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- [00:00]
Jason Kebler
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's that time of year we think about people we're thankful for. Here at 404 Media, we're thankful for all our subscribers and listeners and the people who have helped us start and make a sustainable new thing this month. While you're thinking about what you're thankful for, take a moment to think inward and thank yourself. Sometimes it's hard to remind ourselves we're all trying our best in a crazy world and you can learn how to better process that world with therapy. Starting therapy has helped me understand what I can control and what I can't, taught me positive coping skills, how to set boundaries and how to deal with acute anxiety and more generally, just take on the world. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com 404 Media today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H L P.com 404Media.
- [01:18]
Joseph
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist family company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content@404Media co. I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are 404Media co founders Sam Cole.
- [01:49]
Sam Cole
Howdy.
- [01:50]
Joseph
Emmanuel Mayberg.
- [01:52]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Hello.
- [01:52]
Joseph
And Jason Kebler.
- [01:55]
Jason Kebler
Hello.
- [01:57]
Joseph
All right, this is going to be a slightly different episode. We're going to. Usually we talk about free stories each week, right. We're going to open with one and then we're going to talk about something that maybe Jason is still going to write about, but hasn't yet. It's about the big migration to Bluesky. So I guess. Are you writing about that, Jason?
- [02:18]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, probably. It might even be out by the time this is published. Who knows?
- [02:23]
Joseph
Okay, I guess we'll see. And I'll add some issues.
- [02:25]
Jason Kebler
We'll see.
- [02:26]
Joseph
As for the first story, this is one I wrote. Apple quietly introduced iPhone reboot code, which is locking out cops. I guess I'll start with what Apple has done and then maybe Jason has some questions for me. But as the headline suggests Apple has introduced this feature, an undocumented feature. I'll say. Like there isn't like a blog post about it. There isn't anything really on Apple's website, but it appears to be called inactivity reboot or something like that. And in essence what happens is if an iPhone has not been unlocked for around three or four days, it will reboot itself. And now you may be thinking, okay, why the hell would I care about that? Also, I don't know, maybe I have an alarm to go to the airport and it's going to ruin my alarm or something like that. The point is, it seems to make the phone more secure against forensic equipment. Stuff like Reiki, stuff like Celebrate.
- [03:46]
Jason Kebler
So I want to talk about how cops get into phones like Celebrate and Grey Key are two of them, but there's two different modes. There's before first unlock and then after first unlock. Maybe that is like a good place to start here.
- [04:01]
Joseph
Yeah, that's fair. So after first unlock, AFU is as the name implies. Imagine a user has taken their iPhone, they've powered it on as they would normally, and they've unlocked it at some point during the day. That puts the phone into an AFU state. And obviously it's on a case by case basis, the operating system. The phone also applies to Google Android handsets as well. But broadly speaking, that makes it a bit easier for tools like Gray, Grey Key or Celebrate to get access to user data. You then have BFU before first unlock, which is basically when the user has not unlocked their phone. And you can imagine it's sort of the state a phone is in as soon as somebody turns it on. You know, if I turn on my iPad, for example, I can't use touch ID or anything like that to get into it. It always asks for the passcode. I haven't unencrypted that data or decrypted that data at any point. So that is a BFU state. And if you're a forensic investigator, you don't want a phone to be in a BFU state because it's going to be generally harder for you to actually get data out of there. Does that answer your question?
- [05:24]
Jason Kebler
It does. I think you've also reported recently on a few like leaked, I guess they're spreadsheets, but they're basically like what types of iPhones and what iOS can be unlocked before first unlock and after first unlock. And it's like some of these tools are able to are like not able to get into newer phones before first unlock. If they're updated or it takes longer or it's just like more difficult. Right, yeah.
- [06:01]
Joseph
And I mean, you're referring to some celebrate documents that we got a while.
- [06:06]
Jason Kebler
Ago you published a few months ago.
