2026-03-10 21:00:53
Quittr, an app that promises to help men stop watching pornography, leaked intimate data on hundreds of thousands of its users, including their masturbation habits, and lied about its security issues, 404 Media can now reveal.
I first reported about Quittr exposing user data in January, but was unable to name Quittr in the story because its creators, Alex Slater and Connor McLaren, did not fix its security issues despite multiple requests and an offer from an independent researcher to help them fix the problem. Naming the app while hackers were still able to easily steal Quittr’s user data would have endangered their privacy and put them at risk of extortion from hackers, which is very common today. Some of the data exposed includes the users’ age, how often they masturbate, and how viewing pornography makes them feel. According to the data, many of them are minors.
Quittr is operated by Slater and McLaren, members of the so called App Mafia, a group of men in their early 20s who claim to have made millions of dollars on mobile app development. Slater and McLaren were recently the subjects of a long New York Magazine profile which detailed the opulent lifestyle the success of Quittr has afforded them, including driving exotic super cars and living in a Miami mansion. Slater shares videos about his lifestyle on his personal YouTube channel as well.
Slater claims Quittr has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times and makes $500,000 a month. But despite these incredible numbers, the developers were somehow unable or unwilling to fix a major security flaw in the app for months.
I first learned about the Quittr vulnerability from an independent researcher, who scanned the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for a common misconfiguration in apps that use Google Firebase, an app development platform. The researcher tested hundreds of the top apps on both stores after we published a story about the Tea app suffering a devastating hack due to the same issue. The researcher found dozens of apps had the same problem, including Quittr, but did not name Quittr in his public disclosure because the highly sensitive and personal data could put users at risk.
The researcher said he contacted Slater directly on September 10, 2025 to tell him about the Quittr vulnerability.
“It’s my fault fully I should've been on top of this, the way you pulled the database was super creative,” Slater told the researcher in a series of WhatsApp messages, which 404 Media reviewed. “So props to that, but again this is serious data and is not good at all. Working on fixing rn! Will be fixed in the next hour.”
But Slater and McLaren did not fix the issue for months. I called him in January, told him about some of the sensitive user data I had seen, and asked him why he had not fixed the vulnerability even after he told the researcher he would.
“There is no sensitive information exposed, that's just not true,” Slater told me at the time. “These users are not in my database, so, like, I just don't give this guy attention. I just think it's a bit of a joke [...] after checking with my engineers I saw this was never an issue.”
When I asked Slater why he previously thanked the researcher for responsibly disclosing the misconfiguration and said he would rush to fix it, he wished me a good day and hung up.
After the call, I created an account on the app, which the researcher was able to see appear in the misconfigured Google Firebase, confirming that user information was still exposed. I called, texted, and emailed Slater and any email associated with Quittr I found several times after that call but never heard back. After a week of trying to contact Quittr and repeatedly checking that the app was still vulnerable, 404 Media decided to publish the story without naming the app in order to protect its users while still highlighting an important security issue in a popular app.
Overall, the researcher said he could access the information of more than 600,000 users of the porn quitting app, 100,000 of which identified as minors.
The app also invites users to write confessions about their habits. One of these read: “I just can't do this man I honestly don't know what to do know more, such a loser, I need serious help.”
“We were like, How can we build an app to make money? Then as I realized how large the issue was, that’s when it became more of a passion project, like, How can we help men actually become men again?” McLaren told New York Magazine.
After the New York Magazine profile was published, the researcher checked Quittr again and saw that it fixed its misconfigured database, which is why we’re naming the app now.
2026-03-09 23:36:54
Roblox is one of those games that is more popular than you can imagine, but unless you are of a certain age group and live in that world, you’ll rarely hear about it unless it makes the news for some terrible reason. More recently, for example, we wrote about the Tumbler Ridge shooter who created a mass shooting simulator in Roblox.
But what is Roblox, how big is it exactly, and why does it seem like it's so frequently embroiled in controversy? This week we’re joined by Cecilia D’anstasio in an attempt to answer all of these questions.
