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- [00:00]
Jake Hanrahan
No one asked for this. Nobody wants it. And the constant pearl clutching is literally leading to censorship. There's no other reason this is all getting censored other than it helps these companies make money due to the sensitivities of advertising.
- [00:18]
404 Media Host
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 founded 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 and they get early access to our interview series too. Gain access to that content at 404 MediaCo. This week I'm speaking to Jake Hammrahan. He is the founder of Popular Front, an independent conflict focused media outlet. There's a podcast, they do documentaries as well. But recently Jake has branched out into another project called Away Days, which is more about counterculture. And I wanted to speak to Jake because obviously he is also an independent journalist. He's actually been in the independent space longer than we have, getting close to 10 years for him. And I think the ecosystem around tools and platforms has changed a lot for the better for independent journalists. We're able to run a website and take subscriber money in a very streamlined fashion. That said, platforms, social media, YouTube, places like Patreon as well, potentially have maybe not become hostile to independent media. That'd be too much. But there's a lot of friction there and Jake has experienced some of that with his company as well. So I wanted to have him on to talk about all of that. What sort of thing would be good to be developed for independent journalists? All right, hope you enjoyed the conversation. Jake, thank you so much for joining us. I really, really appreciate it.
- [02:09]
Jake Hanrahan
Thanks, mate. Big fan of what you're doing. I've been a Day One subscriber.
- [02:13]
404 Media Host
I don't have my Popular Front on shirt right now.
- [02:15]
Jake Hanrahan
That's why I got a flag.
- [02:18]
404 Media Host
I often do wear that for those who don't know what is Popular Front and how did that come about?
- [02:25]
Jake Hanrahan
So basically, Popular Front, I started it in 2018 and at the time there was a lot of very just normal tiny follower accounts doing a lot of incredible work. For example, Hugo Carmen always comes to mind. He had like 300 followers on Twitter and was doing some of the best OSINT work and geolocation I've ever seen in my life. And I noticed journalists, you know, as the journalism, journalism industry is essentially just cribbing his work, you know, and like not mentioning him. And I was like, this is bad. And then I started seeing it happening a lot and then I realized, like, we should all be working together sort of thing, you know? And also I realized a lot of these people that were doing this work were kind of like me, kind of like, I guess, unconventional, I would say weirdos, you know, not in a bad way. And so I was like, fuck it, I'm going to start this whole thing. And my idea was to launch an independent war reporting platform, but with the soul left in which maybe that sounds corny, I don't mind, but you know what I mean? I wanted to really. I'd been to war for so long and I just kept seeing the kind of essence of what made it so fascinating removed, you know, and what made the people both good and bad so visceral. And so, yeah, I guess Popular Front was kind of my punk esque idea of doing war reporting. And thank God it took off because I was ready to quit at the time, actually. So, yeah, it's gone well, we're in the year eight. It's on the up and up. But I guess one of the reasons we're going to be talking is because we've had a big problem, particularly with censorship, especially with our documentaries.
- [04:00]
404 Media Host
Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. In a practical sense, what does Popular Front do? It's documentaries, it's written stuff. It's your podcast as well. Like, how do you take that and how does it manifest basically, what do you make?
- [04:14]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, so the bread and butter has always been the podcast because at the time I just had absolutely no money whatsoever to start the thing. So I was like, well, I have. I know how to use my earphones as microphone.
- [04:24]
404 Media Host
Right.
- [04:24]
Jake Hanrahan
And basically the first episodes just sound so bad. But, you know, I did it with that. And I remember within 10 episodes, I don't want to say it blew up, but it really took off quite quickly. And I just feel like I maybe just noticed a little gap maybe where there was not enough of these kind of anoraki type people being taken seriously. And for me, those were just the best people as well. And they didn't have this. I don't want to be negative, but I definitely had. I was very jaded.
- [04:51]
Podcast Advertiser/Voiceover
I.
- [04:51]
Jake Hanrahan
If you could say, like from doing war reporting and just meeting some very snooty people within it, you know, and I didn't want any of that and I wanted to do Popular Front without any of that kind of elitist arrogance, you know, and without any of like too much polish, you know, like our catchphrase has always been, well, first of all, it's warfare for weirdos for about three weeks. But I realized people didn't want to come on with that, so I changed it to no frills.
- [05:15]
404 Media Host
I remember you changed like the tagline in the podcast, you stop saying nerds or whatever.