- [06:07]
Joseph
Yeah, yeah. This was back in July and I think the documents were from a few months before that. I think they were dated to April and there it says stuff like, oh, unlocking iOS 17.4 at the time was in research. And then actually shortly after we published that piece, some people leaked some other more updated Cellebrite documents and they showed that Cellebrite had caught up and it was able to unlock iOS 17.4 in an AFU state. Specifically, like you look at the spreadsheet and it says, yes, we can do it, but only an after first unlock. Which goes back to the point I said earlier about if you're a cop or forensic expert, you want in an AFU state. Because it seems, at least with these leaked cellebrite documents that we reported on a while back and have seen the newer ones, it's easier basically for them to do.
- [07:04]
Jason Kebler
Do you want to talk a little bit about how you first, like started reporting on this specific story? Because there's actually two articles, one based on a specific leaked cop document that you got, and then where they were sort of like theorizing what had happened and then you figured it out and published a second story explaining the whole situation.
- [07:25]
Joseph
Yeah. So I'll put this one in the show notes as well. I just didn't want to lead with it because it's not that we were wrong, it's the cops were wrong. I was just reporting what they were saying, but the headline was Police freak out at iPhones mysteriously rebooting themselves, Locking cops out. Okay, Sounds kind of straightforward. I got sent a document which is written by, it seems, law enforcement in Detroit, and they said that they had a bunch of iPhones ready to be forensically examined in their forensic laboratory or whatever. And they go in to do that and a bunch of them have like magically or mysteriously rebooted and they're like, what the hell? The phones weren't like this. Which is both way. It's very interesting to us and very, very concerning to them. They theorized that Apple had pushed an update to iOS 18 that was telling iOS 18 phones, like sending them a message to nearby phones saying, oh, reboot yourself. Almost like it was infecting or like poisoning other phones in the lab. That is a very interesting theory. Multiple people I spoke to said they didn't really put much weight into that theory. And then another leak I actually got later from somebody who works with Grakie said they. They doubt it as well. So basically the cops were like half right. They were right. Obviously the phones are rebooting because they can see it right in front of them. They were just wrong about how and why Exactly. Because it wasn't some sort of poisoning iOS 18 code that was infecting other devices. It was more. There's basically a timer counting down when a phone is on the most recent Apple operating system. And I should say that I published that first piece and then researchers very diligently start digging through what updates may have happened. And one found the inactivity reboot. I then spoke to a couple of others and then got a leak as well. And that's how we got to the ultimate answer. There's this undocumented feature and I'll just clarify. Apple hasn't given a statement on this. Obviously I'm talking to Apple, I'm trying to get a statement out of them, but they haven't confirmed it. Instead, I've spoken to three or four people about it who independently verified it.
- [10:06]
Jason Kebler
Do you think that we could. Can you safely say that this feature was added for the express purpose of preventing tools like Gray Key and cellebrite from breaking into phones, or is it a broader security mechanism, like. Obviously we probably can't say for sure, but I think. Does this seem like something that is targeted at the cops, or is it more of a broad security feature for its customers that has other implications like anti theft and things like that?
- [10:41]
Joseph
Yeah. Again, Apple isn't commenting, but I feel pretty confident in saying, at least in my own opinion, that it's the latter. I think that Apple takes a much more general approach to security and where they can introduce features that will impact lots of different parts or threats or that sort of thing. I mean, you can think about it sort of when they did that lockdown mode and that sort of restricts a lot of features on the phone. Some people will say that came in response to NSO malware being spread on iPhones and that sort of thing. I don't think so. I think it's broadened that. There's many more malware vendors and contractors and I think it's sort of here in that having a phone reboot after a certain period of time will also potentially stop data being extracted from phones that have been stolen, for example, just by normal thieves on the street. I don't think they're necessarily specifically going out and being like, we're Going to screw over Grey Key or we're going to screw over celebrate. I mean, the consequences, they definitely are, but I don't think, at least in my opinion, that they're doing that specifically for that. And I think you can look back at some earlier features where they've introduced new stuff like there was USB restricted mode quite a few years ago at this point and that made it so after a certain period of time you couldn't sort of make the phone interact with a computer. It basically became like a dumb charging cable so you couldn't plug it into these devices and that sort of thing. I see it sort of that in that context, you know.