This week we’re joined by Cecilia D’Anstasio. Cecilia reports about video games at Bloomberg, and has written many important articles about the business and controversies of one of the biggest games in the world, Roblox. A few weeks ago we had Patrick Klepek on to discuss Roblox from a parent’s perspective, but today we’re going to hear about it from the perspective of a great investigative reporter and for my money the most knowledgeable journalists about Roblox.
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2026-03-09 22:12:22
When David saw his friend Michael’s social media post asking for a second opinion on a programming project, he offered to take a look.
“He sent me some of the code, and none of it made sense, none of it ran correctly. Or if it did run, it didn't do anything,” David told me. David and his friend’s names have been changed in this story to protect their privacy. “So I'm like, ‘What is this? Can you give me more context about this?’ And Michael’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I've been messing around with ChatGPT a lot.’”
Michael then sent David thousands of pages of ChatGPT conversations, much of it lines of code that didn’t work. Interspersed in the ChatGPT code were musings about spirituality and quantum physics, tetrahedral structures, base particles, and multi-dimensional interactions. “It's very like, woo woo,” David told me. “And we ended up having this interesting conversation about, how do you know that ChatGPT isn't lying?”
As their conversation turned from broken code to physics concepts and quantum entanglement, David realized something was very wrong. Talking to his friend — whom he’d shared many deep conversations with over the years, unpacking matters of religion and theories about the world and how people perceive it — suddenly felt like talking to a cultist. Michael thought he, through ChatGPT, discovered a critical flaw in humanity’s understanding of physics.
“ChatGPT had convinced him that all of this was so obviously true,” David said. “The way he spoke about it was as if it were obvious. Genuinely, I felt like I was talking to a cult member.”
But at the time, David didn’t have a way to name, or even describe, what his friend was experiencing. Once he started hearing the phrase “AI psychosis” to describe other peoples’ problematic relationships with chatbots, he wondered if that’s what was happening to Michael. His friend was clearly grappling with some kind of delusion related to what the chatbot was telling him. But there’s no handbook or program for how to talk to a friend or family member in that situation. Having encountered these kinds of conversations myself and feeling similarly uncertain, I talked to mental health experts about how to talk to someone who appears to be embracing delusional ideas after spending too much time with a chatbot.
2026-03-09 21:26:08
In the parking lot of Seven Oaks Element school in South Carolina on one of the first hot days of the year I watched an AI-generated George Washington talk about the American revolution. “Our rights are a gift from God, not a favor from kings or courts,” slop Washington told me. It spoke from a screen that stretched floor to ceiling, trimmed by a fancy frame.
The intended effect is to make it appear as if the founding father is a painting come to life, a piece of history talking to the viewer. The actual effect was to remind that the AI slop aesthetic is synonymous with the Trump presidency and has become part of the visual language of fascism. Which is fitting because AI George Washington is the result of a collaboration between the Trump White and online content mill PragerU.
The AI slop founding father is part of a touring exhibit of Freedom Trucks commissioned by PragerU in honor of the 250th anniversary of American independence. The trucks are a mobile museum exhibit meant to teach kids about the founding of the country. It’s pitched at kids—most of the “content,” as staff on site called it, is meant for a younger audience but the trucks have viewing hours open to the general public. Nick Bravo, a PragerU employee on hand to answer questions, told me that there are six Freedom Trucks and that the plan is to have them travel the 48 contiguous United States over the next year.
I was drawn to the Freedom Truck because I’d heard they contained AI-generated recreations of Revolutionary figures like Washington, Betsy Ross, and the Marquis Lafayette, similar to the ones on display at the White House. To my disappointment, the AI generated videos in the Freedom Truck are remarkably boring.
As I watched the AI George Washington deliver a by-the-books version of the American story, I thought about Jerry Jones. The famously vain owner of the Dallas Cowboys commissioned an AI version of himself for AT&T stadium in 2023. Fans who make the pilgrimage to the stadium can watch a presentation and ask the AI Jones questions. The AI wanders a big screen while it talks to the audience.