- [05:21]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, geeky. Because, like started to have like, very like, you know, a lot of people started coming on and I just, I was like, you know what? Like it's, it's moved on a little bit from that. It kind of started off as this very niche thing, and now we kind of an independent war reporting platform, you know, and we started doing documentaries when we started making money on the Patreon, and that really blew us up, you know, like that when we started doing the docs, I kind of used the same style as the podcast. You know, very scrappy, kind of irreverent, but, you know, heavy on the journalism and also non biased, you know, especially at that time, to really make money in that, in that world, you had to be left wing or right wing or conservative. And we were just like, look, man, you know, like we, we don't like authoritarianism where wherever it is. And that has kind of give us a very eclectic audience, which I think is great. But yeah, so we did the documentaries, we did the magazine, which is all on hold for a long time just because the sheer insane amount it costs to send stuff now with EU and everything. But yeah, we do merch. Believe it or not, our merch funds a lot of our projects. It does really well.
- [06:24]
404 Media Host
It's, it's very good merch. Like, I'm constantly checking the store in case you've done something new, and then I'll go and check for the cap. I think there's the one with the world on fire, right, or something. And she's like, sold out.
- [06:35]
Podcast Advertiser/Voiceover
Fuck.
- [06:36]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, we got a new one now called Send Baron. It just says, yeah, I saw that. So, you know, we tried to always do kind of a reverend kind of cool merch to kind of, I guess someone said to me once, like, oh, you're running this like a hardcore band. And I never thought of it like that. And I was like, yeah, I like the idea of that. So, you know, some people don't like it. I totally get that. I mean, I'm particularly annoying and opinionated, but overall it's been, you know, it's been a pretty good ride. Certainly wherever we go now, everywhere we go, there's Someone is like, we just have so many lovely stories from people that are like, oh, I never thought I was the sort of person that could do war reporting or conflict journalism, but seeing Popular Front made me realize I can. It's like, yeah, if I can. Trust me, you can. You know what I mean? So, you know, in our audience, we don't care where you're from, your gender, your race or whatever. If you're good, you're good. We don't care about certificates. You know, I don't have any, so. And I think that really appealed to a lot of people. So, you know, it's been. Been good fun, for sure.
- [07:33]
404 Media Host
So you do that and it goes on the up and up, as you say, and then you decide to, I guess, launch away days as well, which I'll let you phrase it, but to me, it looked like a series of documentaries that were about things that weren't necessarily conflicts, essentially. Right. Like, what is away days? And how did you come to the decision to do that?
- [07:54]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's kind of popular front, but for counterculture, if you like. You know, I've been doing war reporting for so long. I first went to the front line when I was, like, 24. I'm 36 now, and for anyone that's. And I got. I've been to a dozen wars, you know, and it kind of. You do start to feel your luck running out, which sounds crazy, but to me, you kind of do. And, you know, I've had a few close calls and various family circumstances, like, I can't die out there, you know, and I certainly. I've always been interested. I mean, if you. If you read my book Gargoyle, it's. I've never just been a war report. I've always done, like, counterculture black markets.
- [08:32]
404 Media Host
Well, you did a ton of the Silk Road shift as well.
- [08:34]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I actually was, I think, the only reporter that went and traveled with a Silk Road drug dealer to his actual manufacturing house where he had all his drugs. But, yeah, so I did all this underground stuff anyway, and I was like, well, how about I turn that into a documentary thing? And, you know, my friend said, oh, just. Just bring. Bring it into Popular Front. But I feel like that would have been a mistake because I feel like too often, you know, I got my START advice right. Vice became everything. And I think too often niche kind of platforms lose their edge when they try and do everything. Like, I mean, you can't go from, well, we were on conflict, but now we're war and conflict and counterculture. It just didn't work. So I was like, you know, I'm going to start a different thing. And for some reason, people like, oh, no, popular fronts over. I said, no, you know, there's plenty of hours in the day. Just stop scrolling and you'll find time, you know. So I do both, you know. But Away Days is definitely a lot more specific, as in, it's just a documentary series, you know, like, we having so much fun with it. It's a lot more polished, you know, really specific access, but it's not like a whole network. And so I can run both at the same time. And, you know, so far we've had two docs out. We've got about five ready to edit. It's just money is an issue. But the first dog was we spent like a week inside the favela in Brazil with a gang. And it wasn't to be like, whoa, we're in the favela. It was kind of to be like, actually, this is really sad, you know, and it did really well. Like, that's. That's pushing up to a million now. And then the second one we did really fun doc. Second documentary is a documentary about Kazakhstan football hooligans, which, you know, it's just like, you would never think these things exist, but we kind of go to not to gawk at them, just to be like, how beautiful is vitality, you know. And then there are other episodes that are very dark. You know, we got like underground fighting, no rules fighting episode coming. We got something fun with underground illegal street racing in Japan. You know, like anything that's kind of like that, I like it and I want to know about it. And the people involved you'll meet are just so fascinating and cool to be around quite often. So, yeah, away Days has been great fun as well. And there's a lot less risk of dying.
