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- [00:00]
Joseph
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Jason Kebler
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access in worlds both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404Media co. As well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to the best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are 404 Media co founders Sam Cole and Jason Kebler.
- [00:36]
Joseph
Hey, what's up?
- [00:38]
Jason Kebler
So, first of all, we are launching a new project. Jason, do you briefly just want to explain what that is about? Book bans, that sort of thing?
- [00:49]
Joseph
Yeah. So it's very early days, but we've partnered with our friends at Muckrock, who is this nonprofit that helps US file FOIAs and helps other people file FOIAs, so public records requests. And we're going to do a project where we are going to file a lot of FOIAs about book bans and educational censorship and curriculum changes and things of that nature, which has been something that we and many, many other people who you will be hearing from as we do this project have been funding, fighting against since really like 2017, 2018, during Trump's first term. But we're gonna hopefully be documenting a bit about how this movement started from like trying to get teachers fired, trying to get libraries defunded, to taking over school boards, to then sort of like creating political power on the right through things like crt, you know, railing against drag, story time, things like this. This political movement has gotten very, very powerful. And again, lots of people have been reporting on this for quite some time. But we've wanted to do a project about this for a while. And so we were talking to Muck Rock and we're, we're getting going on it. We bring it up because this is going to be a long term project. So if you are a school board member, if you are a librarian, if you are a concerned parent, if you know something going on in your community, please tell us. Already I think maybe a hundred people have reached out to say like, this is happening in my town, this is happening at my school, this is happening at my library. We also, you know, have done a lot of our own research about where to file FOIAs and that sort of thing. But if you have any ideas, let us know. And if you have already reached out to me, we've gotten about a hundred people who've reached out and we're going through that. I'll get back to you soon. But it's a very exciting time because we're going to be working with Claire Woodcock, who has written for us before, used to write for us at Motherboard, and has been following this topic for a really long time. So you'll start to see stories about that probably in the next month or so. The other quick bit of housekeeping is we have restocked our merch store. We have new designs, we have this sweatshirt is back in stock, Beanies are back in stock, new T shirt, things like this. So go check it out. They're going to be arriving in probably the next week, and it is far easier for me if you order now because I ship them all at once. So if you want that, go check out our Shopify page. You can find it at 404 Media Co and then click on Merch or Store. I forget which one it is, but you'll find merch. I think it's merch. Yeah.
- [03:49]
Jason Kebler
And I also googled 404 Media Shop and it was the first result.
- [03:52]
Joseph
So that's what I do. That's how I find it. So peek behind the curtain there.
- [03:58]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. All right, let's move to this week's stories. This first one is one that you wrote, Jason. The headline is meta tells Workers building metaverse to use AI to go 5x4 faster. So the Metaverse still exists?
- [04:15]
Joseph
Yeah, allegedly. Allegedly. It still exists. There's actually been like, I haven't spent time in Horizon Worlds or any of the other virtual reality prod products of Meta for quite some time. Sam, I feel like you are always checking it out. Like, have you been. You've been in the Metaverse lately, Have you, have you strapped in? I.
- [04:36]
Sam Cole
The Metaverse always was, always is, always will be. That's the state of the metaverse. I mean, I haven't been in Horizon Worlds in a minute either. So I'm also shocked to hear that. I thought they laid off everybody was working on it and decided it was a bad idea, but I guess they did not.
- [04:54]
Joseph
Well, they have spent tens of billions of dollars on it, which is perhaps part of why this message is coming now. But the, you know, Meta, the company that renamed itself because of the Metaverse, but formerly known as Facebook and now currently just obsessed with AI like every other tech company, has decided to pay a little bit of attention to its Metaverse employees through the lens of use AI to go a lot faster, to become more efficient, to do your job more and better.
- [05:30]
Jason Kebler
And who. Who wrote this message, then, it's not coming from Zuckerberg, it's coming from somebody else, right?
