Factually! with Adam Conover - Will A.I. Slop Replace the Internet? with Jason Koebler

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

A.I. slop is competing for space all across the web, and it’s starting to edge out actual human creators. The internet, once rife with possibility, is rapidly turning into a depressing wasteland of mind numbing garbage. Despite the massive volume of brain-waste being sludged out every day, there are still some brilliant human minds trying to turn the tides of the battle. 404media is a worker-owned tech journalism outlet, and they use their real human minds to investigate and report on stories—everything from surveillance, to AI, to cyber security, to hacking, to sex. Joining Adam today is Jason Koebler, one of 404’s reporters and founders, to talk about the bizarre details of the A.I. slop economy and what we can do to fight back.--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now, you probably need more. On Up First from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes. Because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way.

I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again.

You know, I've been making comedy here on the internet for a couple decades now. I come up with an idea with my human brain. I write it down. I got some other nice folks who help me out doing that. We produce it. We edit it. We put it up on the internet for you to watch. And if you like it, well, you give us a little bit of money or we read a couple ads.

Somehow we make enough money to do it again. The next week, I really enjoy doing it. And I thank you for all of your support. But, you know, in the last couple years, there's been this new type of content that's been competing with me and other humans on the internet. I'm talking about AI slop. If you haven't noticed, every single platform on the internet, YouTube shorts, reels, TikTok, and especially Facebook, is overrun by extremely low quality, frankly, bullshit that is being pumped out at massive rates by AI algorithms. And in fact, those very platforms are paying the people who make the AI slop to upload it, to upload bizarre imagery like shrimp Jesus or fake news stories or horrifying imagery where, like,

a local football coach turns into a demon or whatever. This imagery is tricking a lot of people into clicking on it. Your boomer parents, but hey, even a lot of people I know recently shared this clip of a bunch of bunnies jumping up and down on a trampoline thinking it was real, right? This stuff is everywhere and it is working. It is displacing real content. I hate to even call it content because that gives up the game,

but it is displacing real art made by real people at an incredible rate. And it is making the internet, this place I used to love, a place where, you know, you'd turn on your computer and you'd see something amazing made by a real human somewhere else across the world. It's turned it into this wasteland of artificially generated slop. It is one of the most upsetting trends I've seen in technology in years. But, you know, I don't want to overstate it because there are still a lot of pockets of the internet where real human beings are doing really incredible work. And one of those is 404 media. If you haven't heard of 404 media, they are an absolutely incredible worker-owned tech journalism outlet that does some of the very best reporting done

today on the internet, on technology, on any of the other topics that we cover so often on this show. We have used their reporting in my work itself. And they have also been covering for years this AI slop story better than anyone else has. And I am so thrilled on the show today to have Jason Keebler from 404 Media on to talk about AI Slop and what we can do about it. We also get into government surveillance of the internet and how ICE and other government departments are using the data collected by private companies to track undocumented immigrants and American citizens as they travel around the country. It's horrifying stuff.

I know you're going to love this conversation. Before we get into it, I want to remind you that if you want to support this show and all the human beings who help make it, head to patreon.com slash Adam Con. over five bucks a month, gets you every episode of this show ad-free. You can also join our online community. We would love to have you there. It's also full of real humans who would love to talk with you about anything that you're interested in.

And also, if you want to come see me do stand-up comedy and have that age-old human experience of gathering with other people laughing in person in a darkened room. Well, guess what? I'm doing some big shows coming up. On October 5th, I'm going to be in Los Angeles at the lodge room into Highland Park. I'm so excited. It's one of my favorite venues in the city. I cannot wait for everybody here in L.A. to see my new hour.

Sammy Mowry is going to be opening for me. It's going to be an incredible show. And on November 15th, I'm going to be at the Bell House in New York City for New York Comedy Festival. It is one of the very best comedy rooms in the country. I can't wait to be there. Also, this fall, I'm going to be in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Brea, California, Tacoma, and Spokane, Iowa, Atlanta, Georgia, Philadelphia, Washington, D.

DC and Pittsburgh, head to Adam Conover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. I'd love to give you a hug and a handshake at the meet and greet after the show. And now, let's get to this week's interview with 404 Media's Jason Keebler. Jason, thanks so much for being on the show, man. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm a simp dripped out in your merch today. I love it. It's a great look.

I feel like both overdressed and also like I'm not on theme. Well, you're wearing a wonderful monotone ensemble. this I got from I went to your 404's party in L.A. copped this tank came here today, you brought me socks, now I'm head to toe. Yeah, it's your peak

fashion at the moment, yeah. That's the code from Doom. Did you know this? This is the code from, wait. Well, it's not all of the code from Doom, but it's an excerpt for those listening, it says 404 in big letters, but the letters are made of code, sort of matrix code style, green on black. But this is an excerpt of the code

from Doom? It's an excerpt of the code from Doom because there's this meme where it's like, oh, they put Doom on a refrigerator. They put Doom on whatever. And I'm like, well, we put it on a shirt. Doom is not playable, unfortunately. I mean, if this was actually the executable code, so like, executed the tank top, that would be perfection. But I mean, hell yeah.

Well, I'm such a fan of what you guys do. You're, I just want to jump in by, start by saying that, like, there's been a bunch of, like, indie journalism or, you know, writing outfits. but most of them are like commentary like I love defector defector's amazing we've had dave roth on the show they do reporting on there but it's it's about you know 75 to 80 percent commentary right you guys are doing 75 to 80 percent like actual reporting on the site which I think is really unique for any kind of you know worker owned the sort of new crop of outlets because reporting is harder than commentary commentary is really good really great as well you sit back and write what

you think but like you're a lot less likely to be sued right Yes, I think so. We've not been sued yet. Please don't sue us. Don't want that to happen. But we all used to work at Motherboard Back Advice. And we sort of learned very quickly that the way to get readers is to share new information. And so we did that by becoming good reporters and just breaking stories about privacy, about surveillance, about AI, about sex work, about porn. At Motherboard, Sam Cole, who was one of my co-founders, was the first to ever right about deep fakes like ever. Wow. Like porn in porn or just the existence of that technology at all but in porn because it was originally used for porn still very widely used for porn. And you know that that headline was like face swap porn is here and we're all fucked and it did a lot of traffic but and vice had very few sort of guardrails that we couldn't couldn't do. But the fact that it cussed in the headline was quite bad because then it was being cited by like Congress and things of this nature. And it was like, oh, we put fucked in the

headline. It's not not the best. I mean, fuck Congress though. Like you guys, isn't that part of the traffic, part of the style to? It all worked out. It all worked out. But there was like this notion at the time like, oh, that's not the ad the advertisers. It's not brand safe. So therefore maybe we won't be taken as seriously or whatever. It doesn't matter. It was a huge successful story and line of reporting. But we learned at the time, like, we were good at reporting. We're good at getting scoops. We learned libel laws. And we actually learned them somewhat publicly advice. Like we got sued by this company called ShotSpotter, which was a really, their surveillance company that puts like microphones in, like they call them high crime neighborhoods. And these

microphones. What kind of neighborhoods are those, I wonder. Exactly. Exactly. And, And they're supposed to detect gunshots. And basically we did a story about how cops were, you know, using these for problematic reasons. We got sued. The article was very good reporting. But we went through this like very quite scary lawsuit. I think they sued us for over $100 million, which Vice definitely didn't have at the time.

But going through that process, I was like, okay, this is like how this works. You know, this is what a lawsuit looks like. This is how you respond to it, et cetera. And it was an incredibly scary experience, but also became very close with VICE's outside counsel during that period. And so she now represents us at 404 Media. Hell yeah. We have libel insurance. Like, we've taken this very seriously and knowing that we are doing articles about powerful people, about powerful companies. you know, we are very, very careful about making sure that what we've reported is accurate, that we're fair about how we do it and that sort of thing. But it has worked for us as, like, one of these work our own companies where we're breaking stories and we're telling new information.