- [10:37]
404 Media Host
Yes, well, I mean, but then you're also in the car with the Japanese drifters and the street racers, so I don't bell. So they know how to drive. So you're probably
- [10:48]
Jake Hanrahan
when they're doing like 100, drifting sideways down the side of a mountain. I was a bit like, what the hell am I doing here? But it's definitely. I mean, I. The way I'm wired, man, I need some kind of something to blow my hair back. You know, When I think awayadays is definitely a lot safer, but it's also, you know, again, it feeds that fascination I have with just outside of society stuff, you know, which war is as well. I mean, it takes place within it. But the kinds of people that end up fighting are usually those that they become transformed, you know, And I really like the idea of, like, when someone is kind of almost alchemically transformed into someone else when they're involved in their scene, you know, like. Like, you know, from the main character in our Kazakhstan documentary. By day, he works valeting, like, cars, you know, but then on the weekend, he's like a hero of the forest, fighting in groups and, you know, and then has all his friends and then he goes to the mosque and he's chilled out. Like, just so many layers to people. I think that's what I'm focused on often. Same with the war reporting as well. Like, our docs have rarely been straight news reports. You know, we do do them, but we can never be first. So we had to be unique, I think.
- [11:54]
404 Media Host
Yeah, that's a good point. Is the. Is the business of away days, like, entirely separate from the Popular Front? And, like, you're treating them as like, two streams. Like, not to get, like, too inside baseball, but like you mentioned, you mentioned money for the away days. One is like, it's entirely separate.
- [12:11]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because it just. I didn't want anyone to think I'd fluke something. Well, to be honest, to myself, you know, and I was like, can I build another thing? Obviously, granted, I've got a lot, lot more reach now and, like, eyes on me from Popular Front. But I wanted to do it completely separate. So I think of it is. Imagine it's like Jake Hanrahan, the channel, you know, and then each one is like, you know, a vertical or a series or whatever. So they're separate, but they're within the same wheelhouse. All my production company and the same team. Exactly. The same team that does Popular Front does Away Days. But it was just kind of almost a challenge to myself. And also, like, I was like, I can't be taking all the money out of Popular Front and be spending it on away days. Like, that's why it's so slow. You know, if I did that, we had. The docs would be flying out. But it's very slow. People like, oh, you've only put two docks. I'm like, you know how expensive this is to do this, you know, without kind of crossing the streams. So, you know, it is what it is. At the start, we just maxed out credit cards. And then, you know, the merch is doing quite well. We've made some money back on that, and then we're in Talks with some people to try and get some funding, which is looking good. We have actually, no, I've not told anybody this, but we're actually doing a collaboration series with Vice soon, and it's going to be like away days on Vice, but it's going to be much shorter. So like 15 minute kind of segments. It was going to be called Hard Week, like where days presents Hard Weekend, but we're gonna have to change the name because they already have something similar. But, yeah, that's going to come out this year and that will be fun. And I think that will bring a lot more eyes and hopefully revenue. And if not, it doesn't, you know,
- [13:47]
404 Media Host
and if not, it still gets the stuff out. You still get to make it.
- [13:50]
Jake Hanrahan
Exactly. You got to do it, man. I really. I mean, it's easy to say when you've been doing it 10 years, but I. The same way I tackle this now is the same way I did at the start. You know, the reason I got my job advice was I got a friend of mine that I knew was studying photography and I was like, does that have film mode? He's like, yeah, I think so. And we just went. At the time, we went. I was like, I want to go to Occupy. Not Occupy Wall street, it was Occupy London. It was the Stock Exchange. And then it moved to St. Paul's and we just went down there and just filmed and did random interviews with people. And even though it was absolute trash, I think they realized, like, okay, you're getting off your ass, you're doing something, and I think that still kind of counts. Exactly as you guys did, you were like, right, this isn't working. Okay, let's go and do it. And you just have to do it, I think.