- [12:29]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, I mean the cat and mouse game between Apple and I guess Google as well, but and other phone manufacturers, but especially Apple and Google and law enforcement and the government and hackers more broadly is super interesting. And it's something that you've been covering for a really long time. It's also something that, I mean the big sort of flash point was the San Bernardino shooting a long time ago. I mean it wasn't that long ago, but that was sort of a moment where there was a ton of pressure on Apple to put a back door into, you know, the suspected shooter's phones. Well, they were the actual shooters phones. And I feel like this is just my opinion, but I think that there's some truth to it. There was an ongoing court case between the Department of Justice and Apple and it was headed toward this like very important or what would have probably been a pretty important like court decision. And what happened instead is the Department of Justice and the FBI found another way to get into that phone. And I believe we still don't know, at least on the record, who did it.
- [13:38]
Joseph
Well, the FBI never confirmed it, but it's Azimuth Security, which is. I had one source I covered about Azimuth Security with our former colleague Lorenzo years ago and they're a super important, very, very small hacking shop that works with five eyes intelligence agencies and law enforcement. And then the Washington Post reported later that it was them that basically broke the San Bernardino phone.
- [14:02]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, yeah, I guess I bring it up because Apple has actually like there's kind of a symbiotic relationship between Apple and companies like Azimuth and Cellebrite and Grayshift where Apple will update iOS to not be as hackable, then they update their hacking tools to break into them. And in some ways this keeps some of the pressure off of Apple to have a formal backdoor into iOS or into the iPhone where Apple probably doesn't like the existence of these companies, but the fact that they do exist has taken a lot of pressure off of them, in my opinion. Like, can you talk a little bit about that?
- [14:48]
Joseph
I mean, I think that's a really, really good way of pulling it. It's similar to. I gave a talk recently at defcon and like there's the free options when you get data from companies, right? There's the front door and you sen send a search warrant or a court order to discord and it gives the user messages or something like that. At least when it comes to encrypted messaging services like Signal, you don't really want them doing that. Right. That would kind of suck. The other one is a backdoor, which you also don't really want for Signal. And to your point, you don't really want a backdoor in the iPhone because there's going to be all sorts of unintended consequences. Can that backdoor be protected? Would it be abused? Is it going to be available to non western law enforcement, all of that sort of thing. And the third option is basically what we have, which is hacking goes on. Apple and others try to stop it. The hacking companies get better and get workarounds and the cycle continues. And it's expensive and it's labor intensive, but that's better than having a back door, you know. And I think the way you put it, Jason, was really interesting in that the taking pressure off Apple. I haven't really thought about it that way before. That's, that's really, really interesting.
- [16:03]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just like if these tools didn't exist, we would probably be having the encryption debate constantly in the United States and it hasn't gone away entirely. But I think the fact that law enforcement can get into these, into most phones has made it so that there's not as much political pressure on Apple to introduce a full back door into, into the iPhone because that was something they were obsessed with for a while. There's like a huge, you know, history of going dark and just like this tension between law enforcement and technology creators and encryption providers and you still have some of that, especially worldwide. Like there's, there's been some attempts to force Apple and other companies to put a backdoor in, but it feels like the US Government has at least kind of pulled off of that for a while anyways. What do you think happens next? What is the ultimate impact of this new feature that you found?