And I think one thing, like, when I think, oh, like, what are we, how are we different than other things that are on the internet? we realized like at motherboard that we were breaking stories and then there were like YouTubers and podcasters that were taking our stories and immediately reading them like and commenting on them and stuff and it was like I do a version of that myself I tried to do more than just read and comment on it but like you know I'm lower down the information food chain the reporters are at the top and I'm synthesizing it I'm chewing it up I'm writing some jokes I'm like contextualizing I'm doing op-ed but there's

so many times that I saw, I was going back through your archive today to prep for this interview and I'm like, oh, this is something I saw everywhere. A lot of people were talking about this and it started with you. A lot of people were talking about this and it started with you guys. Like you are the ones injecting the new idea into the ecosystem. We're trying to do that and I saw that happen so many times. We all saw it happen so many times at motherboard. And if they're adding context, a lot of people are funnier than us. A lot of people have better personality on camera than us. I totally understand it. But we were saying like, why are we just letting our stuff like filter through this ecosystem when we could be we could be making these

videos and podcasts ourselves as well alongside of the articles. And so I think that there's been so much sort of like so much writing about the media is dying, journalism is dying, these publications are dying. And it's true that it's like a really difficult like business environment for like a website online. But at the same time you have all of these influencers and like news streamers and things like that who have managed to make a business for themselves. And so it's like, well, what if we learned from them by trying to bring some of that to this company?

Right. What if you did both things? What if you did the reporting and all the stuff that brings people in the door? And I mean, you know, Vice, you guys left, I assume, in one of the many rounds of layoffs and shutdowns that happened there, right? or we left in the immediate aftermath of them getting purchased out of bankruptcy got it um we were not laid off but we would have been you were like let's get let's get out of here we've talked about other people who i'm friends with who the waypoint crew all got laid off etc um but you really

sort of proved you're proving capitalism wrong right because this thing that like you would have been laid off a lot of other people who were doing the same job as you were laid off from vice And you went and just started doing the exact same thing, but yourselves and are doing so. I think I would maybe say more successfully than it was happening advice. Like you guys are having a huge impact. And I assume you have a sustainable business. And I went to an event that you had in LA that there were hundreds of people at you. Through another one in New York, you're having like hundreds of people show up for live events about journalism.

You're proving everything that, you know, the exact. negative classes say about online media wrong. It's crazy and wonderful. Yeah, I mean, it's very mind-blowing for us. Like, it's extremely surreal because we sit in our apartments. I work out of my garage and I'm typing my articles on the internet. And I'm like, I know people are reading it because I see that people are reading it and people are subscribing and it's working. But it's also very like, you know, I'm alone all day. And so then to go to a party and it's like, wow, there's tons of people here and they're like stoked on it. It's just like, it's, it gives me so much hope that like that subscribers are the ones who have made this like a sustainable business and

it is working and I think about vice it's like vice is actually very good at making money and getting attention and having like tons of people watch the YouTube videos and and read the website but what they were really bad at is they spent so so so much money it's like huge office in the most expensive neighborhoods in the world like talking I went to that office a couple times it was fucking crazy. And the one here, too, is right next to an Arawan. It's now an Arawan parking lot, literally. But it's like, we were like, what if we strip out, like, what is minimum viable journalism blog to use a Silicon Valley term?

Like, what is the, like, least amount of stuff that we can do? Like, how would we strip our expenses to basically nothing and then build up from there? And that has been a really awesome experience. It's also been a bit of a roller coaster. Like, we launched our podcast, and we think the information on it is good. But for the first few weeks, we were editing it ourselves. And a lot of feedback was, like, you guys don't know how to make these, the levels. Like, why is Jason so loud?

Why is Joseph so soft? Like, why is there, like, random stuff cutting in and out? And I was like, oh, that's because, like, I am in audition. You can't be doing that. Like, cutting out the ums. and I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, watching YouTube videos to do this. We only did that for a few weeks,

but we've taken that sort of ethos to everything we do where it's like, let's try it ourselves first. Let's see if it's hard. Often it is, and it's like, then we'll, like, bring in a professional to do it. But before, like,

before we get the big office, before we get, you know, the fancy studio, this is a very fancy studio. Well, I don't own this studio. I understand. It's not my studio, but we've done that for everything.

Like that part you went to was, at this place called Rip Space in L.A. It's amazing. If you're in L.A., you should check it out. But it's also, like, an artist loft that didn't, like, we brought all those microphones, all those cameras, everything. And it's like, can we do this all the time? And I was like, it's a lot of work. Maybe next time we'll try it at a place of business. You guys are pumping out so much stuff. I mean, I went to your front page and there were like, in the last, I think, five days. Like, the whole front page was like about a dozen

stories that were just in the last five days, which is like high output even for, you know, if you were VC funded or something like that, or for like, I don't know, like it's like a Gizmodo level of output almost, but just you guys as a collective. It's really amazing. The success is wonderful. What I want to talk to you about is sort of the polar opposite of what's taking over the internet. You've spent a lot of time covering how AI slop content is transforming the internet that we grew up. loving and consuming content on. And that's really completely, like, you're doing something very human.

You're doing, like, the real work. You're doing, like, the hard thing of journalism in a very efficient way. But, I mean, the Internet is being, like, flooded by machine-generated content, right? Yeah, yeah. This is something I've become completely obsessed with. There's been lots of good reporting on it, you know, by other people. But I feel like I was one of the first people to write about really bizarre AI content that was taking over Facebook at the time.

And I learned this because there was this like woodworker in in the UK who does chainsaw carvings of dogs, which is like it's a job. He's a very talented guy, but basically he'll take like a huge tree and carve it into your dog. And he will document the entire process, you know, like take photos and videos of it. And he has like an Instagram account and a Facebook account. And these would go viral sometimes, him making like this cool dog. And one of our readers noticed that there was like dozens and dozens of variations of this guy being posted by, you know, a Facebook slot page called like Newsforyou.org or something like this. Or like, love Jesus, love you. They all have really weird names or did at the time.

And so they were posting like maybe 15, 20 times a day. And it would be a picture of this guy sitting next to a dog. But in each image, the dog was slightly different and the guy was slightly different. And what they realized was that this page was running this guy. They were ripping this guy's images off and running them through an image-to-image AI generator. So basically you would run it through this generator and it would change like 1% of the photo or like 10% of the photo. Like you can say how different you want it to be. And they were posting it and they were going viral like repeatedly over and over and over again.

and there was this Facebook group of people dedicated to like finding AI on Facebook which is very funny because this was not that long ago this was December. It seems like trying to find leaves on the ground in fall. Well, exactly. This was December 2023.

And so there were only a few pages doing this and I talked to this one woman in New Zealand who had a spreadsheet of like hundreds of these groups and she's like, I think I found it all. I think I found all of the, That's on all of Facebook. And then fast forward like literally only like two, three months. It's like that was the era of shrimp Jesus, which is, you know, Jesus with the arms of shrimp.

Yeah. And it just like it spiraled out from there. And it started off like very rudimentary where people were trying to trick you by being like, oh yeah, this is real. Like I saw on this like dream homes page because there's a lot of like fake log caps. that people were making and posting. I saw these people talking about this deck of this log cabin and the deck was AI generated. And there was like this guy in Ohio who was talking about how the deck wasn't up to code. It was like the support structures on this deck or not up to code.

And then like someone would argue with like, no, actually like I'm a contractor in Florida. This is like how we do it here. And like I saw these people arguing back and forth about this image that is completely. not real and whether it complies with like building codes and I was like we're cooked this is really bad like there are like thousands of comments on this because these are real people having a real argument about an image that they do not realize is fake but they're engaging with it it's it they're engaging with it in the same way they would engage with other rage bait which is stupidly and without much thought or in a reactive way but they're doing that to the fake content

in exactly the same way they would the real content exactly exactly and was just like, I don't really know how to think about it, but I've spent like hundreds of hours at this point scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, like my entire Instagram algorithm is AI content at this point because I like engage with it because I want to see what the current like state of the art is. So it gives you more.

It gives me more. Like you interact with this stuff even once. So you even like linger on it for too long. Uh-huh. You get more of it. Because it hasn't been huge in my feeds. It's like the bunnies on the trampolines was like a pretty big meme moment where like a bunch of people in my circle got fooled by an image of a bunch of bunnies on trampolines. And we're like, oh, it's cute.

But apart from that, I'm not I'm not really seeing much, I think. Yeah, you probably aren't. Okay. But there's a lot there. Yeah. Like it's an endless, endless flood of it. And it's, you know, Ryan Broderick who runs the Garbage Day newsletter, a very good reporter. he has access to some tool that shows you like the most engaged with content on Facebook that

I don't have access to anymore or never did actually. And there was a few months where it was like the top 10 posts on Facebook were all AI generated. And so I mean I got very obsessed with this and sort of the business model of it that like what's going on behind the scenes of it. And I did this big story about, you know, it's a it's a very like pyramid shaped scheme aspect. which that was a very good episode. But basically, like, there's an entire industry of side hustle influencers who are like, you can make money by posting AI content on Instagram, by posting AI content on Facebook, just by my $49.99 class.