- [14:33]
404 Media Host
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, on that, there's the making, the journalism and the filming and the writing, the recording or whatever, and then there's the distribution, which, frankly, when I worked at Vice, I didn't give a shit about because I didn't have to. I was an intern. I rocked up on my table at the London Vice office or whatever, wrote my shitty little blog post and it went out on the Internet. I didn't have to worry about any of that. But now, when you run your own media business, you have to figure out, how the hell am I going to get this in front of people? Not necessarily to be like, oh, I want clicks, I want views. But you do want people to see it, because otherwise, what's the entire point?
- [15:08]
Jake Hanrahan
Of course. Yeah, I've always said that, like, never, ever I don't get why people are like, oh, I don't want to be narcissistic. What are you talking about? You make this to show people. I don't want a niche group. I want as many people to see what I'm doing. It's journalism.
- [15:27]
Podcast Advertiser/Voiceover
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- [21:17]
Jake Hanrahan
If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the Internet doesn't mean you get away with murder. I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead. This season I take you inside the business of suicide and the places desperate people go when they can't find what they need in the real world. Hunting the Suicide Salesman, available now. Wherever you get your podcasts,
- [21:54]
404 Media Host
You distribute on a few different platforms, we also do the same. And I'll go specific, sort of one by one. But YouTube obviously key for you putting out documentaries. But you've had some stuff with YouTube, right? Where maybe have they like demonetized videos or taken them down? Like, what's the deal with YouTube and you.
- [22:13]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, so, I mean, I will say I do think YouTube is still an excellent platform. And I do. I'm very glad it's there, but the censorship issues are just beyond the pale. You know, it's like North Korea. It's crazy. I mean, we had, we had a clip, a short, a reel. The shorts, they are on there taken down because it was, had the word hooligan in the thing and it was deemed as promoting violence. I was like, what? Like, you know, we weren't saying this is great anyway, whatever.
- [22:42]
404 Media Host
It was a piece of journalism about hooliganism.
- [22:44]
Jake Hanrahan
Exactly. Yeah, of course, you know, and I think maybe because we, we showed them in a, a decent light because this isn't street stuff, this is all private in the forest. And I was like, who cares? You know. But anyway, so the problems began pretty early on with Popular Front. So the way that I edit, the way that I produce my stuff, I don't really have the wagging finger, you know, I'm like, this is what's happening. And I, I certainly would edit my stuff. Like if we're in a riot, you're going to see we're in a riot and it's going to feel fun to watch the same way it would to be in it, you know. And a lot of journalists will say, oh no, it's not that. It is, you know, it absolutely is. It's not that I've been, Don't worry, I've been shot in a riot like with a big rubber bullet that like scrambled my innards. I'm not saying that's fun and that same riot, someone lost their eye, you know, but I'm saying like there is part of it, there's maybe not fun but like there is some exhilaration to it, you know. So I was like, well I, I want, surely as a journalist you want to get across that because that's a lot of why actually people are involved in riots and stuff like that, you know, it's not all political. So I was like that, that to me makes, you know, it's a no brainer. I'm going to edit it to make it feel as close as I can for the viewer to what it feels like to be there. And you know, I stand by that. I always have some people say it's gratuitous. Those same people are now happily posting up, you know, war footage from Ukraine with silly music.
- [24:04]
404 Media Host
Right?