- [17:06]
Joseph
Yeah, usually I would say, well, it'll just continue and the cycle of life carries on and people find exploits and they hack into iPhones and that sort of thing. And I do think that's the case and I do think that will continue. That being said, having a four day timer in the iPhone to reboot, to go into a state where the cops can't get in, that is dramatic for sure. You know, and I think what will happen practically is that, I mean of course maybe the gray keys and the celebrates of the world will try to find more technical solutions to get around that. I think it will probably change policy. I don't know, local, state, federal forensic laboratories where they say like we have three or four days to get into this phone and we need it to be stores correctly, we need to get it, we need to get it into a AFU state, we need to unlock it, something like that. Technically again you're going to need the tools to do that potentially. Maybe there will then be more pressure to on the individual suspects. Like you have a time, you have a deadline to unlock this phone for us and if you don't there's going to be a problem, you know, because it even got to the point where they started introducing face ID and touch id, right. You then have in the search warrants new, not new now, but at the time boilerplate language saying we can force you to put your finger on here like legally, you know, and I don't know, maybe they introduce more language that could do something about the timeline.
- [18:49]
Jason Kebler
You know, I think before we end this section, do we have a sense of how long it takes to break into a phone with a strong password that is updated? Like this isn't necessarily like a 10 second process. Like that's as we understand.
- [19:07]
Joseph
That's a fair point. Actually I don't have like modern or recent data on like how long it would take but it's interesting in that if that four day timer is counting down since it was unlocked before, if your brute forcing attempt or your unlocking attempt is going to take more than four days, are you just like also screwed there as well? It's not like oh, we can just keep the phone alive. It's like no, you have to basically get in there. I don't know. Yeah, it really depends on the passcode, you know, that sort of thing.
- [19:41]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, it's just because you can alter, not alter, but there's an option on the iPhone to instead of using a four or six number passcode, you can have an alphanumeric password and if it's a really long one that is by definition going to take longer to brute force, if that is how these tools are currently working. Which, you know, it's kind of hard to say, but that's an interesting, that's like a question I have essentially for sure.
- [20:10]
Joseph
I mean, hopefully we can get some clarity on that as well. All right, we'll leave that there and then when we come back after the break, we're going to talk about Blue Sky. We'll be right back after this.
- [20:33]
Jason Kebler
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- [24:47]
Joseph
Hackers and cybercriminals have always held this kind of special fascination. Obviously I can't tell you too much.
- [24:54]
Emmanuel Mayberg
About what I do.
- [24:55]
Joseph
It's a game who's the best hacker? And I was like, well this is child's play. I'm Dina Temple Reston and on the Click Here podcast you'll meet them and the people trying to stop them.
- [25:06]
Sam Cole
We're not afraid of the attack. We're afraid of the creativity and the intelligence of the human being behind it.
- [25:12]
Joseph
Click here Stories about the people making and breaking our digital World AI machines. Satellite engine ignition. Click here. And liftoff. Click here every Tuesday and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, and we are back. We're going to call this section the Big Blue Sky Migration. So what happened? What happened to Blue sky over the weekend? Did everybody get more followers? Is that what happened?
- [25:51]
Sam Cole
Did anything happen in the last week, like, anything big that would make something happen with social media? I don't know.
- [25:59]
Joseph
I mean, you can lay it out if you want. I mean, do you want to lay out the timeline? It's a very short timeline, but I.
- [26:06]
Sam Cole
Think I'll let Jason do it because I think he maybe has a different perspective. I mean, obviously, Trump won and Elon owns Twitter is kind of the very short version.