You'll get access to my Discord. I'll teach you the tools of how to do it. And so there's, like, you know, a handful of people who are doing this. Like, you know, like, you're a cuck if you're not making like six figures a month. making an AI girl. This is the new passive income. Have your AI agent make a content for you and like reap the money. Right. And so this is now a new type of content, the content about how to make it. But then there's also just like legions of people who are making this stuff. And they're actually getting paid out by the platforms is what's happening. Like Facebook is literally paying them to post

it. Facebook is paying them to post it. TikTok is paying them and post it. YouTube is paying them post it and the way that it works is like each uh social media platform has its own creator bonus program is what they're called and so it's like go viral we'll give you like a they don't call it this but it's a fraction of the ad yeah revenue for you know you get a million views like we'll give you well and that money is is so for a person like me is like so minimal you know like i basically stopped around like 20 late 2020 early 20 21 i was like posting a lot on TikTok. I was doing stuff for TikTok. And you know, you'd make, uh, you get a million views. You'd make 40 bucks, uh, which is like not enough to be worth my time, frankly. And so I spend more

of my effort on YouTube because if something goes viral here, uh, a million views is like four or five grand plus, you know, we sell other ads, et cetera. It's like more of a business for a person, you know, but that's because I'm actually making, I'm talking into the camera. I'm thinking about what I'm going to say, if you're just generating AI slop, then a million views you get 40 bucks or whatever it is now is a lot more sustainable. You're like, oh yeah, well, I made 500 of these today, right? Yeah, it's a lot of it. And then also what I found was a lot of these people are living in the global south. Not all, it's increasingly coming to the US, but like a lot of these videos that I was writing about were in Hindi. They were like Indian

influencers. And so they were like making videos like, here's what? we think Americans like and a lot of them were like one of the videos is so funny it was like Americans love dogs which is accurate but they're like they treat dogs like they're their kids so like make content about their dogs etc but it's like that money goes further like there was this one guy who made a an image of a tree that was made of leaves like literally it was an image of you know an AI image that made him like $4,000 he showed the like screenshot of his back end on Facebook and that guy went on like 14 podcasts in India like I watched him go on to all these different ones and he was like you know that's because he also made

4,000 USD he made 4,000 USD so he was like that was like six months worth of income at my like tech job in Mumbai like this is my job now like this is what I'm doing and so these platforms have incentivized they've incentivized people to flood their platforms with AI slop and I don't know like they're making real money and so and then the other thing is like you mentioned it's like you spend a long time thinking about what you're going to make scripting it recording it editing it etc you can generate AI slop very quickly of course as you just said but what you can also do is you can see what works and you can see what doesn't work and you can iterate on it extremely fast and so you might try to make like 40,000 images of a train with

made out of like shoes and they're like oh don't like that but train out of leaves that works like I'm gonna now make a lot more of that and that's what we've seen is like there's these eras of AI slop where something becomes very popular and then all the creators rush to do that same thing and then that falls out of fashion and they move on to something else I mean it reminds me of a sort of mechanized version of what BuzzFeed used to do right like BuzzFeed was sort of this company premised on this idea of we can understand virality and pay people to make those things in a way that is like less cynical than what you're describing, but still pretty cynical.

The BuzzFeed era wasn't as bad as the moment that we're currently in, but it's the same thing and the same trends. Oh, now we're doing lists. Now we're doing polls. Now we're doing what, you know, character are you, whatever. Like that's not what's viral on the internet anymore, but we're still going through the cycles just much, much more quickly. and now everyone is doing it.

So, like, what hope does a company like a BuzzFeed have when the public and, like, everyone on planet Earth is being paid by these, potentially being paid by these platforms to do this? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like, it's not just, oh, I'm one person and I'm going to make my one AI, like there's AI influencers are a big thing now. So their Instagram's accounts of women in bikinis in, you know, vacation destinations and everything is fake.

The woman is fake. The destination is fake. All of it is fake. They have something called FanView, which is an OnlyFans competitor, but FanView allows only, like, allows AI influencers. And so you then have men subscribing to these women. And so, like, I have talked to people who have made these AI influencers and they're like, well, I'm like a man. and I consider myself to be straight. All these guys are sending me dickpicks.

But, like, I'm making a lot of money doing it. So, like, I've, like, figured out how to, like, sex with these men who think that my AI woman is real. And they're, so they're, they're essentially doing a complex role play on, but they're, like, puppeting an AI woman, right, and creating sexual content and sexting, maybe via the AI, but they're still doing it with other men, but they're like, I'm straight and I'm, That's really... I talked to multiple people about this. I haven't written the article yet, but this is happening.

It's happening regularly. And there was actually an article in Rest of World recently, which is a good website that covers international tech. And a lot of them hire AI chatting services in Malaysia, I believe it is. But basically, it's like a call center where you outsource that part of it. So it's like, I'll make the cool, like the sexy picks of the woman, but I'm going to make like these workers in Malaysia do the sexting part of it. Yeah.

I brought this up, one, because it's insane, but two, because it's not like these guys who are making money doing this are making one woman. They're making like 50. Uh-huh. And so it's like, they're running all of these accounts because they figured out how to automate the entire process. And so

with AI it's not just like, oh, I can like have a meme account. It's like, no, I can run like 500 meme accounts and they all run themselves. I just like have to do some maintenance to make sure that like I'm not they're not getting deleted for spam purposes or like I need to I need to occasionally ask chat GPT for for more ideas to generate images for my like meme account. And so it it is pretty bleak. I think like it really is like flooding these platforms in a way

that, you know, there's like billions of people on Facebook. But then you compound that. And then you compound that by the, you know, probably at this point, only tens of thousands of people who are doing this, but then, I don't know, we're going into a dark place, I think. Folks, how much of your personal data do you think is online? You know, it's scary to hear, but it's probably a lot more than you think. Our whole world is online, even if you think your data is not. And that means all kinds of your information, including email addresses, phone numbers, names of relatives, they all exist out there on the internet, just waiting to be grabbed by anyone looking to exploit you.

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we're going to create a system by which we pay tens of thousands of people in the global South to churn out true cynical garbage, truly like nightmare nonsense images for our Western or, you know, Global North audiences. So I honestly feel like it was a mistake, like an accident. Like they stumbled onto this, the fact that this was happening. And that's just a hunch that I have. I don't have actual reporting on this. But it seemed at first that Facebook was like, oh, yeah, like we don't want this type of stuff

on our platform, but then Facebook started investing in AI, like heavily. Facebook started rolling out its own AI influencers and AI accounts and AI chat bots and things like that. Facebook started making its own, you know, like competitor to chat GPT, where you can generate these things yourself. And so I think that these companies have so much money on the line, so much investment in the idea that their audiences will accept AI like they're shoving into every part of their platforms hoping that we will use it and engage with it and I mean I hate to say this but it's working I think especially for meta where I've watched some of the earnings reports and things like that and it's really

helping with their ad targeting and it's also helping with the like creative like the ads that you see on meta like in the past if If you were an advertiser, you would maybe buy an ad, and then you would make a separate version of that ad to A, B, test these ads. And so the ad that worked better, you would put more money behind, like, A, B testing. And so that's how it used to work. But now you can make, like, 50 different versions of the ads that are all, like, slightly different based on, you know, generative AI, they'll be, like, tweak the photos somehow,

tweak the call to action, like, let our AI write the call to action. and then whichever one works best you can just put a ton of money behind that and so instead of having two versions of an ad you can have 50 versions of an ad and that's leading to like huge revenue growth for them and so I think that they are now seeing this as an opportunity and where I see this going is we know that these social media algorithms know so much about us know so much about our behavior and deliver us content based on what we engage with so on and so forth, I think we're moving toward a point where everything is going to be so hyper-personalized.

