islamic State videos created using Minecraft and Roblox. “They’re creating these virtual worlds that mimic the Islamic State’s caliphate, literally calling it something like Wilayat Roblox [the Province of Roblox] … and they’ll completely mimic the video styles of well-known Islamic State Videos using Roblox characters. This includes faux executions. It includes Arabic and English voiceover in the same cadence as an Islamic State narrator.”
One of the most famous pieces of Islamic State propaganda is a film called Flames of War: The Fighting Has Just Begun. Ayad has seen multiple 1 for 1 recreations of the film using Roblox characters. “They’re often tied to Discords where a number of users are creating this content. They always claim it’s fake or a LARP,” he said. “To see them in this video game skin is odd, to say the least.”
What drives an Islamic State poster? “It’s done very much for the love of the game,” Ayad said. It’s done for the fact that, as a user, ‘I might not be able to participate in physical Jihad but I can participate in electronic Jihad.’”
Keeping Islamic State off of major social media platforms is a constant battle, but one frustrating finding of the study is that the tactics for avoiding moderation haven’t changed much.
“Techniques included the use of alternative news outlets to rebrand IS news, as well as purchasing or hijacking channels with high subscriber bases. These were then repurposed to share IS content. IS supporters, groups and outlets also use coded language: they sometimes referred to the group as ‘black hole’ or the ‘righteous few’ to confound moderation efforts.”
To fight back against IS online, Ayad said that platforms needed to be better at coordination. Often a group is kicked off of Facebook so it moves to TikTok or another platform where it flourishes. He also said that all the companies need to be more transparent about who they’re kicking off their platform and why.
“Europol does these big takedown days and they’re effective to a certain degree but the fact of the matter is that the Islamic State is spread across an expanse of different platforms and messaging applications,” he said. “They’re able to shift operations to another place, wait it out and regenerate on that platform…it’s not like you’re dealing with an average user, you’re dealing with a user that’s determined to spread their ideology and exploit your platform to their own ends.”
And then there’s the old problem of language. “There needs to just be better moderation of under-moderated languages,” Ayad said. Facebook and other platforms have long been terrible at moderating non-English languages. A lot of rancid content online gets a pass because it’s in Arabic or Bengali.
2026-02-26 04:08:57
Amazon is telling people who use its wishlists feature to switch to post office boxes or non-residential delivery addresses if they want to ensure their home addresses remain private, as part of a change in how it processes gifts bought from third-party sellers. The change is especially concerning to many sex workers, influencers and public figures who use Amazon wishlists to receive gifts from fans and clients.
First spotted by adult content creators raising the alarm on social media, the changes open anyone who uses wishlists publicly to increased privacy risk unless they change how they receive packages.
In an email sent to list holders, Amazon said beginning March 25, it will reveal users’ shipping addresses to third-party sellers. The platform added that gift purchasers might end up seeing your address as part of this process, too.