- [05:37]
Joseph
No, it's coming from Vishal Shah, who is the head of. Well, they're VP of Metaverse. So basically he's in charge of Metaverse development at the moment. I saw. I did an interview with the Verge last week, and, you know, it was fine, but I also tried to figure out what was going on with the Metaverse. Like, it was an interview with him nominally about developments in the Metaverse, and it was so vague that I could not tell what the current state of the Metaverse is. I have obviously talked to employees in Metaverse Development and just like in on that team, which is called Reality Labs. And so Reality Labs also encompasses the smart glasses that we've talked about a lot. So that is kind of like the shiny product in that world at the moment is the smart glasses. But anyways, Vishal Shah went on to an internal message board which looks just like Facebook. Like, it's just a. It's essentially like a Facebook group of four Facebook employees. And the title is Metaverse AI4P, which doesn't sound like. It sounds like anything, but AI4P is AI for productivity. So the message says, Metaverse AI4P. Think 5x, not 5%. Our goal is simple, yet audacious. Make AI a habit, not a novelty. This means prioritizing training and adoption for everyone, so that using AI becomes second nature, just like any other tool we rely on. It also means integrating AI into every major code base and workflow. And then he goes on to say, I want to see us go 5x faster by eliminating the frictions that slow us down, and 5x faster to get to how our products feel much more quickly. Imagine a world where anyone can rapidly prototype an idea, and feedback loops are measured in hours, not weeks. That's the future we're building. As the weather cools, I've been swapping in pieces that actually get the job done. Warm, durable, and built to last. And Quint delivers every time with wardrobe staples I can rely on. Quince has the kind of fall staples you'll wear on repeat and look good doing it like 100% Mongolian cashmere from just $60. Classic fit denim and real leather and wool outerwear that can handle harsher weather. I've also been considering a suede trucker jacket, which is perfect for layering and can be dressed up or down. And here's the thing. By partnering directly with ethical factories and artisans, Quince cuts out the middleman. That means premium quality at half the cost of similar brands. I've been wearing this 100% European linen long sleeve button down most of the summer and now that it's fall I can easily layer it with some of the high quality heavyweight T shirts I've gotten from quints. I also love a throw blanket that's gotten a lot more use as the weather cools down. Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.com 404media for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com 404 Media free shipping and 365 day returns.quints.com 404 Media for years I hated buying glasses and I looked at it like a chore to be avoided. I'd sit on my optometrist and try on glasses I didn't like, which took forever to make and were riddled with hidden fees. Then I found Warby Parker and I realized it didn't have to be this way. First of all, I love Warby Parker. Stores everywhere I've lived for the last few years seems to have one honestly within walking distance which has been a game changer and it feels like I'm shopping for a premium product, not sitting in a doctor's office. Warby Parker uses nothing but premium materials in each frame. Warby Parker designs every frame in house and their collection includes silhouettes, colors and fits made to suit every face. I have a super wide face, but Warby Parker has me covered. I as you'll see here, Warby Parker offers everything you need for happier eyes, eyeglasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and eye exams. You can shop with them online and in stores. Warby Parker glasses start at 95 bucks and include prescription lenses with anti reflective scratch resistant coatings. And a lot of stores offer comprehensive eye exams starting at $85. Add a pair and save 15% when you purchase two or more prescription pairs of glasses or sunglasses. This offer is available both at home and in stores. Free shipping and free 30 day returns. My favorite thing about Warby Parker is I can get stylish modern glasses and sunglasses at a price point that feels super premium but doesn't hurt my wallet. I recently picked up this pair of black walnut Elio shades frame width wide which protects my eyes and elevate my outfits. Warby Parker has over 300 locations to help you find your next pair of glasses. You can also head over to warbyparker.com 404 media right now to try on any pair virtually. That's warbyparker.com 404 Media warbyparker.com 404Media so.
- [11:04]
Jason Kebler
You see this message and obviously you read this and then maybe you see some reactions from Metro employees or not, and we'll get to that. But what's your immediate reaction to seeing that Message asking for 5x productivity?