It's like, I'm starting to, like, we wrote an article today about, like, 80s nostalgia, and it's like, oh, don't you want to, like, go back to the 80s or whatever? And it's like, that's capturing, like, a specific demographic. But, like, if you're into corgis, like, you're going to see, like, AI Corgi. My favorite example from your reporting that I was rereading today was the one about the head coach of the LSU football team and there's like these meme,

the AI meme pages that are pumping out article. Is it Brian Kelly? Is that his name? It's like Brian Kelly saves family of five from burning airplane or what, or you know,

a father tragically loses whole family, but what Brian Kelly says inspired everyone. And it's just like mad libs with Brian Kelly in there. And then they've got a photo of him like rescuing a child

from like a flood or whatever, and you point out, he's not like nationally famous. I don't follow college football at all at all. I don't know who he is, but I do know that there is a large cohort of people for whom he is the only person in the world who matters. People who are obsessed with the LSU football team, they're going to, they're like thinking about that guy 10 times a day. So this is like custom fake viral content for like literally that one interest group of people

who are, if Brian Kelly's in the thumbnail, I'm clicking it. Exactly. Exactly. And we were talking about BuzzFeed earlier. And the thing that I think about a lot is there was a period where BuzzFeed was doing articles where it was like, only University of Maryland kids will get this. And it would be like, you know, stuff about University of Maryland. And then they would be like, only Arizona state kids will get this. And like they were trying to do that with, you know, their network of freelancers and stuff where it's like like hyper niche local content. And that's exactly what's happening now, but with AI. It's like, are you an LSU Tiger fan? Like, we're going to. going to deliver you inspirational content about Brian Kelly saving a kid from a burning building but then there's also um uh I'm blanging in his name but the one of the voice from the voice one of the judges like Luke Brian oh okay so there's the same content but about Luke Brian there's like the same content but about Shohei Otani so it's like oh like for whatever interest you're in it's like here's your favorite celebrity doing really

amazing stuff and like that is it's kind of um I I still think it's very early days. Like, as in, you know, I don't know how big the audience of, like, LSU, Brian Kelly, inspiration porn there is, but, like, this is going to expand out into, like, any interest that you can possibly imagine. Yeah. And I'm trying to think of what that interest is for me, you know. Like, when you talk about nostalgia content for my college or, like, a decade that I lived

through, part of the point of that kind of content is that there's a human experience on the other end. Like, I followed a meme account for the college that I went to that was done by a current student because she was doing jokes about the cafeteria that I also ate in. And that was, like, fun to have the connection, right? Like, with this group of people. So, of course, that would make sense. But, like, what would I click on that just because it mentions the thing, even though

it's fake, you know? Is there something like that for me? Maybe Mario content, maybe Nintendo content, something like that, like where it's just like, yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a marketing. for it. Yeah, yeah, I've tried to think about the same. I was actually, I was just like scrolling Reddit yesterday and my fiancee was like, you're always looking at such wholesome stuff because I was looking at a picture of like a big wave and like a cool surfer on a big wave. And all the comments were like, sick, bro. Awesome. So it's like, I've seen a lot of like fake AI like AI surf content.

And I was like, oh, maybe maybe they could get me there. Yeah. Yeah. No, the wholesome parts of the internet, like one of my, I love the comments of like a YouTube video of anyone playing music. It's very funny. She said this, by the way, because I'm normally looking at like the most fucked up AI you can possibly imagine. I was like, I don't know. But, well, the thing is, though, the reason you're on Reddit, like the reason you went to that subreddit that where you saw the wave is there's like a site with a community of surfers who you enjoy commuting with for a moment, right? It's the good and the bad thing about Reddit, they sort of centralized all these communities in one place.

But it is like full of people, you know? And to me, like, don't these platforms realize how much worse they're making their product by removing the people from it? I mean, I'm sure that like some dementia addled boomers, right, will continue to click on whatever and it'll be like abusive to do so. Like when I picture someone clicking on the Shrimp Jesus or whatever or the Brian Kelly content. I'm like, oh, grandma loves her football team and she's not as quick as she used to be and she fell for it, you know, same way you picture who's at the slot machines. You're like,

oh, no, it's people who are, you know, they're taking advantage of somebody. But we know culturally that's bad, right? Like it is, it's pernicious, but it's also a little bit niche in that we all see it as being so something that we don't want to seek out, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think in the long term, it feels like there's no way that this type of content can work. Like, it feels like, okay, at first people were maybe tricked by it. And then now it's like, I feel like a lot of people can recognize some of this stuff as AI, but they're like, oh, it's so weird though. Like, I'm going to stick around and like look at it. Like, look how far it has come. But then, yeah, like, it's very hard for me to say just because it's like AI has been shoved into

everything it's like you Google anything on it about anything now and it's like that you get the AI summary at the top and at first I was like oh fuck this like I'm going to scroll past it and now I'm like oh like that it basically answers my stupid question I had at the bar about like what year like Cal Ripkin was born or something yeah I'm like okay I didn't click on the the website who makes it living by posting baseball players birth dates or whatever and that's happened across the entire internet. But I do think that there's been a real backlash to AI. Like you've talked to many people about this. And yeah, as part of my business now is the AI backlash. It's like what I do for a living. Exactly. That's what we do for a living.

Like our whole thing is like for humans, by humans, we're not writing for an algorithm. We're not writing for to get like the top ranking on Google. We're not writing to try to go viral on social media. It's like we're just writing out cool shit that we think that we see. And we're very upfront about like we are human beings who are here's how we do the process here's how we do this reporting and people have responded really well to that and I think that people also respond really well to your show to like podcasts that they that have like a really strong voice that really like lean into the personality of the person doing it and so I do think I think they were moving toward like an internet where you'll have like these social media platforms and they will be for

Slop. They will be for like whatever nonsense shows up there. And then you will like purposefully seek out your favorite human creators either on those platforms or on their own platforms. And I think like I think that's why you're seeing so many journalists start their own things. You have like, you know, Taylor Lorenz friend of mine as well. And like she has a really good YouTube. She has a really good newsletter. She has she explains like who she is and you know people have like feelings all over the place about her but she at least is like I'm a human being here's what I think here's how I do the reporting and I'm going to like break some news every now and then and I think with you it's like you have like here's what I'm good at here's how I'm funny like people come to you for your take for your comedy yeah

and I think that gives me some hope that gives me some hope and I don't think that's going away I think that this has become a more, like paradoxically the internet's being destroyed, but like human forward fuck the algorithm type content seems like it's doing better than never. I hope

so, but the problem is that I still make my living in the algorithmic spaces. Like, you know, for the last five or six years since my last Netflix show, like I actually know, from the beginning

From the beginning of my career, my entire career has been based on knowing what people would want to watch, like basically on the internet. Like my sketch group that got started like pre-Utube is called Old English. We were making viral videos that we were compressing with quick time and uploading. And people were like emailing them to each other. Then YouTube came out and we, you know, figure out how to do well on YouTube, right? Then I start working at college humor. I make videos that do well enough there that we sell a TV show. Part of the success of the TV show was every single clip was getting millions of views on YouTube.

to the extent that you also knew what worked on YouTube like you had that internal clock where it's like oh this is the type of stuff that YouTube likes at this moment and it'll be like your spin on it like you I'm not saying you did stuff like just for the algorithm but you had a sense like yeah it was this sort of educational comedy content that I was doing at the time this this will do well and it wasn't like I know the algorithm I wasn't like mr. beastifying like you know optimizing I was just I know what I like I know what I would click on I know what a lot of other people would click on so this sort of thing will do well And then after the Netflix show, I'm like doing stuff on TikTok, I'm like, all right, if I start with the first five seconds are interesting and they grab people and then I give them some actual information, they'll stick around for the whole video.

And then it'll do well. And there was a period where that felt like not quite a meritocracy, but like, hey, I'm good at this. So that's why I get the views. You know, I know how to do it. And even now, the process of booking you for this interview is like, okay, what's the title going to be that will get people to click on it? And so we sell our ad rates and, you know, we're able to pay everybody and headgum wants to keep us in the network, et cetera, et cetera. That's still the distribution mechanism, you know, Apple podcasts, thank you for people listening

on there. People are subscribed and they're going to hopefully listen every week. We've got that base. But a big portion of it is, like, you know, doing a good job in the Algo soup. And, like, I do worry about what you're talking about, like pushing people like me and Taylor and even you guys, like, out, you know, because we're still competing with all that other stuff. And it's not so much competing because what I do, like, just AI slop is not going to compete directly with that because I'm giving people something different.