Other than the lazy AI generated videos, the Freedom Truck doesn’t have much to offer. I signed a digital copy of the Declaration of Independence on a touchscreen and took a quiz that asked leading questions designed to find out if I was a “loyalist or patriot.”
“The British Army sends soldiers to Boston. How do you react?” Answer 1: “View them as occupiers violating colonial liberty.” Answer 2: “Welcome them as defenders of law and order.” With ICE and the National Guard patrolling American cities, I wondered how supporters of the current administration would answer that one.
PragerU is known for its “America can do no wrong” view of US history. Its short form video content offers a cartoon version of the past stripped of nuance and context where the country lives up to the myth that it is a “Shining City On a Hill.” According to PragerU, white people abolished slavery and dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was a necessary thing that “shortened the war and saved countless lives.” Now PragerU is taking its view of history on tour across the country. School children in every state will wander these trucks and encounter an AI slop version of the past.
Bravo told me that all the truck’s content was generated as part of a partnership between PragerU and Michigan’s Hillsdale College—a Christian university that helped craft Project 2025. There were, of course, hints of Project 2025 around the edges of the child-friendly AI-generated videos. Slavery isn’t ignored but the stories of early African Americans like poet Phillis Wheatley focus on her celebration of America rather than how she arrived there. On the museum’s “Wall of Heroes,” Whittaker Chambers is nestled between architect Frank Lloyd Wright and painter Norman Rockwell.
A small note near the floor at the exit of the truck notes the collaboration of PragerU and Hillsdale College, and claims that “neither institution received any federal funds and both generously contributed their own resources to help create this educational exhibit.” It also said “this truck was made possible through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services,” which is, of course, a federal agency.
Every AI-generated video ended with a title card showing the White House and PragerU’s logo. “The White House is grateful for the partnership with PragerU and the US Department of Education for the production of this museum,” the card said. “This partnership does not constitute or imply a US Government or US Department of Education endorsement of PragerU.”
Trump attempted to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) via executive order in 2025, but the courts blocked it. Libraries and Museums have since reported that the IMLS grant process has taken on a “chilling” pro-Trump political turn. The administration has also attempted to dismantle the Department of Education.
Trump’s voice was the last thing I heard as I wandered into the bright afternoon sun. “I want to thank PragerU for helping us share this incredible story,” he said in a recorded video that played on a loop in Freedom Truck. “I hope you will join me in helping to make America’s 250th anniversary a year we will never forget.”
2026-03-07 22:00:31
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that moved the heavens, coveted crystals, dined on lunar legumes, and got a four-star review.
First, humanity has permanently signed its name into the orbital dynamics of the solar system. Take the win! Then, we’ve got the origins of our obsession with sparkly rocks, a stint of extraterrestrial gardening, and a story of stellar significance.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
Well folks, pack it up: Humanity has shifted the path of a celestial object around the Sun.
You may remember NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, which slammed into an asteroid named Dimorphos in September 2022. Dimorphos, which is about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, orbits an asteroid named Didymos, roughly five times bigger. In the aftermath of the crash, scientists determined that DART had successfully shifted Dimorphos’ path around Didymos, shortening its roughly 11-hour orbit by 33 minutes.
Now, scientists have confirmed that the mission also changed the entire binary system’s “heliocentric” orbit around the Sun. While scientists had expected the spacecraft to push this pair of asteroids off-kilter, a new study has now quantified the impact by presenting “the first-ever measurement of human-caused change in the heliocentric orbit of a celestial body.”
The team determined that the system’s pace around the Sun was slowed by about 10 micrometers per second as a result of the mighty spaceship wallop. It took years to refine that measurement, which the researchers calculated with radar and stellar occultations, which are observations of the system against background stars.
But it’s worth the wait to know that we shifted a celestial object’s circuit around the Sun, even by a tiny bit—an achievement that may come in handy if we ever need to deflect an asteroid or comet on a collision course with Earth.
