2025-05-09 23:49:07
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss the death of Mr. Deepfakes, introducing kids to the Manosphere, and working on big, difficult, high-brain-power scoops.
SAM: I’m gonna use my time to give a huge shoutout to Bellingcat, the CBC, and Danish publications Politiken and Tjekdet for this story, where they spent a ton of time and effort tracking down the guy behind Mr. Deepfakes. I don’t really know a better word to use to describe this investigation than ballsy—it takes serious nerves of steel to confront a guy at work and in his car about some vile shit he’s done online. I would be pretty nervous about his reaction, considering he’s spent years thinking he’s completely anonymous and untraceable, and now a reporter is dogging him in person. The way they conducted the investigation is also really impressive, using crypto payments, usernames across forums, and IP data along with a bunch of other data to track him down. He eventually slipped up, and so much of this kind of investigation is about patience. I have a lot of respect for that process. Go read it.
2025-05-09 22:48:43
Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man whose family says he was “disappeared” and who wasn’t included on a previously leaked government list of people sent to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, was included on a private airline’s flight manifest to the country, according to hacked airline data obtained and analyzed by 404 Media.
That means a private charter flight company might have more accurate information on where people are being deported than the government, experts say, and raises questions about the process being used to deport people.
While the government initially declined to say where Prada had been sent before eventually admitting he was sent to El Salvador, the man was on a manifest for a March 15 flight held by GlobalX, one of ICE’s primary charter companies. The news also raises questions about whether other people whose families are unaware of their whereabouts may be in El Salvador too.
“There are so many levels at which this concerns me. One is they clearly did not take enough care in this to even make sure they had the right lists of who they were removing, and who they were not sending to a prison that is a black hole in El Salvador,” Michelle Brané, executive director of Together and Free, a group that has been working with families of deported people, including Prada’s, told 404 Media. “They weren't even keeping accurate records of who they were sending there. What that says about how much due process or how much accuracy there is in the rest of the assessments of whether these people should be on those planes at all follows very closely behind that.”
2025-05-09 21:09:22
On Wednesday, The Information reported that Meta is working on facial recognition for the company’s Ray-Ban glasses. This sort of technology—combining facial recognition with a camera feed—is something that big tech including Meta has been able to technically pull off, but has previously decided to not release. There are serious, inherent risks with the idea of anyone being able to instantly know the real identity of anyone who just happens to walk past their camera feed, be that in a pair of glasses or other sort of camera.
The move is an obvious about-face from Meta. It’s also interesting to me because Meta’s PR chewed my ass off when I dared to report in October that a pair of students took Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and combined them with off-the-shelf facial recognition technology. That tool, which the students called I-XRAY, captured a person’s face, ran it through an easy to access facial recognition service called Pimeyes, then went a step further and pulled up information about the subject from across the web, including their home address and phone number.
When I contacted Meta for comment for that story, Dave Arnold, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email he had one question for me. “That Pimeyes facial recognition technology could be used with ANY camera, correct? In other words, this isn't something that only is possible because of Meta Ray-Bans? If so, I think that's an important point to note in the piece,” he wrote.
2025-05-09 02:48:02
Job hunting can be a dehumanizing, demoralizing experience even if you’re interacting with an empathetic recruiter on the other end. For the 1.7 million people slogging through long-term unemployment in the U.S., the process is grueling at best. Add to this the advent of AI-generated recruiter avatars that glitch out on you before you even speak to a real person at the company you’re trying to work for, and now you’re truly in hell.
This week, TikTok user @its_ken04, who goes by Ken, posted a recording she took of 25 seconds of the “interview” that’s now viral on TikTok. In the video, the avatar says “vertical bar pilates” 14 times in a row, occasionally tripping over the words or stuttering, while Ken stares at the screen unamused.
2025-05-08 03:45:57
An AI avatar made to look and sound like the likeness of a man who was killed in a road rage incident addressed the court and the man who killed him: “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the AI avatar of Christopher Pelkey said. “In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and a God who forgives. I still do.”
It was the first time the AI avatar of a victim—in this case, a dead man—has ever addressed a court, and it raises many questions about the use of this type of technology in future court proceedings.
The avatar was made by Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales. Wales tells 404 Media that her husband, Pelkey’s brother-in-law, recoiled when she told him about the idea. “He told me, ‘Stacey, you’re asking a lot.’”
2025-05-08 00:14:36
Earlier this week TeleMessage, the company that creates modified versions of messaging apps like Signal and adds an archiving ability to them, made a video private on its YouTube channel that explained how its Signal message archiving tool worked, and how the company says it is able to copy messages securely. The hiding of the video came after 404 Media revealed that a hacker had targeted TeleMessage, which is used by the Trump administration, and managed to obtain the contents of some users’ messages and group chats.
404 Media made a transcript of what this video said and is now publishing it in order to preserve TeleMessage’s claims around the security and functioning of its Signal archiving product. The news comes after Senator Ron Wyden has demanded a Department of Justice investigation into the TeleMessage episode, including the national security risk the app poses. The letter demanding the investigation also points to TeleMessage’s marketing material which claims messages are protected with end-to-end encryption, a claim that both the hack and a subsequent technical analysis refute.
The video said TeleMessage’s app keeps “intact the Signal security and end-to-end encryption when communicating with other Signal users.” This is not true, judging by the fact the hacker was able to obtain plaintext Signal messages. The video also says “The only difference is the TeleMessage version captures all incoming and outgoing Signal messages for archiving purposes.”