- [11:19]
Joseph
Yeah, so, I mean, weirdly, I'm not surprised at all. And I got comment from Facebook or from Meta on this and they were like, I don't know why anyone would be surprised about this. Like, this is what we've been talking about for quite some time. And that's true. Like, Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about trying to deploy coding agents all throughout Meta, the company. So basically like using AI to write code, not just to help developers and programmers write code, but to just like deploy them and have them write and push the code themselves, presumably after some sort of human review, although maybe not always. And so this is like the future that Meta has been pushing for. It's the future that a lot of Silicon Valley companies and startups have been pushing for. But I think the reason that it's like, very noteworthy is that it shows the level of, I guess, delusion that we're under. It shows the level shows a lot about how Meta thinks about its employees and how it thinks about its future. It's like, right now is a very difficult job market for computer programmers and computer scientists, in part because a lot of Silicon Valley companies are not hiring because they think, oh, we'll just offload this work to AI. And this shows that Meta isn't like, oh, we can get a little bit more productivity from some of our employees if we leverage AI in a careful, thoughtful way. It's like, no, do five times the amount of work that you're doing right now. So, I mean, think about that. It's like, do five days worth of work in one day. So I guess all of them are going to be working Mondays and not any other day of the week, and everyone will be happy and healthy and that's how this is going to work.
- [13:09]
Jason Kebler
But even if Meta deploys all of these coding agents in various parts of those companies, or just in the Metaverse to keep it to this example, how can you possibly 5x a person's output? And of course, it's not even just coding as well. There's going to be decisions have to be made inside meetings from human to human, just like it seems less moonshot, more Delusional.
- [13:36]
Joseph
Yeah, yeah. I mean the message sort of goes on to say like, we have all these internal guides about how you can use AI and what you can use it for. You know, I don't have access to those guides. They're also doing some like events and webinars where they're like, here, use our coding agents, like use our AI tools to, to become more efficient, blah, blah, blah. But I think this really just shows like AI as being a tool to replace human labor. Even if that, even if it is not like doing as good of a job as humans are doing and that it's not like, oh, maybe we will just like close some job openings and we'll slow down hiring and maybe if we do layoffs, we won't replace people. And it's like, no, the future that they want is they want each human to be five times more efficient, to do five times more work. And you know, I don't think that they're going to get there. Like a lot of companies that have tried, like have replaced workers with AI have found that they actually need to hire human workers back. A lot of studies have sort of been done where it shows like AI can be helpful around the edges for specific tasks, but in many cases it actually slows down work because you have to do a lot of, you know, like quality control and fixing the fuck ups and hallucinations and things like that. But like this is like the job market that meta is like hoping and imagining is one where for every human they're getting five times the amount of work that they used to get. And, and you know, you can do the math from there. Like this portends layoffs, it portends like, you know, hiring freezes, so on and so forth. And I, I think that is why it was notable and that's why I wanted to write about it is because it sort of shows how this like massively important company that I think still employs probably more than a hundred thousand people worldwide is, is thinking about AI and is looking at human labor. Yeah.
- [15:45]
Jason Kebler
Even if you personally don't use a ton of meta products, or maybe you just use Instagram and you definitely don't use Facebook or whatever, they're still a huge company and they're still doing an absolute ton of stuff. So decisions like these are going to impact a bunch of people's lives and then the users of the products as well. And even those who may not even be on Facebook, you've still seen Facebook's AI slop even if you're not on, on Facebook. So did you see any of the responses from Meta workers about this or get a vibe of that or not really.
- [16:23]
Joseph
I did, I did. I think the team, like, meta, is huge company. There's a lot of people working on the Metaverse. It was tricky in this case to include worker feedback because there's only so many people who, like, would have seen this message and kind of, like, sharing different things would have made it easier to figure out, like, basically, like, when a specific worker saw this or. Or whatever. Like. So in that case, I didn't include much in the article, but. But, like, vibes are low. The vibes are not good. On the Metaverse team in particular, I think that they feel a little bit like an afterthought at this point after, you know, so much money was poured into it. I think that, you know, Zuckerberg has shown himself to be interested in chasing whatever shiny new thing there is. In this case, it's AI and it's like, I don't know, they cloned Cap Cut, for example. It's like, I feel like Meta in general is, like, constantly releasing products that are similar to other products that already exist. And then they're like, wow, here's our new thing. And then they move on from it, like, really quickly. Like, I don't know if you guys remember, but they launched. I was scrolling through my phone and they launched an app called Edits, which is literally a Cap Cut clone. And they did that. And they did that because cap cut and TikTok got banned for a moment for, like, literally 24 hours. And that's like, when it came out. And they're like, oh, we are going to compete with Cap Cut. And I opened it the other day and it sucks. It's like, it's not. It's clearly like, kind of being abandoned, more or less. I mean, surely there's people still working on it. But I think that's how people working on the Metaverse feel, where it's like, shiny new toy, Zuckerberg moves on. And then they're sort of still toiling away, and then also, of course, being asked to do 5x work. They're just like, fuck this.