“By demonstrating that asteroid deflection missions such as DART can effect change in the heliocentric orbit of a celestial body, this study marks a notable step forward in our ability to prevent future asteroid impacts on Earth,” said researchers co-led by Rahil Makadia of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Steven R. Chesley of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
So, forget moving mountains—we’ve graduated to moving space rocks.
For anyone interested in learning more about DART, I highly recommend How to Kill an Asteroid by Robin George Andrews, which provides a fascinating inside account of the mission.
In other news…
It’s crystal clear: We clearly love crystals. Humans and our early hominin relatives have collected crystals for nearly 800,000 years, making them “among the first natural objects collected by hominins without any apparent utilitarian purpose,” according to a new study.
To explore the origins of this fascination, scientists gave chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, a bunch of sparkly crystals at an ape preserve in Spain. The chimps were intrigued by the offerings; indeed, one female named Sandy immediately absconded with a large crystal dubbed the “Monolith” and took it back to her group’s indoor dormitory for two days.
“When the team of caretakers tried to retrieve the crystal, it took hours to exchange it for valuable ‘gifts’ (i.e., favored food items—bananas and yogurt—which are known from daily observations to be highly appreciated by the chimpanzees), which suggests that the crystal was highly valued,” said researchers led by Juan Manuel García-Ruiz of Donostia International Physics Center.
“Crystals may have contributed to the development of metaphysical and symbolic thinking, acting as catalysts for the conceptualization of a ‘big beyond,’” the team concluded.
Scientists are finally addressing my dream of enjoying locally-grown falafel on the Moon. In a new study, a team experimented with planting chickpeas in lunar regolith simulant (LRS), a human-made substance that mimics lunar soil.
The results revealed that chickpeas could flower and produce seeds in the simulant, provided that it was treated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) which are fungal microbes known to protect plant health. Small additions of vermicompost also helped the Moon beans flourish.
“Plants seeded successfully in mixtures containing up to 75 percent LRS when inoculated with AMF,” said researchers led by Jessica Atkin of Texas A&M University. “Higher LRS concentrations induced stress; however, plants grown in 100 percent LRS inoculated with AMF demonstrated an average extension of two weeks in survival compared to non-inoculated plants.”
“We present a step toward sustainable agriculture on the Moon, addressing the fundamental challenges of using Lunar regolith as a plant growth medium,” the team concluded.
Who knows if we’ll ever live off the lunar land, but as a garbanzo fanzo, I’m hoping for heavenly hummus.
Three-body problems are so last season; the era of the quadruple star system is upon us. In a new study, scientists unveil the most compact quartet of stars ever discovered, known as TIC 120362137, which is about 2,000 light years from Earth.
“This inner subsystem, which contains three stars that are more massive and hotter than the Sun, is more spatially compact than Mercury’s orbit around our Sun, and is orbited by a fourth Sun-like star with a period of 1,046 days,” said researchers co-led by Tamás Borkovits and Saul A. Rappaport of the University of Szeged, Hai-Liang Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Guillermo Torres of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian.
“To our knowledge, there are no other known, similarly compact and tight, planetary-system-like 3 + 1 quadruple stellar systems,” the team added.
The researchers predicted that this fantastic foursome will eventually merge together into a pair of dead stars known as white dwarfs in about nine billion years. No planets have been found in this system, and it may be that it is too dynamically eccentric to host them. Still, it’s fun to imagine the view from such a hypothetical world, with four Suns in its sky. Eat your heart out, Tatooine.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
2026-03-07 00:26:59
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 a PC repair battle, a revealing comment from an FBI official, and a dangerously dumb narrative.
EMANUEL: I want to update those who have been following the 404 Media sidequest “Emanuel’s CPU is dying.” The update is that I basically got a new PC. I kept my GPU (4080 Super), my CPU cooler, and storage, and upgraded everything else, including the case, because I bought the old one in the era before GPUs were more than a foot long.