- [26:15]
Jason Kebler
So, yeah, the interesting thing to me is I haven't seen, like, a specific, like, call to action in the way that I have seen in the past when people have migrated off of Twitter to other platforms. I mean, I feel like it was kind of just like a some sort of, like, shared holy shit moment after Trump was elected, sort of like with the help of Elon Musk. But I don't know. Like, I don't. I didn't see some, like, amazing blog post that said, like, everyone needs to move to Blue sky now. It just seemed like people started doing it, and, like, now everyone is talking about it. But over the weekend, I was trying to figure out why people were moving to Blue Sky. And, I mean, the reason is Trump Elect, Trump's election, Elon Musk's, like, dominance over Twitter. I think also people are starting to get annoyed with threads for reasons we can possibly talk about. But it seemed like people were just, like, moving over very quickly over the weekend. And I got, like, 6,000 followers in two days over the weekend. Two and a half days, something like that. I was getting, like, hundreds of followers an hour, and I wasn't even doing anything. Like, I don't know, I just, like, was refreshing Blue Sky. And, you know, I don't say that to brag, although I do like my serotonin. My serotonin go way, like, way up. Dopamine, et cetera. Because I was like, wow, people following me. But it was more like, it feels like there's a critical mass on this social media network for, like, maybe the first time. But I don't know. Did anyone else. Was anyone else even excited about this, or is everyone just very mad at me for talking about it endlessly?
- [28:06]
Sam Cole
I'm, like, begrudgingly back posting again on Blue Sky. I just. I'm so tired of thinking about, like, which social network is the right one to be on. And I don't want to add another one to my list of things to check. Like, I have to stay on Twitter because we're journalists, we kind of need to be there. But now I guess everybody's on Blue Sky. Like, it just feels like another thing to check. So, like, that's. That's why I have an attitude about it, that people may be picking up on, that Jason's definitely picked up on, because I've told him up front, fuck Blue Sky. But, you know, it's like, it's not anything against the people moving there. It's just like, God, here we go again. And it's happened. It happened in, you know, every time there's, like, a major thing that pisses people off on Twitter, people are like, I'm goodbye to the hell site. And it's like, okay, see you in three days. Like, I don't know.
- [28:57]
Joseph
But this feels different. It definitely feels different in that the last time there was the. Well, there was an attempt at a big migration was, at least as I can remember, was when Musk originally bought Twitter. Right? And then there were the blog posts and there were the articles about, it's time to leave, we're gonna leave it. And, you know, nothing wrong with writing those. And I agree broadly, broadly with all of their points. It's just that sort of what you were getting at, Jason. This one felt more organic in that people weren't, like, talking about doing it, they just did it. And that's interesting, you know. Emmanuel, did you notice any uptick? And sort of. Were you already there or not?
- [29:38]
Emmanuel Mayberg
I am there and I definitely noticed the uptick. I think one reason that this wave seems to hold more than other ones, and definitely the reason I'm noticing it is the lists that people use now to kind of get up to speed are very useful. Right? Like, I mean, the most annoying thing for me about migrating to a new social network is reconstructing your feed and getting all the. The follows you want. And somebody, Many people have just created, like, list of people you should follow, and you can follow all of them with one click.
- [30:15]
Joseph
And I think. Starter packs.
- [30:16]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Yeah, yeah, the starter packs. And I think the reason we're seeing, like, so many, like, I've gotten a few thousand followers as well, and that's probably because I'm on, like, a couple of lists, and I think that's probably true for all of us. So that makes it. That makes it easy to get up to speed. And it makes it very useful. Just personally, I think maybe, I don't know, two years ago or around when Elon bought Twitter, there were a lot of takes and I think there was maybe one on Motherboard about how it's the end of the social media age and just from like the perspective of an individual user, that's where I'm at. I'm on all the networks and I look at all of them looking for stories. And that's something we were talking about this week. Like, okay, how do I get, like an interesting feed so I can find cool stories on Blue Sky? But I am not, I think, ever going to again be a person who is just like tweeting or skeeting my thoughts and feelings of what I'm doing throughout the day. Like, I think that I'm done with that forever. I share my stories, which I know is a very boring feed, so I don't begrudge anyone for not following me. And I go and I read as much as I can. Always. I'm on there all day looking for stuff, but I'm not interested in interacting that way. And I thought, like, we as a society were kind of moving away from that. And if anything, I mean, whatever, people should go wherever they're happy and like, do whatever they want. I don't judge you for, for tweeting or skating, but I thought we were moving towards like group chats and discord channels and comments on subscription websites, like four four media. Like, I love interacting there. If you email me, I'll email you back. If you comment on a story, I will respond to the comment. We love reading emails and comments you send us here on the podcast, but just like tweeting into the void, no, thank you. I don't care why you're doing it. Yeah.