- [24:05]
Jake Hanrahan
Suddenly it's different. It's different when they support the war. But anyway. But yeah, I don't think it is. I think it's more honest actually. I think it's super honest. And so anyway, so immediately we were getting a bit of like, you know, this has been age restricted, this has been put behind whatever. And then we had our big kind of breakout with Plastic Defense, of course, the document about 3D printed guns, JStock and that hit like A million views, like very quickly for us, because we were like, I think we had 20,000 subscribers before that, if that. And it just went off. And because of that, in some ways we started getting eyes on us, right? So the whole channel got demonetized, basically. They were just like, yeah, you're not going to make any money now. And but the irony is they didn't take the dock down or even actually age restricts plastic defense. So I presume they were like, well, we're making money from this, you know, so it carried on because I know to this day there's adverts on it, but I don't make any money from it. You know, we, we had. We got some footage from a sicario filmed on his phone and just showed what is actually a very grim representation of life in the cartel. And that did really. That blew up in Mexico. Mexicans were like, this is great, like this is reality. So that did really well. Some, like big news channel over there were kind of talking about, I didn't even know. So they made God knows how much money off that. We didn't make a single penny. So basically, long story short, we've. We didn't make a single penn. Our documentaries, bearing in mind you're looking at five to ten grand loss every time, you know, which is a. It's very little money for what we were doing. But we, we do everything on a shoestring and I was editing them all. So I was like, you know what, I can accept that because every time we had a doc went out, we got more on the Patreon, we got more support, more merch. So I was like, you know, it's not exactly like we're not getting paid for the docs, but it kind of evens itself out. Then they started age restricting things. And as I'm sure you know, when they age restrict things, it's gone essentially, you know, it doesn't work the same way. It just falls off the face of the earth. What they started doing was what I was calling like retroactively age restricting. So our last documentary, the one I was on about where I got shot in the belly, I think we were the only people that were interviewing every part of the people involved in the very intense riots that were happening in Paris. Not just for Mayday, it was on Mayday we went. But it was like a long continuing thing for about six months and it got age restricted about eight months after it first was published. Now that never happened to me. Now, I can't confirm that if this is true. But I was told by someone that I, I know for a fact works there, that that is only done with like manually. Like someone has kind of gone right age restrict that and that just for me it was kind of the final straw. And I was like, right, I'm sick of losing money on this. I was prepared to do it if people could see it, but when they can't even see it, it just falls off. And they, you know, I was like, right, I'm done, you know, like I'm done with doc. So we haven't met a doc for about. Well, we had to go out actually. We did one in Said Naya prison in Syria with 11 on one. But we haven't really made a proper doc for about two or three years because of this. And to be honest, it's, it just really has stopped us. Luckily, through a white eyes, I found unfortunately a way to get through it. I was always very against self censoring but you know, I've accepted it now. So we are going to start doing docs again. I'm just gonna have to put, put them out. Very heavily censored.
- [27:11]
404 Media Host
Yeah, that. I was going to ask that like, what's your response to that? And initially your response was sort of, well, you, I'm gonna keep making this. And then, and then it just seems the YouTube response got so aggressive that you came to the conclusion, correct me if I'm wrong, that if we want to get anything out, we have to adapt what we put out, unfortunately. Because like otherwise, what's gonna happen?
- [27:32]
Jake Hanrahan
Exactly. And I think I was a lot younger and more idealistic at the time. I was like, I'm not going to bow to it. And it's like, you know, we live in hell, we got a dance in hell. You know, like I was like, you know, it ultimately it was like, that's my ego, almost like I, I shouldn'. And it's like, well, the whole world has to. You know, I personally don't feel that the west is any less authoritarian than our so called enemies. It's just done in a different way. I mean it is, you know, physically perhaps, but especially in England, we, we're feeling it so heavily. Like it's outrageous. Like I went to Nando's the other day and it's, it says you're not allowed more than one glass of Coke. And it literally says on the label it's government mandated.
- [28:13]
404 Media Host
There's a little sign, oh my God.
- [28:15]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, government mandate. So I had my little, you know, one government mandated Coca Cola. And you Know, people might find that funny, but the real implications behind that is so dark, you know, and we're just seeing it everywhere. And I was like, you know what? It's sink or swim. So, yeah, now I tried it with the white eyes and it's worked. You know, we actually have our own completely independent website where you can watch them uncensored. And it. The amount of signups were unbelievable. Completely for free, by the way. Like no one's, no one's paying for the Away Days stuff, but the signups were like thousands. And I really think five years ago that wouldn't have happened. I feel like almost the censorship has created a cottage industry for people that are against it. So I've realized that I'm going to have to play along with it. And so we have some stuff coming out for Popular Front soon and I'm just going to have to put the uncensored stuff on our Patreon. But we've had problems with Patreon. And then you also can't put 4k on Patreon. But you know, we'll find it, we'll find a way.
- [29:10]
404 Media Host
Yeah, we'll get to Patreon in a second though. I was just going to bring up the Away Days website. So you, you just uploaded the docs basically to the site. Like, is there a Vimeo embedded there or does it just let you upload video just like straight into the cms?