- [18:17]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. And then at the same time, Mark Zuckerberg is going with Palmer Luckey and announcing a new AR headset or whatever for the US American war fighter. And the poor people working on the metaphors are just like, well, do we have legs or not? To these avatars, like, it must suck.
- [18:37]
Joseph
Well, there's that. And I think also there is honestly a sense I'm Extrapolating out a little bit, but based on, like, the workers I've talked to and the stuff that I've seen, it's like there was this idea that they were going to build the metaverse and it was going to be a place where you go, like, surfing. Like, Zuckerberg is always showing, like, surf demos and like, you know, concerts where you could buy little outfits for your avatar and, and add legs and all of this sort of thing, like these developments. And like, what it turns out that the company is interested in the metaverse for at the moment is, as you mentioned, like, military, industrial complex applications. And so there is the like, oh, we thought we were doing this to like, connect people and to, you know, for like, peaceful purposes, for lack of a better term. And now it's like, well, the cops are using the smart glasses, Ice is using the smart glasses. And also we're like, partnering with Palmer Lucky. It's like, not. Not good vibe.
- [19:42]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, that makes sense. And then I think just lastly, what. And you touched on this with some of the startups and stuff as well. But what context is this message from meta landing in? As in, other companies are basically doing the same thing. They haven't said 5x specifically, necessarily, but Amazon is mentioned in the piece as well, right?
- [20:02]
Joseph
Yeah. So there's actually been like a handful of companies that have been like, Messages, emails from CEOs and messages from CEOs being like, I use ChatGPT and it wrote an email for me and it took notes at a meeting for me and therefore I expect everyone to use AI and therefore I expect. Expect you all to be like, a lot more productive. And these messages have leaked, like, from time to time. And it's very funny because almost all of them have come from, like, quite small startups where they're just like, you know, you can kind of like roll your eyes and be like, oh, this person doesn't really know what they're talking about. Or like, this CEO just found out about ChatGPT for the first time ever. And in this case it's like, no, it's like it's meta. It's like one of the five largest companies on planet Earth and that's what. And they're telling their employees to do the same thing. And then similarly, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said something like, quite similar earlier this. It was earlier this year where they said that they, quote, expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the country. Company. And so again, yeah, most companies that are using this, are sort of doing it in the name of increased productivity, but also like. And because of that increased productivity, some of you will not have jobs.
- [21:32]
Jason Kebler
Great.
- [21:32]
Joseph
Yeah. And I mean, I don't. It's very hard to even tell, sort of like the impact of AI on the job market at the moment because the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics and things like that, like, are not releasing jobs reports. One, because when there was a bad one, Trump got very mad and fired the people who did it and then replaced them. But beyond that, the government is shut down now. So there, there's not even like the kind of, I mean, I'll say it, but like sham numbers or, or the numbers that are like, you know, approved by the admin for release. And so it's kind of hard to say what the job market is doing right now, but like private estimates of how the job market is doing. There's been like a few bank reports and like, you know, like consulting firms have done reports and they're like, it's extremely bad. Like, very few places are hiring. A lot of places are doing layoffs and most growth that we're seeing is in like, I could be wrong, but I think it's like nursing and AI and it's like data center building and it's like healthcare and that's pretty much it. And the entire rest of the economy is like very stagnant at the moment. So not good? Not good?
- [22:51]
Jason Kebler
No, not good at all. Right, let's leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about this really catastrophic discord hack. We'll be right back after this.