- [32:30]
Jason Kebler
So there was in the aftermath of the election, there was like this really widespread take that the left needs a version of Joe Rogan, which I won't get into here, but it feels to me like this is that. But for social media, where people are saying, like, the left needs a version of Twitter now that Twitter is expressly owned by someone who may work in the Trump administration, who actively, you know, campaigned for Trump. You have also things like Truth Social and Parlor and Rumble and Gab, which are these specific right wing social media networks that, to be honest, I have more or less discounted over the last few years. You know, there was this whole time when people were saying, like, you know, don't amplify Nazis or don't amplify the Far right, blah, blah, blah. And like the effect of that was they formed their own social media networks and there's something called like Donald Win, which was, is like a Reddit replacement that happened after Reddit banned the Donald. And I think it's really hard to say what the impact of those specifically like right wing social media platforms are. But I did read or hear a take that I kind of agreed with. Where you have places like Gab and Truth Social where like absolutely batshit things happen and then you have like a right wing media ecosystem that picks and chooses things that like resonate there and then like brings them into something that's like more mainstream and then it's sort of like filtered through into like the public consciousness. And I'm not saying that Blue sky is like, is going to be that. I have no idea. But I do think something very interesting and extremely cringey happened, which is AOC was like, hey, I'm back on Blue sky. And she tweeted something and then CNN was like, here's what AOC said on Blue Sky. And it like filtered out of this specific like smaller social media network into like a larger context. And I don't know if that matters at all. But I think that the idea that I've seen where it's like social media is fractured in a big way and if you're just posting on these smaller platforms, it doesn't matter and you're just like talking to yourselves. I don't know if that's actually going to be true. I think that it does have the ability to like form larger talking points because that's, that's what conservatives have done for a long time and they've done it very successfully. I'm curious what you think about that.
- [35:27]
Joseph
I mean, I think that makes sense. Yeah, I think that it's probably going to branch out, you know, and you said this all fractured and decentralized and I guess Blue sky is the one. One at the moment. You, Jason, specifically previously thought that Mastodon was the one of the moment. What was the article you wrote a while back and were you wrong?
- [35:53]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, it was over a year ago. The title was Mastodon is the Good One. And I have a whole like spiel about it, which is I still post on Mastodon. I think Mastodon is good. I think the Fediverse is like interesting and like we are on it and I think that it's good to have decentralized social media that's portable. It obviously uses like, you know, the Fediverse platform, whereas Blue sky uses something called the AT protocol. And for a while they were not interoperable in any way. And now they are kind of interoperable, which I think is notable. But I guess I'll say is that, uh, the, the thing that should not win is threads. It's just like it's owned by Mark Zuckerberg. It is like a disastrous, like, like Meta is a disastrous company for many of the same reasons that Twitter is a disastrous company in my opinion. It like spreads disinformation in the same way it, you know, it deprioritizes links. It like doesn't want politics or news. And yet there's many, many people sort of defending threads as an alternative to Twitter. And I think that's like so stupid. I think it's like one of the stupidest things. I just, I have no patience for it.
- [37:14]
Joseph
Is it Fred's super aggressive moderation where we post one of our articles and it has a nipple in it and people get scared and it gets removed from Fred and they go home crying? Or is it like that its user base numbers are entirely infl. Because there's just ports all over from Instagram and they say, look how many hundreds of millions of users we got. Yeah, because you copied and pasted them. What is it exactly?