- [29:26]
Jake Hanrahan
So we bought a great friend of ours, Elias, he's an absolute wizard, man. Basically just build us, built us a website and yeah, we got server space and he even worked out a way to make it really cheap. And we can still stream 4K, like 25 frames per second. So yeah, we own it completely. Right? So we have it also. Even then, like Vimeo can't take it from us. You know, Vimeo was, it's there now. You can't censor it unless the servers get blown up or whatever, you know, it's there. So I did it that way because I just, I just realized, like, to really know it's not getting tampered with, we have to be the baseline to upload it, you know, and certainly me and Alias were talking about actually trying to make some kind of platform together to do that for other reporters, you know, but it would unfortunately have to be exclusive and elitist in a way because you couldn't just do it for everybody because of how expensive it would be for server costs. But I don't know, it's something we'll look at. But yeah, it's I think unfortunately that was the only option for us. So ironically, when I first started doing anything with editing and films and that, it was literally when I was about 12 years old filming on my granddad's like, digital camera. Just me and my mates just skateboarding, like, fighting, like breaking, you know, like nonsense stuff and editing it in Windows Movie Maker. And at that time, the only way to put it online or show your friends was to upload it. I think it was like Angel Fire or something like that at the time. And now, ironically, in 2026, I kind of have to do the same thing again, you know, because of all the platforms have become so difficult to not be censored on. And look, I don't make anything that outrageous. I'm not doing like hardline political commentary. I'm not talking like violence is good, like, which a lot of very big streamers are, you know, and because they're so big, they don't get tackled. And that's the problem because we are like, we're not big, we're not small. We're kind of like there. It's like, you know, we kind of, if we do get vanished, people notice, but we're not big enough to not get vanished, you know, And I do think that's a big problem, the favoritism within those streaming platforms and all the multimedia world.
- [31:26]
404 Media Host
Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Like, your size is great and impressive, but then you get to a certain point where it almost works against you because you're not obviously a CNN or something where you can appeal and have contacts, YouTube or whatever. And you're not a rando who, like, nobody's going to pay attention to. You're in that middle ground where, shit, we're actually going to get like the worst parts of the platforms potentially.
- [31:49]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah. Because if you do get taken down, you need your channel back. So say you have like five subs. You go, whatever, man. Like, I'll just start another one. You can't do that if, you know, I think we got nearly 200,000 subs on our popular front, YouTube, 35,000 on way days, I think 12 on my own. I can't just go, I'll start again. You know, it's just not gonna happen. You know that that's a long time to build that stuff up. And, you know, we're not Channel 5, we're not Hassan Piker. We're not, you know, whatever the right wing equivalent is. So, yeah, we're in a weird space where we can't just start again but we also then can't really get the, you know, get the attention. Luckily, we've. We've been, you know, decent enough and work with enough people that do have that level. Neither of those two actually helped us, but Tommy G, for example, randomly, like, helped us get our monetization issues fixed through YouTube. And that is really messed up that the way we have to get these problems fixed is to appeal to bigger creators that can say, hey, we'll help you out. And God, I appreciate them so much. You know, like, big shout out to them. Not the ones that completely ignored us after we helped them, but the ones that did. And it's just like that. This is absurd. You know, this really is absurd. And man, I thought we were jumping through hoops at the start. Like, it's so bad now, and it's very difficult, difficult. And now you've got, like, the new digital ID and VPNs and all these issues now. What's going to happen? I don't know. You know, I'm quite worried about that. We have viewers all over the world. We have viewers in, like, you know, restrictive parts of the world that they have to get their VPN just to watch our dogs. If we're going to be. Are we going to be taken off or for, like, you know, like having a anti Israel stance or an anti Russia stance? You know, who knows? I mean, I. I didn't think we'd have facial recognition without anybody voting for it, but here we are. So it's a. It's a little bit of a worry, you know, and I just don't know, tackle it. But we do keep finding ways to do it. But it's really, as, you know, it's an extra job on top of your job.
- [33:44]
404 Media Host
It becomes like, more than 50% sometimes.
- [33:48]
Jake Hanrahan
Way more. Way more.
- [33:49]
404 Media Host
Yeah. Oh, my job is now I have to figure out distribution rather than making journalism. And sometimes when I'm doing that and I'm focused more and I know I've learned to enjoy the business part because I think if I didn't learn to do that, I mean, I'd be depressed. Right? Like, I've learned to embrace it and I actually do genuinely enjoy it now, but. But there's a limit to, like, man, I just want to do some journalism. And I think everybody at 404 feels that as well. You mentioned Patreon, what happened with them then, because this is now not just about the distribution. This is fucking with your money.