- [23:16]
Joseph
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- [26:35]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, because I remember Sam actually saw something about this breach before we covered it. And yeah, there were rumblings about it on Twitter from various infosec accounts. I think maybe Matthew, our regular contributor, saw something as well. But to peel back the curtain, a Little bit. It's kind of hard. You can't just write a story. Like you have to find a way in basically. And it's like, oh, people saying there might be a Discord breach. It's like, that's not really an article. Fortunate for us, very unfortunate for the victims of the breach. And of course Discord as well. The hackers did start to publish some of this data that was related to Discord users. And I mean, it's really, really sensitive stuff. There are selfies in there, people's identity documents, and often those are the same photo because of course you have to take a photo of your face and hold up your id. So Discord can see or the third party service or whoever can see. Yes, that's the same person and yes, they're of a certain age or whatever, but there's also users email addresses in there and their phone numbers and sometimes this is linked to their customer support tickets. So like it's a bunch of really sensitive Discord user information. I mean, we'll get into it. It's not a breach of Discord. It's not like Discord itself was hacked, it was a third party provider. But all of the data is Discord related. So I'm just calling it a Discord breach. And I think that's totally fair. But yeah, this is like really, really scary bad stuff. That's so much worse than like, I don't know, a username and password. This is like more sensitive.
- [28:21]
Joseph
Yeah. Is the company that was hacked, in this case the company specifically dealing with age verification for Discord, or is it, or was it more than just that?
- [28:35]
Jason Kebler
So discourse has been a little bit flippy floppy on this information. They say that the IDs taken were related to its age related appeals. As we'll get into. That's not necessarily the same as age verification, which Sam could talk about a lot, but it still shows that it's basically the same risk.
- [29:00]
Joseph
Right, got it.
- [29:01]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. And then, and I didn't put this in the article because it came out maybe, maybe a day or two later, but Discord did tell me that the third party service provider was a company called 5ca, which I'd never heard of before, but they were the ones that were actually hacked.
- [29:20]
Joseph
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so hold that there. We'll get back into that in a moment. But so tell me a little bit about like how this information came out. Like you sort of watched the data coming out more or less in real time, right?
- [29:36]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. So Discord was being extorted for a while. As we said, rumblings of this breach had happened and were going around. I then got a link to this Telegram channel which. Where the Discord hackers were taunting. Discord taunting, I think Zendesk as well, which is, you know, a piece of software and a platform that apparently this third party probably used. And they were very annoyed because apparently Discord was not playing ball with this extortion attempt. As, you know, readers will know and you've probably seen because there's a million reports on it. Reports on it. Now is so, so common today for hackers to break into a company, steal the data, and they won't just send like a private extortion demand. They will do this, like, spectacle. And they may even send information to journalists. They may send a very well choreographed or orchestrated email laying out to journalists, hey, here's what we have, blah, blah, blah. Or they, they may post it to Twitter. That doesn't happen so much now because Twitter's changed its policies and in this case they were posting stuff to Telegram. So I join the channel. The hackers, as I said, are annoyed and then they just start posting some of this user data. Now, we only included heavily redacted copies in the article itself. Like, we basically blurred out the entire face, hair, eyes, hand, username, ID of some of these people. And they were very, very small snippets. It was just like a handful of photos of what looks like a young person, or they are definitely young people holding their IDs. But then there were screenshots of what the hackers were presenting as much more stolen data. And I was just sat there in real time. I just joined the group. And this very steady stream of data just keeps getting posted to the channel. It was kind of an unfortunate matter of being, you know, in the right place at the right time. And, you know, this is just the way that some of these hackers do it nowadays.
- [31:58]
Joseph
Yeah, yeah. Okay. I want to pivot to the age verification slash, age appeals situation, like, part of this, because, Sam, you have been writing for a year, two years at this point about age verification laws and about sort of like what happens when users are required to provide an ID to access different web services. And in most cases, it seems like a lot of companies are outsourcing this work, like they're having a third party company do this sort of thing. So age verification law or not, like, there are selfies of people holding up government IDs and their face, and that's like, what was in this breach. This seems like the nightmare that you have been Writing about from a theoretical perspective for a while, but now it has happened.