It's like, but what if YouTube decides to stop showing content like this to people? That's the problem, because that's what Facebook is essentially done, right? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the two things I worry a lot about are discoverability. So it's like, yeah, how does, like, how do you get that top of the funnel, which is like, I don't even know if it's corporate speak, but it's just like, how do you get new people to find your thing? And then, too, it's like, how do you get, like, you're famous already enough, you know, like established in your career. Thanks for qualifying. Yes. No, like, same. Like, we worked at Vice for a long time. Like, we had people who already knew us. But, like, if you were just coming out of school. right now and you're trying to become a journalist, like, how do you start from square zero

to build a following in the first place? Like, you have to do it on these social media platforms and, like, are you going to be able to compete with this slop? So we had an advantage there because we had, you know, some people knew who we were already. And there's people who like work on the internet and presumably had relied on your reporting. Like I, as soon as you guys started the site, I was like, I've been reading them for years. I'm going to support this because it feeds the work that I do. And so it is a little bit that sort of like, it's not quite business journalism like Bloomberg or something, but there's an audience who like really does need it. Right, right. And then so I think the question for you and for all of us is like, how do we

go from YouTube to convert people to listen to us on Apple Podcasts? Like how do you get them off of the algorithm platforms to like a more reliable delivery mechanism and like for us that's been email and that's just it's an ancient technology at this point but it's like one to one relationship with our readers it's like you subscribe to us we're going to email you the story we want you to read because we know it'll get delivered but email is changing as well and also being an algorithmified and AIified and all of that so well and how it is scary how big of a market is gmail right gmail's i don't know offhand but it's got to be high double digits or mid double digits in terms of what their market share is for email clients.

And like, they, every couple of years, they fuck with that thing. And they're like, now it, you know, who's to say? Now we're going to put you in the trash can. Yeah, exactly. Or now you're in the back. Or now AI is summarizing the whole thing. Or, hey, we Google have decided you don't need email anymore. We're going to have it work this way.

And the convertibility is already a problem. You know, we had a clip go pretty significantly viral of our interview with Vivian Wilson a couple years ago, a couple weeks ago, excuse me, where she was bullying me. It was a very funny clip. Um, but the, it's not like it was driving people to the YouTube video, right? Or to Apple podcasts. I like, know enough of the numbers to know. People watched it there and they were like, oh, that's funny. So it created awareness. But, um, you know, a big part of my income's live touring. Um, very hard to get the word out about that on the platforms where people currently, you're convincing me I need to start a mailing list. I don't mean to turn this into workshopping my

My hope now, my last hope is like group texts, where I'm just like, maybe people will share our articles in group text. Like I talk about that a lot where I'm like, if you think this is funny, send it to your friends. Like back to like word, word of mouth type stuff. Like, I don't know if that's scalable, but it does feel like a lot of our new subscribers say like my friend told me about you. Yeah. Like directly said, check this out. which is such a I mean it's it's awesome because that's like the best type of referral that you can get but it's also like is that sustainable is that scalable like how does one rely on just I mean it I don't think we talk often enough first of all about how like group text or texting period is like the most important form of social media like that's why all the companies like meta like jammed it into every product because they want a little piece of the I message. like pie but like that is still the most that is the real reason people check their phones hundreds

of times a day is not for instagram it's for like did i get a text um and the good thing about texting is it is truly person to person unless you're apart from these like giant telegram groups or whatever um it it like human social what i come back to when i get to this level is i'm like humans do still exist in the real world right we don't literally exist on the computer or the phone. We are walking around. We do have friends. We do have personal relationships.

We need to eat and we want to leave the house occasionally. And like that exists regardless of the algorithms. And that's like what's important about texting to a certain extent. It's also what's important about like me having like a live business as a, you know, I travel around the country to see people in person. This is like why we threw a party and it's like it makes no financial sense. for us to throw a party, it's like, costs us money to rent a place and, like, have this. And I don't know.

I don't know how to do a live business, like live events business. So it's like we paid for all the booze. Like, we didn't want to charge people. That's correct. That's correct. It's fun. It's fun. But like, then people show up and you're like, oh, like, you do exist and you do like us and

you do want to see us. And it's awesome. It's like, it's so good for our vibes, first of all. But also just like, I'm like my mental health, frankly. I'm like, people think this is sick. Yeah. You know, I'm not proud to say so, but I need constant stimulation or I get bored. Something to look at, a podcast to listen to, a little tasty treat here or there.

I have a million ways to jangle the shiny keys of life in front of my face and to stay entertained and stimulated. But I can't always say the same thing for my dog. That's why I do everything I can to make sure my pup isn't bored. I mean, she's a cattle dog. She needs a lot of stimulation. okay, and the number one place to do this is meal time, because that's when she perks up. I mean, would you want to eat the same thing every single day for every single meal? No, and neither does she.

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Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to MySkylight.com slash factually. Go to my skylight.com slash factually for $30 off your 15-inch calendar. That is, M-Y-S-K-Y-L-G-H-T dot com slash factually. That's the same charge that I get out of touring, like after every single one of my stand-up shows, I do a meet and greet after every single show and anybody who wants to can shake my hand, get a photo, whatever, because that's genuinely like kind of the most important part to me is like, okay, real people in the real world, remember me, saw something I did, remembered it, bought a ticket, came out and, you know, and like that's an important relationship that, like, I want to reinforce that goes beyond like, audience acquisition or top of the funnel or like Algo, et cetera, do you think there's any chance that like the, the slop is going to push people more towards that? I've already found myself going like when I want to learn about something. It used to be if I want to learn something now go on the internet or go on YouTube. And now genuinely, I'm like, I think the best thing to do

is buy a book. Like it's actually hard to find good information on the internet at all anymore. and like the old ways are starting to seem better to me. I do agree with that. I wonder if, well, I think you probably are in the minority where it's like, yes, I'm going to go to the library to learn about. I'm sure I am. But I do think. But so were people before the internet, not that many people want to the library, you know.

Yeah, that's true. And I think also, I mean, talk a lot about the media business because that's what I'm in. but it's like there has never been really an audience problem. It's like if you did good work, people would read it. And that number would fluctuate. It's like, you know, millions of people every month read our articles advice. And when someone on my team, like, if they were upset, like, oh, things aren't going well, I'll be like, let's look at your traffic, which is not something you should say to a journalist,

but it's like, let's pull it up. Let's look at it. And they're like, oh, like, but this story only did like 60,000 pages. views or something. And I'm like 60,000 people fills up a football stadium. Like those 60,000 people read your article. That's a lot of people. It's just been a matter of like so many media businesses have been venture capital funded. They've been taken over by private equity. They need to return like some huge amount on their investment. And for us and for so many people who have struck out on their own, it's like, well, the infrastructure to run this isn't expensive. Like, you know, we pay

essentially like 3% of our subscriptions on our website costs. It's like there's not a lot that goes into like publishing content on the internet. If you can get some small fraction of those people to directly support you, which I know is not a new business model, it's how media has been funded for a long time. It's like you can make it work, but you can't make it work if you have super expensive office if you're flying all over the world for like whatever reason to go to a bunch of conferences if you like are just wasting money on a bunch of shit and like that's how so much of our media has been run for a really long time it's like there's tons of like middle managers there's like

it's just like a big complicated all these companies are very big and complicated yeah and i think that there is an opportunity for people to like strip things back down to the bare minimum and still have a huge impact and still reach a lot of people, but not have to be part of like the pretty like wasteful ecosystem. And I don't know what that looks like on the back end, but I think it is possible. You know, I agree with you. I also will say, I don't want to defend these companies, but like, if you go back 30 years, the reason those companies were so big and wasteful was they were making so much money.

Like a company like Time Life or whatever, if you like read anything about like that kind of magazine. They're just making magazines and sending them out in the mail, but they're like, you know, throwing lavish parties and like sending photographers around the world. And, you know, like, and they're doing it because they're making so much money they can because it's like a large business, you know? Like, uh, and,

and now like it seems ridiculous because there's less money in media period. You know, like, oh, well, let's be super, super, super lean and you can make it work. Um, is it's also a retreat, right? Like, yeah, I can make something that, you know, my perennial frustration is, yes, I can make something that I like every single week and put it out to the public and like find the right business model to make that work. But I used to have a couple hundred thousand dollars an episode and I could hire a hundred people and we could make something really good.

And like, was that some of that money wasted? And like you didn't have to do everything yourself and like hustle and be like a jack of all trade. Yeah. And was some of that money wasted? Yes. But, like, it also made some stuff that was super sick. And, you know, was it wasted by, you know, are there showrunners who waste money, you know, needlessly, totally?