- [37:39]
Jason Kebler
Dude, it's all of those things. It's that, it's. I mean, it's the fact that it's like many of the people are like brain poisoned Silicon Valley, like rank and file defenders of like meta's practices and stuff. It's like the algorithm is super broken. It's not real time in any way, shape or form.
- [37:58]
Joseph
I always use as well.
- [38:00]
Jason Kebler
It's like Sam has the most interesting threads feeds like that I've ever heard about. And it's like, maybe Sam you can talk about like what you get on threads.
- [38:10]
Sam Cole
I mean, yeah, there's got to be a middle ground because threads is. Because threads is like you're kind of on threads if you're on Instagram. In a way. It's like, I think it's. They're kind of like almost because it's meta. But on Instagram I can see threads posts on my feed. So that's how I consume my, my threads intake. But the threads algorithm is so aggressively like for what it thinks my demographic is, which is middle aged white women who may or may not have children who are dealing with some kind of like serious mental or physical illness. And that's just all I see on my timeline. Emanuel's laughing really hard. It's like That's. I mean, that's definitely like an algorithmic niche that is very valuable to these social networks. So that's what I get all the time, is like, people who are, like, having, like, real serious crises with their children involved, and I'm like, go to the hospital or the police get off Threads. And then you get to the end of the. The story, the story time they're doing, and it's like it was kind of like the whole time, it was like a really boring story. And I'm like, my heart rate's up reading it. So Threads has an algorithm that's like, very much attacking me. And then Blue sky has like, no algorithm, right? So the chronological timeline and just like not having it feed me anything that's like, specifically relevant to me. It's just like, here's everyone you follow in a row. What they've said is also very chaotic to me and not. Not a useful way for me to look at, like, what's going on. Because people are just posting about, like, what they had for breakfast or like, whatever thought, whatever Margaret Atwood quote comes into their mind. It's like, okay, that's not really, like, something I want to use either. I kind of want to know what's, like, popular right now, or I guess there's a popular tab. But I want to know what's like kind of popping above the feed and like, getting attention as it's getting attention and not just like happening in the moment. I don't know. It's like, maybe I just need to spend more time in Blue sky and unplug my mind from the algorithm. Maybe I'm just getting out of the matrix. I don't know.
- [40:25]
Jason Kebler
Well, so what I was. I wrote my behind the Blog last week saying, like, I had no way of following the election because I could not find a good, like, real time, ish feed. It's like, Threads was useless. There wasn't that much happening on Blue Sky. And that was probably my fault because I wasn't following enough people on Blue Sky. But I guess, like, what I would say is in the last few days, Blue sky feels very usable to me as like a feed of news because I've added all these things and because people are like, actively posting there in a way that Twitter did used to feel like for me a long time ago. And I think Emmanuel is right that like, the social media age is kind of coming to an end. But. And I also think that something Joseph said is very smart, where you said, it's like, Threads is adding a Million people a day. Nominally, it's the number one app in the App Store, but it is, like, not clear to me that Threads has anything happening there. And what I mean by that is you're, like, forced to look at it on Instagram. It'll, like, it will inject Threads posts, and then if you want to look at them, you have to download the app. And so, like, how many people are actually using that app? How many people are actually posting? How many are, like, international in nature, but, like, not posting? Like, I think. I don't. I think that Threads is popularity or quote unquote, popularity is fake. And like, Katie Natapoulos has written about this a few times. Like, Max. Max Reid has written about this a few times. They have both articles that you should check out. But, like, what's happening on Blue sky right now feels like more real to me than what I have seen from Threads, which feels like forced Facebook engagement. In the same way that, like, if you go on Facebook right now, there are tons and tons and tons of, like, Facebook stories. People, like, normally, like, using the stories function or the reels function because it will just, like, automatically cross post from Instagram or something. It's like the Facebook ecosystem automatically shares your posts across, like, all of the apps that they have. And that is not, like, real, in my opinion. Yeah.
- [42:43]
Sam Cole
Also, Threads was, like, originally, like, so many brands. You remember this? It was all brands talking to each.