- [32:57]
Sam Cole
Yeah, I mean, this is what everyone's been warning about. Who's been talking about age verification and the risks that go along with it. Um, I was just looking it up because I was like, has it only been a year? And Louisiana passed their age replication law, and they were the first one in the states to really enact one of these laws in 2022. So it's been three years now of two and a half, three years of talking about the risks involved in these laws. And now I think we're finally seeing it happen in real life. It's no longer hypothetical. Oh, maybe hackers will get access to this information. It's like, okay, now it's become widespread enough, enough platforms have it that bad actors are savvy to how it works and know that there's basically a honey pot waiting on any of these platforms that have age verification in place. And I think this is. I mean, it's pretty. It's a pretty basic tenant of like online privacy and security that the more places you have your stuff spread out there, the more of a risk it is to have your data breached or hacked or leaked or accessed by people you don't want it to. And now you have to verify your age to get into certain discord channels. You have to verify your age to get into pornhub in a lot of different states. Or you can access pornhub a lot of states, period, because they know these are the risks. But in the states that you do, you have to put your ID in. There's states where you have to do this for blue sky. It's just, it's becoming more and more common to hand over not just your id, but also, like, take a selfie with your face. Even like T. When we wrote about that hack, that was a pretty clear example of the way that verification systems that rely on government ID and selfies and these kind of know your customer systems that are. These third party systems are vulnerable to this sort of thing. And I think it's. It's sad and it sucks in a couple ways. I think one of the ways that I think is the most striking to me is how this is going to erode people's trust in pretty much any kind of security and privacy online in general. I think already people are like, I don't give a shit, just tweet my Social Security number and it doesn't matter, no one cares anymore. And now it's like you're facing a prompt that Says, we store your data safely. We don't store your data. We store it for three days, whatever it is, we make sure that we handle that correctly. And then two weeks later, your selfie is on the Internet because hackers have found it and you're holding up a picture of your id. Yeah, it's like, at what point do people just, like, not care anymore what what a platform says about their privacy practices and just say, give it to whoever? I don't, it doesn't matter to me anymore because I don't think the reaction is going to be I'm going to lock down my opsec or, like, I'm.
- [36:05]
Joseph
Not going to use Discord, or I'm not going to use, like, my. All my friends are on Discord, all the people I play video games with are on Discord. I'm just going to not go on there. It's like that, that's really not, not that many people are going to just say, okay, I'm not going to use these services anymore. Like, a lot of people are just going to do what they're being told to do.
- [36:24]
Sam Cole
Yeah, and we saw it with T. It's like T got more popular after the hack because it was in the news more. You know, it's like, I think, I think we're just in such like a nihilistic zone with our privacy that. That is more worrisome to me even than like, your data being out there. It's like the, the effect on the way we see our privacy is eroding.
- [36:46]
Joseph
Yeah. I mean, one thing that, you know, you touched on it, but it's like, as a user, you cannot choose what third party age verification service, like any of these platforms are going to use. And so there's a lot of different ones. Some of them say that like, okay, we take your selfie, we verify it, and then we like, destroy it immediately, or we encrypt it, or we keep it for three days, then we get rid of it or whatever. And so you're kind of banking on the security of that third party, you know, age verification service. But if not all, not all companies do that. And like, it's very hard as a user to vet the security of any given service that does this. And as these laws get more and more onerous and as they're in more and more places and as the definition of what porn is gets bigger and bigger or what adult content is gets bigger and bigger, or it's like, I feel like it's becoming very, very difficult to avoid this. And so yeah, maybe like one service does take privacy seriously, but another one will contract with someone that doesn't.
- [38:06]
Jason Kebler
I mean, even before this, we had something of like a halfway between a hypothetical and a real situation when a security researcher found that a ID verification surface for TikTok Uber X exposed people's driver's licenses. Like there was some sort of exposed database. And as part of that flow, the researcher was able to get those licenses. And in that case, that was a security researcher trying to warn the company to get the issue fixed and that sort of thing. No evidence it was done maliciously or used by hackers or entered by hackers. Well, now the full on real one has happened, which is like, these are hackers trying to extort people. Well, extort discord.