But at least they're doing so in the name of art on a, at least, you know, ostensibly, you know. I do agree with that. I think, like, a little, I think it shouldn't have to be the case that in order to, like, make any of this stuff work and be sustainable for people to have jobs and live, you should. shouldn't have to strip everything out of it. You should be able to like go out to dinner with your team from time to time. It's like, you know, things like this. You should be able to like buy a new computer and stuff like that. Like there was a period of advice where like I was working on like a four year old computer and it was like, well, we can't, we can't get a new one now. I was like, okay, I see. Things are going well. I was actually in the office in Venice when our coffee machine

got repossessed. I was like, it seems seems like things are not. going super well. Maybe I'll start my own thing that doesn't have a coffee machine on loan. Like, what kind of credit are they? What kind of coffee machine is this? It was a super fancy coffee machine touchscreen. Like they had a service contract for it and stuff like that. So, you know, regular, I make cold brew myself now. Sure. Like happy with it. But you asked this question quite a while ago, but I just now thought, I think that people are going back to print in some way. It's like every magazine got rid of their magazine, every like newspaper got rid of their daily newspaper and things like that. And you see places like The Onion have brought their newspaper back. I know

that's a one-off and that they have people who really know what they're doing, running it at the moment. But I do think that we're like we as a society are looking for alternatives to the algorithmic distribution system. And it's like sending stuff in the mail to people is a potential avenue. like printing books, putting them in stores and other potential avenue. And I think that, I think you're going to see more of that. And I think it's cool. Like, I think there's, we're starting to see like a return to like physical media. Yeah, certainly what I've been doing.

I'm like, have more magazine subscriptions right now. Like I wanted to read Wired's coverage. And I was like, fuck it. I'll get the monthly magazine. Like, yeah, it's not more expensive, really than the digital version. Like maybe a couple bucks more. I'm like, then I get a pretty thing in the mail. Like, yeah, that's nice.

Yeah, you take it to the beach and if it gets wet, it's like, okay. I'm not shitting you. I brought a copy of Consumer Reports, the magazine that my parents got the whole time I was a kid. And, you know, I got a subscription a couple years ago because you were buying a bunch of stuff for the new house. And it was like, I was feeling like, oh, I'm going to be real parental. I'll get a consumer report subscription. First of all, the very first issue I got, it told me about a recall of a giant switch that was attached to my AC unit. and it could have caused a fire.

So it, like, helped me. But I've maintained the subscription because it's not expensive. And I brought it to a picnic. And a bunch of my friends, they were like, why'd you bring a magazine? And then five minutes later, they were ooing and awing over it.

They were like, oh, my God. Like, the best cars of 2025. Oh, I'm going to subscribe to this. Like, just the novelty of, like, seeing a layout of information on a page was remarkable to them. Consumer reports rocks. Like, it's been around for a long time. It's a nonprofit, I believe.

Yeah. They also do a lot of, like, well, lobbying is the correct word, but like the good kind. Yeah. For like consumer rights and for rights to repair and things like that. And then also, they're a really interesting case because the rise of like affiliate content on the internet where it's like, oh, like use my link and buy this on Amazon and I'll get a kickback from it has led to like some of the most garbage like product recommendations that exist. You know, just like every single publication that exists on the internet has started being like, buy this charging cable and we'll get 17 cents. And it's like, consumer reports have stayed like pretty good for decades in terms of actually recommending and testing the products that they do. Yeah.

They also buy all of the products that they review where it later on it just like given to them. And then, so I think that's, I think that's cool. It's cool about you subscribe to the consumer report. You know what? Thank you. And that's why I brought you on was to tell me this. But, like, you know, I've been more into analog media lately. I just went to, like, a big vinyl record convention this weekend in L.A.

I'm taking a film photography class. I'm going to go literally later tonight, go, like, make prints for the first time. And I got into film as well. Yeah. Huge film fan at the moment. I'm tickled by the fact. Thank you. I'm tickled by the fact that, like, you know, I had a little camera.

It opened a little door. It changed a chemical on a little piece of paper, a little piece of plastic film. And then I shone some light threw it onto a thing. and then it made one of something. And like that doesn't, the uniqueness of physical objects, the fact that like it's non-transmissible, that like it is a single object

that's different from even another print I would make is like the thing that I'm tripping out over and the thing that I'm sort of like aesthetically enjoying. I, it's, that's still a very precious thing. I don't know if people get like pushed back to that. But it just seems like, everything that was good and revelatory to me about digital culture, about digital media, about the potential of the internet as like an information source is almost completely

been bled out with the exception of like your work and, you know, a couple other people that I like. It's like hard to, the amount of drek out there. And also as the platforms have consolidated. So now there's only five websites to go to. And those websites, are prioritizing, not things made by people. It's just, it, it, you remember an app called Binky? Have you ever heard of this app? Don't remember Binky, no. There was an app called Binky that was a parody of Instagram, and basically all it did was

take like the headlines, like the photos and titles of random Wikipedia pages and just let you scroll by those and it let you pull to refresh. That's really good. And the idea was, if you don't want to look at Instagram, but you feel the compulsion, you can just do that. And I literally would do it for a while. I'd be like in an airport security line being like, oh, Buckminster Fuller, dog, egg salad, right? And look at the image.

I'm like, oh, there's a funny little picture. That's what all of the, it was a parody at the time. Right, right. That's what they feel like now. There's nothing there for me. I think that we went like, I don't know if I'm talking about everyone, but myself went like, I'm like, yeah, technology. I'm going to do everything. I'm going to do like the most that you can do with technology.

Like I'm going to be on every internet forum. I'm going to have a Reddit account. I'm in the second a new social media platform launches I'm going to sign up for it I'm going to post and one I think that gets very exhausting very quickly and two I think that over time we've realized like this is this is quite bad for us it's bad for our mental health it's bad for our sociability it's bad for all this and so I think everyone starts to find their thing that they're going to pull back from and for me it also was a film photography because I I was realizing that I was taking out my iPhone on trips and I was taking like 400 pictures of the exact same thing and then like never looking at it ever again. Yeah. And I was like, cool.

Like, why did I do that? These pictures suck. And now I'm like, I'll bring my camera. I'll take like a couple pictures. And then I'll develop them like a few weeks or months later. And then I'll like remember that time that I had and it was nice. And like my favorite thing to say now when I take pictures of my friends and you can use this if you want is take the picture.

you'll see that in three to six months like when I get around to developing this but it is cool and I think that I think that you start having grown up with the internet largely like I got dial up when I was like 12 or something 11 like I don't know

I was on like old AOL chat rooms like as a child and so I saw like this whole evolution of technology over time, and so did you. And I feel like I was like, yeah, this is cool. Like, I can talk to my friends. They're in Australia, and I play video games with them over the internet. And, like, that was really awesome.

But then I realized, like, whoa, like, some of this is good and some of this is bad. And I feel like personally I'm starting to pick out, like, here's how I like to spend my time online. And here are things that are better done the old way, which is like reading books, taking photos, whatever. And hopefully... Hopefully other people will realize that's possible as well and will, like, find their things that are not just, like, scrolling the algorithm at all time. I mean, the hope is that I guess, I guess all I can hope is that things get bad enough that more people do that, right?

That, like, we'll start to see the internet as, like, a casino, right? Where, you know, you go by, you go by Mohican Son or Yamava or whatever, and you're like, oof, I'm glad that's not my thing. You know, there are people in there. God love them or maybe they go for a weekend they have a nice time but also I know there's people who go there every day

and I feel bad for them but like I'm gonna go do something else you know maybe maybe the internet will become that bad that like it pushes more people away you know but that's like a dark thought that I have

because it used to be the most exciting thing in my life used to be the most exciting like innovation right it's a bummer What has happened? It's a bummer. And there's so many people doing cool things and, like, you know, sort of resisting the tech oligarchs and the big tech companies and building, like, cooler, indie, small, you know,

companies and things like that. Thank you. But, like, as we've written more and more about the internet, more people start reading our stuff and then they send us tips, they're like, oh, I work at this big tech company and, like, something very bad is happening. like we're draining the blood of children and drinking it at night or whatever. And I'll be like, oh, I wanted to write about like this cool company that was like doing a cool thing. And then then someone will like hit me up on signal and be like, here's something horrible happening.