- [34:19]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah. So, I mean, I don't want to go too hard at Patreon because they have been good to us, but they have also been bad to us in a sense where like, all of a sudden, we'll get all of our funds frozen, right? So this happened very recently that we're just like, hey, we need to check out your funds. Well, actually, they didn't. Firstly, there was nothing. There was just nothing that we couldn't get the money. I, you know, out it comes, and, you know, I have, like, people relying on me now on our team. It's not just me at all. So I got to pay people now. Like, some. You know, one of our guys is in Romania, you know, in a very impoverished area, and relies on, you know, he does great work for us. He's amazing. But, you know, there's no industry for him what he's good at where he is. So he's pretty much reliant on us. And I'm just terrified. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, you know, so it was fine. I paid out my own money and whatever. But it's one of these ones where all of a sudden, your. Your money just goes. And it just vanished into the ether like it was nowhere. It didn't come through. There was no message. There was nothing. So I withdraw my money and it vanishes. And there's just. I mean, to this day, there is still no live chat on Patreon, right, For help. It's just insufferable. The back end. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it. It's a disaster. I'll be honest. Every new update, it's buggy, it's confusing. It's like, oh, you need help with this? Yeah, click it. Oh, here's 50 articles. You know, and it's just like, this is madness. And long story short, eventually, after, I think, two weeks, and me just sending constant emails, luckily someone I know who, who, you know, has money offered to give us, like, lawyers for free if. If. If it never came back. And I was like, thank God. And, you know, I emailed them, like, look, we're gonna have to do this illegal thing. And all of a sud. It just all came back and there was nothing. And eventually all the retroactive emails come through. What's the problem? And it's like, man, this is not good. You know, this really is not good. And it's not like, oh, big, poor me with my independent journalism. No, it's just wrong. Like, you know, like, if you're doing this independently or whatever, you shouldn't be accepting one day's pay late. You know, if you don't get paid in a normal job. You don't come back to work the next day or the next day.
- [36:24]
404 Media Host
Well, Vice had an issue paying some freelancers, but, you know, as do a bunch of other outlets.
- [36:28]
Jake Hanrahan
But, yes, yeah, when I first started working there, I never forget I was paid 78 weeks late in a row.
- [36:34]
404 Media Host
But, yes, you're right. With a salary, you don't just rock up the next day. You're like, what the hell? Yeah, yeah.
- [36:39]
Jake Hanrahan
You know, or if. And if you go to your manager and they just don't tell you anything and you're just silent, you'd be like, right, I'm out. You know, like. And I've always said this, freelancers, unfortunately, we can't live like this. But we. I mean, you know, we're independent. We're essentially freelance on a way. And it's like, freelancers, like, you shouldn't be paid one minute late ever. Not once. Once is unacceptable. One minute late is unacceptable. I don't care. It's not fair because the people at the top are not getting paid late, you know what I'm saying? Ever. And, you know, it wasn't like Patreon struggling. Just for some reason, we got hit with this thing and through whatever reason, they don't have the adequate customer, you know, service to help you. And I just think that's. It's just. I don't know, man. I think it's become almost acceptable now. I noticed it with YouTube. Good luck speaking to anyone at YouTube. You know, it's so difficult. You know, there's this thing now where they just expect, like, yeah, we. We don't really have to get back to you. We have no obligation. You know, you're just talking to an AI chat bot, an email. Like, nobody helps. And it's just beyond. It's so bad. I. I think the bare minimum, you should at least be like, well, the people that literally make us money, you know, that they take us the percentage off, we should probably get back to them if everything goes wrong, you know, ironically, the only people that have ever got back to us is Twitter, like, in a timely fashion, and really tried to help us, and we had a very minor issues with them, like, like shadow banning or.
- [37:55]
404 Media Host
Or what was it?
- [37:56]
Jake Hanrahan
We got banned once, like, randomly. I got banned. Me and this lad were, like, having a joke and I said, yeah, come and meet me after school and we'll have a fight. You know, like, we're messing around, like, banter. And I got banned for that. And I was like, what the Hell. And you know, eventually they were like, we're so sorry, like we sort it out. And I was like, oh thanks. A guy from Bellinga actually helped me like, you know, put a lot of tweets out and it was great. Nick, he's brilliant. But yeah, it was, it's just crazy now that you kind of, you can just make all these companies money and make the, you make the platforms what they are, right? Without it's users, Patreon is nothing and they just have no obligation to get back to you. You know, I'm sure it's illegal part of the time. I'm sure there's like trade in standard laws where you, you have to get back to people in timely manners. But yeah, it's just madness. And I think that's just, it's going to get worse and worse with AI. You know, like half the time you now just end up talking to a chat bot and then it's like here's a link to the problem that isn't the one you told me about. And yeah, I just pray it doesn't happen again. You're constantly on eggshells, constantly worried that the rug is going to get pulled at any moment.