- [38:54]
Sam Cole
Yeah.
- [38:56]
Joseph
Can I read you something unrelated that I just saw that is sort of related, which is Sam Altman just tweeted maybe the craziest tweet I've ever seen, which is we made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realized this made it less useful slash enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems. But given the seriousness of this, this issue, we wanted to make this right. Then they talk a little bit about how they believe they have solved the mental health issues associated with ChatGPT, which, okay, huge like claim to make, goes on to say in December, as we roll out age gating more fully and as part of our treat adult users, like adults principle, we will allow even more like erotica for verified adults. So ChatGPT is getting into the porn chat bot business seemingly, but behind an age gate. And like, how will that age gate work? I don't know. Uploading selfie, like, unclear at the moment, but I don't know. I literally just saw that as we were reading it. And the idea that they one have solved mental health on ChatGPT while they're being sued for like various people who have died because of advice that ChatGPT gave them. And also we're gonna roll out porn, but behind an age gate. Good stuff.
- [40:27]
Jason Kebler
This tweet is like micro targeted to Sam because it has the mental health AI chatbot stuff in there. And. And we're now going to give porn to adults also behind an age verification gate. Sam, what do you think of it?
- [40:44]
Sam Cole
It's Sam versus Sam. It's. Yes, he's reading my browser history and is like, how can I piss her off? Yeah, yeah, he's reading 404 and concocting schemes for us to blog about at this Point.
- [41:00]
Joseph
Yeah. So I mean that was an interruption, but it is. This is like front and center at the moment across like I feel almost every service that we use online because I think that one like as. As these age verification laws are being pushed more heavily, you know, we're a lot of services have to put it in. And then the other thing that's happening is services are voluntarily age gating things because. Because they're being blamed for bad outcomes happening to children because they've like rolled back all of these content moderation things. And so they're like, oh, like anything goes as long as you prove that you're an adult and prove that you're an adult by like giving us your ID and a selfie and so on and so forth. There was one like little, not a quibble, but let's clarify the difference between an age related appeals process and. And age verification. I think here it's like what happened shows the danger of age verification, but age related appeals is perhaps something slightly different. Joe, you got in the weeds on this, right?
- [42:13]
Jason Kebler
A little bit, yeah. As far as I understand, age related appeals is not the same as age verification. Like you go to a help page on the Discord website and it says help. I'm old enough to use Discord in my country, but I get locked out. That's when you have to appeal and provide your id. And of course in lots of circumstances, especially a social media network or something like that, companies are not supposed to provide products to say under 13s or something like that. So that would be more the age related appeals. And then to me, the age verification stuff would be like the law in the UK or the stuff that Sam was talking about, like these particular.
- [42:57]
Joseph
The state laws. And the state laws.
- [42:59]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I feel like we're still obviously seeing the rollout of those. So I mean, there's no indication that the breach necessarily impacts age verification stuff. The two driver's licenses or the two IDs we saw, one was Ontario, Canada and the other was I think Colorado, obviously in the us so it is impacting stuff. In North America it was 70,000 IDs in total, which doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of data breaches, but again, that's really, really sensitive stuff and it could be linked to their other activity. And I guess just to clarify, that last thing I said at the top that I didn't put in the article just because it was the day later or whatever, but you. But yeah, 5ca was the third party service provider. The Discord. It blamed it on them. And I'll just say it's pretty unusual. Usually a company that is somehow impacted by a breach like Discord or whatever would just put out, hey, we're impacted. It was a third party service provider. Especially in the case of those Snowflake breaches a while ago, right? Not many he, as far as I can remember of the blog posts or the companies said yeah, it was Snowflake and we didn't have two FA and that's why we got screwed over. Pretty unusual for Discord to say this, but maybe it was because the hackers were kind of throwing Zendesk under the bus in their telegram messages. So I don't know. Just a weird wrinkle there. All right, let's leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about what happened when AI came for craft beer. I mean, it wasn't great. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co.
- [45:01]
Sam Cole
As.
- [45:01]
Jason Kebler
A reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by by subscribers. If you do 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 helps us out. Now this has been 404 Media. We will see you again next week.