That's very urgent. And in my mind, I'm like, ah, like it's really important that people know about this thing because like when you do a good article about like, you know, a surveillance firm overreaching or about ice raids or whatever. Like, we do a lot of articles that end up having some sort of impact and, like, that company stops doing that or, like, Congress starts an investigation or a state passes a law or something like that. And that's very cool to see that happen. But I do think that our website ends up being, like, pretty dystopian. Even though we live in very dystopian times. But there are, like, really cool distributed movements, like, I don't know, like nonprofits doing cool stuff. And it's like, I would like to spend more time lifting that work up. It's just a matter of like finding enough hours in the day. I know what you're talking about. Like, do you know Andy Bayo? Yes, he's amazing. He's, I've read his blog Waxy.org. He also organized the XOXO Festival for many years. Incredible guy. Incredible internet culture guy. And I've read him literally for 20 years and he just has a link blog on the side of his site and he posts like cool stuff he finds. And I just think about

him. He used to just, it was cool thing, cool thing, cool thing. And now it's like cool thing, thing awful thing cool thing you know and he's just posting as he feels like it but like that transition where it it used to be turn on your computer and go delight yourself with something a cool human is doing that you never even thought was possible and now it's like I turn on the computer and I either go look at shit that makes me feel bad or I go read about why the internet is making me feel so bad it's a it's a bumper and they're like I got to turn it off and read a book You mentioned ice raids. I just want to talk about another big thread in your coverage that has been really

invaluable is how much you guys cover surveillance, specifically government surveillance. And just like what has jumped out to you about that dystopian piece of the internet? Yeah, we've been writing a lot about a company called Flock lately, which is they make automated license plate readers. And so these are cameras that detect every time a car drives by them. take a picture and they basically like document the time and place of it and flock started by going to like all these small communities around America saying like you have a stolen car problem like we take pictures will help you find recover stolen cars and seemingly it's like pretty good at that but they

basically went from like city to city got a lot of people to sign up like a lot of different towns to sign up and they can contribute that information into what's known as flux national network. And so suddenly you have like, I don't know, Columbus, Ohio has its own little network, but then they're sharing information with Chicago, sharing information with Detroit, sharing information like all around the country. And like before you know it, there's a national network where you pretty much like can't drive in the United States without your whereabouts being known. Because they're just, they've got cameras, they're scanning license plates, like the makes of cars or whatever. And yeah, they're just tracking people wherever they go. Yeah. And it's like if you drove

across the country, you would drive through like tons of towns that have them. And so, you know, if, and cops have access to this system. And so we learned that, uh, local cops were giving access to their, in some cases, access to their accounts to cousin board patrol or ice and ice doesn't have a contract with flock uh custom the board patrol didn't have a contract with flock although recently they have got access to flock and then minutes before we recorded this we did an article and flock said that they shut off access to this but basically uh this technology is being deployed all over the country and it was made for one purpose theoretically which is like recover stolen cars and now it has been used by

you know the federal government to look for undocumented immigrants and in some cases illegally because some some states don't allow the use of this technology for the purposes of immigration enforcement and so that's been like a quite a like a depressing thread to follow but I think it's been in I'm very interested in like how surveillance technology proliferates around the country and so that was a really interesting one where it was like, oh, like, just a few years ago, they were only in a few towns, and now they're, like, in thousands of towns. So following that sort of arc of, like, how does a technology become something

that is, like, intended for one purpose, but then used for something totally different. And the only thing stopping the government from getting that information is either the government not asking or the company refusing, right? Like, I think about how often, like, the FBI has, like, asked Apple to crack their encryption for them. And Apple is big and powerful enough of a company with enough of a genuine commitment to security. They have enough, I assume, real security people on staff to go, no, we won't do that.

We're creating like a real security products to a degree that I'm still confident, you know, in like the encryption on my iPhone, right? I know enough to be. But like when we have a government that doesn't give a shit about any of that, also doesn't give a shit about the law and won't be prosecuted. and a company with just a little bit less of a commitment, which Apple could have, like, you know, let's check back in in six months to a year, right?

They're already given Trump, like, you know, glass statues in his office. Yeah, there's nothing to stop, like, a company's product being a de facto government surveillance network. Yeah, it's been really interesting the role that private companies play in this. Not speaking specifically about flock, But my colleague Joseph Cox writes a lot about like social media monitoring companies.

And some of them have been like compiling information, like these different data brokers and things like that. Like they'll compile information that's like hacked and they'll just like use it to make dossiers of people and things like that. And then police can buy access to that tool that like a private company is selling. And normally like the police would need a warrant to get a lot of this information. or to do like a specific type of surveillance on their own but because they are buying access to a private tool that that private company like does the surveillance for them and therefore it's like

an end around the fourth amendment it's like it's pretty wild and this has happened like increasingly where uh you know the police might not be allowed to do something on their own and this is like assuming that we still respect the rule of law and things like getting warrants etc but like but they're like oh well it's not us doing it it's this company and therefore we just do it and that's held up in court well i mean there's there's been a lot of court cases and like sure they sort of have to like work their way up like there's currently a court case in virginia beach about flock where there's this guy who has there's a flock camera like he lives in a cul-de-sac and he can't leave his house without driving by a flock camera and so he sued the city and

Flock got added as like a defendant in this lawsuit about whether they're allowed to have this because you can you can have like a camera in public there's no like expectation of privacy so for the same reason with our film cameras we can go take a photo of somebody in the park and might be rude but it's not illegal because they're in public and so is the camera and that's like a well established legal principle right and so but by now the question is like can you have 80,000 cameras on 80,000 street. corners that are always connected to the internet and talk to each other to like do this and so this case was not thrown out by a judge like it has been it's going to

the next step basically which is like the judge found that perhaps the cops should be getting warrant for this sort of search and that that would be like a really huge change because we've been getting records lately like we file a lot of public record requests and get back information and like there's tens of thousands of well I don't know how many but there's thousands and thousands of searches every month done by police all over the country almost none of them with a warrant and so if if this court case goes through like maybe things would change and so there are there are court cases it's just they take often years to like work their way up because a lot of them are usually not that high profile like usually it's some usually it's like someone

who's been arrested for a crime challenging it in some way and so you know that you either rely on like the electronic frontier foundation or the ACLU or like one of these non-profits to represent you pro bono and it can sometimes take years to get sort of like an answer on this stuff insane so if you're a undocumented immigrant or someone who is accused of being an undocumented immigrant like the ice goes to the police department looks in this like like car tracking database. There's like, oh,

we know everywhere that they've been for the last, uh, for the last like year or so. If you know their license plate, yeah. Um, and so,

and what we know is like, uh, the federal government has been doing a lot of data sharing from within different agencies. And so they're marrying like IRS data with like DHS immigration data and like employment data and like combining it all. And that, that's,

that was like a huge part. of sort of like what Doge was sort of doing in the early days of this administration all of several months ago. And there was a lot of reporting on it, but there was so much reporting focused on like the destruction of the federal government, federal bureaucracy and all these people being laid off. But like a lot of the data silos have been knocked down by this administration. And that is really scary because a lot of these data silos existed where it's like if you're an undocumented immigrant, you can send your kid to school because we want kids to go to school and things like that. And that information won't be shared. And like increasingly the administration

is trying to get data that like for law enforcement purposes that they couldn't previously use for law enforcement purposes. Yeah, like the silos were inefficient, but they were also like designed to keep the data separate so that you couldn't track someone throughout the United States so that there was. Or so like an undocumented immigrant could like pay taxes, for example. And like so then the U.S. is getting revenue. But now, you know, they're trying. I think they did. I haven't been following super closely, unfortunately.

But I think now different parts of federal law enforcement can get information from the IRS. And that wasn't the case for a long time. Or from like Social Security Department from Department of Education, et cetera. And so that's been a big, that's been a big part of our reporting focus as well. It's just like, how does, how is information shared? Well, that's, it's surveillance and privacy focused. Like anything to do with, you know, government overreach, that sort of thing. How tech companies are helping the government.

You know what I just learned through my own random research the other day? I was just thinking about like when I was 18 and I had to sign up for selective service for the draft. And I just remember being like, I don't want to go to Vietnam. Do I have to do this? You know, but I did it, right? you're supposed to. And they're just like, let me go look at whatever website that is. How do you do it?

It's just a little form. There's a PDF who has to sign up. And I go through and it says citizens, immigrants, and undocumented immigrants are required by law to sign up for the draft. Isn't that insane? I had no idea. I had no idea. I don't, I'd never see that information anywhere else.

Well, that's the thing is that we have asked undocumented immigrants to like interact with the system. Right. And like a lot of them have. because it, you know, in some states, you can get a driver's license if you're an undocumented immigrant. Yeah. We ask them to send their kids to school because we want educated kids like this. I mean, I know undocumented immigrants who came to this country when they were one.