- [38:57]
404 Media Host
Yeah, that's definitely the feeling. And I mean just on the AI thing, I mean, Jason just reported that the AI is so bad for the customer support things that hackers can then use it to take over people's accounts because they just trick the AI.
- [39:10]
Jake Hanrahan
Instagram. Yeah, yeah, Instagram the other day. Everybody's losing their accounts like crazy.
- [39:16]
404 Media Host
So I think just my last question is like, as you as an independent journalist, what sort of tools or platforms would you want? Like what would you want there to exist for you to better do your job? Is it just improvements to the current ones? Is it something different? Like what would you want?
- [39:33]
Jake Hanrahan
Yeah, I mean basically the ones we have and just the people that own them and run them stocks stop being children. You know, like it's infantilization. You know, we, we can post up a war report without blurring certain things because, and I'm not talking pure gore, I'm not even like, you know, like we had to blur the end of like a gun firing once, you know, like this nonsense infantilization. That has to stop. It won't stop because I understand that the only real, I mean people say they care about people and it's because of this. It's nothing to do that. It's advertising. Right, but advertising is infantilized. Advertising needs to grow up. I mean, go to the 90s when I started away days, I was doing loads of research into like my favorite period of TV, like mid 2000s. The adverts were absolutely wild. And rightly so, because we're adults, you know what I mean? Or. But someone might see it and that, you know, they might feel a certain way.
- [40:28]
404 Media Host
So what?
- [40:29]
Jake Hanrahan
That's part of being an adult. And I don't even mean it in this like, oh, anti woke thing. That's all dead. I don't mean that. Who cares? I'm just saying, like, stop treating everybody like a child. No one asked for this, nobody wants it. And the constant pearl clutching is literally leading to censorship. There's no other reason this is all getting censored other than it helps these companies make money due to the sensitivities of advertising. Do you think the CEO of YouTube cares what goes out? If he did, he would stop like AI slop. He would stop the absolute trash of like Mr. Beast and that because it's scrambling children's brains, it doesn't care. He cares about the bottom line and that's fine. But unfortunately, treating everything like a nanny state has led to really serious censorship. And well, it depends who you are. Like for example, if you're Hassan Piker or the other side, Tim Pool too. Degenerates, in my opinion. You can make a load of money, you can say whatever you want, you can incite violence and you can just still make the money because it makes them a lot of money, right? But if you're midway, as most people are, you're kind of at the mercy of them, you know, some random AI or some random guy deciding if it's, if it's worth them unbanning you because it will make the money or not, or it'll keep the advertisers happy. And all I want is the same platforms to just chill out, basically. You know, like I would love, I would love a anti censorship kind of YouTube alternative, but the pure amount of service space, it's just never going to happen, you know, like, I mean, you've got Rumble, but. But again, when you run on like no censorship, it just becomes right wing crap.
- [42:04]
404 Media Host
Well, it becomes something else anyway, right? Yeah, like Rumble is like a right wing cesspool because they've taken that idea but they've kind of done it in the other direction. Right? So it's like, no, that's not what we mean.
- [42:17]
Jake Hanrahan
It's annoying. I think all you need to do is just go, look, this is a platform. We're going to be adults and that's it. You know, Noster feels like that, you know, and it's just like, I think stop it.
- [42:25]
404 Media Host
But.
- [42:25]
Jake Hanrahan
But honestly, other than that, it's fine. I just think they need to leave the tools alone a little bit and fix the backend on Patreon because it's chaos.
- [42:33]
404 Media Host
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I'll leave it there. Jake, thank you so much for joining us. People listening check out Popular Front of the Way days. I'll put the links in the show notes, but thank you so much, Jake. Really, really appreciate it.
- [42:44]
Jake Hanrahan
Cheers, mate, appreciate it. See you in a bit.
- [42:47]
404 Media Host
As a reminder, 404 Media is journalists founded and supported. Supported 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 produced by Alyssa Midcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. Plus stuff really does help us out genuinely. This has been 404 Media. We'll see you again next time.