- [42:48]
Joseph
Other at the start. Yeah.
- [42:50]
Sam Cole
At the start.
- [42:50]
Jason Kebler
Yeah.
- [42:51]
Sam Cole
And Blue sky has, like, I haven't really seen any, like, brands.
- [42:54]
Joseph
Well, we're trying.
- [42:55]
Sam Cole
Well, we're trying.
- [42:56]
Joseph
Yeah.
- [42:57]
Jason Kebler
Well, we don't count.
- [42:57]
Sam Cole
We're not a brand.
- [43:00]
Joseph
No, that's true. But for those who haven't noticed, we are doing more social media posting from our main accounts. Like, we have some help on that. So you may notice some change there. And it's just funny that we're doing that on Twitter and bluesky and Fred's and they all have their own idiosyncrasies. And I don't think the particular news outlet idiosyncrasies of bluesky have really been established yet, because nobody's done it yet. Right. Because we're now doing the big migration and we're going to figure out how news fits in there beyond, you know, individual reporters and that sort of thing. Yeah.
- [43:37]
Jason Kebler
I want to say one more thing. I know. I feel. I feel like you're about to be like. And that's our show to go back. It's like Blue sky is part of a broader decentralization thing. It is not owned by billionaires. It is, like a portable platform. And so when I wrote, like, Mastodon is a good one, it's like, I. Now Blue sky can also be the good one. It's like, it's the same vibe in terms of, like, portability and being part of, like, a broader Fediverse and, like, owning your audience and stuff like that. So I don't regret it was correct the whole time.
- [44:11]
Joseph
Wow. Wow, wow.
- [44:13]
Jason Kebler
But it's. It, like, embodies the sorts of things that I think that we have, like, largely championed. And so, like, if Blue sky ends up being some sort of winner and, like, if it has some staying power, then I think that that's a good thing. That's just the point that I wanted to make, that it's not owned by a billionaire. Jack Dorsey is no longer involved. Was, like, bullied off of the platform, as far as I know.
- [44:36]
Joseph
There's a lot of good bullying. I'll give it that. You know, if someone turns up and they don't like it, they get them the fuck off there. That's. That's refreshing. Super briefly, just because I do think it is relevant. Sam, you've been using RSS more, right? Can you just talk about why? Because. Is that in response to all of this decentralization of social platforms or.
- [44:56]
Sam Cole
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's like, I. I used Feedly for a long time and, like, Feedly, I don't know if I'm using it wrong or it's not, like, what I needed, but I saw someone posting, like, rss, like, what is it? Like, oml, like, one of those files where you can just kind of, like, populate your whole entire RSS in one go with somebody else's followings. So I did that and I was like, yeah, maybe this is, like, how I can, like, consume information without having to deal with, like, everyone's opinions and, like, their every thought that crosses their mind. Because that's. I mean, I just, like, I'm trying to find a way out of the noise and into, like, what's actually going on. It's just so much chaos right now, in particular, that I was just like, I need to, like, get off of these social media apps that I'm looking at all day long, one way or another. So, yeah, that was kind of. That's where that came from. I don't know. I mean, I just started using Innoreader like, three days ago, and it's been okay.
- [46:04]
Joseph
I don't know.
- [46:05]
Sam Cole
I kind of missed the opinions.
- [46:07]
Joseph
I've tried that I should get back into it. And that's just a reminder that if you are a Paying for a Full Media subscriber, you actually get a full text RSS feed of our site so you could read our articles without even our opinions as well. You know, if you want to entirely get rid of all of that, we will leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I will now play us out. But if you are a Paying for a Full Media subscriber, we're going to talk about this article we published in the wake of the election, about what we're doing, what we did in 2016, why we're staying. I guess I'll leave it at that. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media c o. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the Subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really does help us out. Go ahead and do that if you haven't already. This has been 404 Media. We will see you again next week.