They went to an American school. They grew up and, you know, their dreamer status during the Obama years. And so, yeah, why wouldn't want to say, okay, yeah, sure, the government told me to sign up for the thing. I'll do it. I'll pay my taxes. Like, yeah, they're going to be a different databases. It's going to happen. Exactly.

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know if they're grabbing information from the selective services. I would bet that they are. I would bet that they are. Well, and all that was was a database of, like, I live here, and here's how old I am, so that if there's a draft, that's where they go both. That's the entire point.

I remember signing up for it being like, I don't want to do this and being told, it's just a database of addresses. I mean, I did it in my cafeteria in high school. There was, like, a person there being, like, they had a table. And it was, like, they had a table where they were recruiting from the Army at, like, one table.

And then the other was, like, This is for people who have to sign up for the selective service because you have to do it. But like, you don't want to go to Afghanistan. So it feels like, I mean, why would people engage with these systems if, A, the silos are being knocked down. They're using to persecute people. But then also, if we're being surveilled at every moment, it's like we're moving from an information economy where it's like, oh, yeah, sign up for this thing. pay your taxes. You want to get a social security number.

It'll pay you back later to the government is conspiring with private companies to follow you wherever you go. And the fact that this is being put into place by people who sort of like claim to care about freedom in some abstract sense. I'm like, I think you're pulling us towards like a Neil Stevenson novel, like level of ubiquitous surveillance is it's really stunning how quickly we're getting there. Yeah, I feel like we're not getting a lot of the, like, benefits, like the efficiencies of surveillance either. Like, the only thing I can think of is, like, I have global entry.

And now when I come back, like, I don't even take my passport out of my pocket because the facial recognition recognizing me from, like, really far away. And I'm like, this is really creepy. As a tech reporter, I really hate this. I don't like it. I also remember waiting in a customs line for a long time in the past. And it's like, kind of nice, kind of nice. Don't like it conceptually, but kind of nice. But we have, like, all of these companies surveilling us.

We have all the government surveilling us. But I feel like we're not getting the, like, you walk into a store and you don't, I don't know, like, I'm not getting the, like, sci-fi. Your life is so much easier because, like, you don't have to, like, pull out your wallet anymore. When I go to, I see these mainly at sports arenas, you go to the concessions counter where you just grab a drink and walk out. but the experience of doing that is so confusing and dislocating for people and they have to have someone there. They always have like a lot of people working it

because it doesn't work super well. They're like, no, no, no, you don't pay. Well, okay, you have to show us your ID if you're getting beer. No, no, no. Just, and now, well, you have to scan your phone there or whatever. It's like, and so you have people milling about

and bumping into each other. And nobody likes it. No one's like, this is an improvement over the 50s. where like I just wait in a little line and I gave somebody a nickel and I got my thing. Like what is the,

uh, sometimes I hand someone cash and I'm like, what an incredible convenience that I didn't need to pull. There's nothing digital involved. I just gave you a. I sometimes feel bad about it too, though, because I'm like, oh, now they have to like make change.

They have to do, they have to like do some math on my behalf versus just like the tap to pay or whatever. And it's like, um, you know, cash is very important. It is like, I don't like that we've gone away from it in so many places.

We're like, we're a cashless place. You can't use that here, which I always thought was illegal, but now it seems like so many places do it. And we just don't care. It's illegal. It's illegal in a lot of places. I remember it used to be when I went back to New York. Like, L.A. went very cashless. I'm going to go back to New York.

And that was like the city of cash. And I would always make sure I got a lot of cash. And that has even changed in the last couple years. Like it's all the bodegas, you know, have the little stripe thing. Yeah, they have the tip thing. now too, which is fine. I'll take the bodega guy. Yeah, no, I will too, but I was like, I'm just buying a snapple.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. How is it for your mental health, you know, tracking this slide into this dystopian world? I've been doing it now for like almost 15 years as it's just been a tech reporter and I feel like I've been writing about kind of the same things, obviously to like a different degree. But there was never a period where I was writing, like, here's the cool new app update that, like, adds a new feature to Facebook or whatever. Like, I was always kind of writing, like, here's the new privacy features on the iPhone or like, here's Facebook is not doing a good job with hate speech, which it never has. And so it's kind of the only thing that I know.

I would like to know what it would be like if I logged off for like an extended period of time. but I love what I do and I think it's like I feel like I have different parts of my brain where it's like okay I'm going to like dive into this AI slop hellscape and scroll through it for a long time and feel like really bad and then I'm going to like not look at a screen for the entire evening I'm going to go surfing I'm going to go for a run I'm going to go for a hike or whatever like take some film photography of your friends although I mean I've had you know if we're doing a confessional here Yeah, it's like I've had like some severe like anxiety and panic attack problems and they, they were way worse like, you know, five, six years ago.

I think when I was like mainlining the internet without these outlets, like I really very purposefully was like, I need to get into surfing because you can't bring a phone out there and I can't see it. And I feel like that has been like so good for my mental health to be able to have these like super specific. like log off periods and I don't know I don't know what was causing the anxiety but I do know that like as I started consciously not mainlining the internet it was better yeah no I've for me the big flip was the pandemic was uh you know when I was younger the screen was a place of like freedom of possibility of creativity um uh and of relaxation a lot of the time and then after being cooped up inside and I was show running a television show and like being forcing myself to work and also like mainlining the internet it's now I'm now just aware oh screen feel

bad yeah it's made me stop enjoying video games as much as I used to unfortunately and things that I used to really enjoy and and like it's harder for me to like watch a movie at home which is a real form of art I'd like to engage with but um yeah it just switched it it like became a source of anxiety in my life and now like, oh, 3D, real world. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's that game, like, time to log off from bad screen, go to good screen. Yeah. You know, when you're finished working and you're like, oh, I can scroll my phone now.

It's like, now they're kind of both the bad screen. Yeah. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on and talking to us about it. Give us the big plug. I mean, I can't imagine people aren't going to want to sign a metric. Yeah. Yeah, so we're at 404Media.co. We're a reader-supported publication, so we need subscribers.

So please check us out. We're also on YouTube as 404 Media. Please, please come check us out. We talk about this stuff. And you know what? Can I just say, I'm sorry, because we ended on like a down note about screens and the internet. And I feel like we shouldn't because what you guys do is like one of those human places

on the internet that like keeps me coming. back. And when I engage with your work, like, I am energized. And you do post a lot of positive stuff about, uh, you post a lot of cool science stories. You do post stories about like creative things that people are doing. Um, and so, do some like shit posting, like old school blogging that feels like it doesn't super exist on the internet anymore outside of like defector and aftermath and remap and these, you know, worker own places. Because so many places have been sort of chasing like SEO and things like that. But like, it's a, it's a place to have fun on the internet. We're, like, so thankful that we've been able to do this and that we've had so many people, um, you know,

support us and we've been able to, like, create our own jobs and it's awesome. Yeah. And that is a thing that the internet promised us. Uh, and to see you guys do it and like, you know, create your patch of earth there, um, where when I go to your site, like, I am excited, uh, about, like, Despite the, like, talking about, like, a lot of things that are bad about digital technology, you're doing it in such a fun way, in an engaging way. It really is like a bright spot. And it's something that makes me more optimistic, even as you're talking about stuff that makes me more pessimistic.

So I really hope people check it out and support. Yeah. No, thank you so much for having me. And I feel the same about your podcast. So thank you. Oh, that's really nice. Thank you. Well, thank you once again to Jason for coming on the show.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Please support 404 Media. and consider supporting this show. If you want to do so, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Once again, five bucks a month, every episode of this show ad-free.

For 15 bucks a month, I'll read your name in the credits. This week I want to thank Nick Wagner, Jake Callan, hey, look a distraction, Uber Elder, Avaro Eggburger. You know what?

Let me choose some random people from the middle of the list. I also want to thank Danielle Morgan, Solar Yeti, Brennan, Peterman, Ultrazar, and God King, Engineer of Beaver Kind. Thank you so much,

God King Engineer of Beaverkind. If you want me to read your name or silly username at the end of the show, once again, that URL, Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Of course, I want to thank my producer, Sam Rodman and Tony Wilson.

Everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible, thank you so much for listening. And we'll see you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum podcast. I'm Tignotaro. I'm May Martin. And I'm Fitton.

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