What if you sell out, but no one buys?

The following is personal, unsponsored editorial opinion.

Legitimate news media outlets segregate their sales and editorial functions. Because when the publishers and the sales people are also the reporters, that conflict of interest can lead to publishing misleading or dishonest stories that are based on a hidden agenda of creating sales.

Know what’s worse than reporters who are naive, stupid or incompetent? Reporters who are clear-eyed, smart, competent, and compromised.

Meet 404 Media.

When 404 launched, I paid the annual $100 subscription fee and encouraged others to do so, too. Because I believed the founders to be reporters of integrity wanting to cover important issues and not letting The Man tell them what to write. There’s lots to get legitimately mad at when it comes to policing, privacy, and technology, and I want to support good reporters who uncover those things. But that’s not what we got. I want my money back.

404’s reporters are former journalists from publications like Vice and Motherboard who now also act as sales staff, editors, and publishers. They now write stories sensationalizing mundane, “Dog Considers Biting Man!"-caliber fare in an increasingly plaintive - and to date manifestly unsuccessful¹ - bid to sell ads.

404 says it strives to create, “society-shifting technology journalism … to create a sustainable, responsible, reader-supported media business,” yet many of its stories are just lamentable tosh, with clickbaity shock headlines. Some are recycled from former reports, others are straight up hit pieces.

Many 404 articles foment anger about, well, wrong things. I don’t mean injustices, I mean things the writers have misconstrued, or things they present without critical context the writers either didn’t understand or, perhaps worse, intentionally omitted. Poorly analyzed things, presented with incoherent or incorrect conclusions. Through poor, or shoddy (and sometimes, it would seem, sole and targeted) sourcing, some articles arrive at and then excoriate for, at worst, disingenuous or manipulative, but sometimes just dumb, conclusions.

And in this way, 404 Media readers get both angry and less informed.

What’s In It For Me?

When bad reporting indicts good people doing the right thing, and detracts from efforts to do real public service, and distracts attention from actual malfeasance; when reporters make themselves the story and strut and showboat in an attempt to profit on the backs of dedicated researchers and professionals who do hard, crucial, thankless work, it is rude and it is a waste of talent, and it pisses me off.

Poop, Not Scoop

When “SIM Swappers Are Working Directly with Ransomware Gangs Now” appeared, practitioner-experts who research ransomware, SIM-swapping, and fraud were perplexed. These experts, and local, county, and federal police, had been following this trend for more than a year.

The story contains bad, late, wrong, and irrelevant reporting by a non-practitioner reporter who seems to have less than full mastery of a topic that is well-reported elsewhere. As early as 2022, legitimate security researchers had written detailed accounts documenting the SIM-swap component of ransomware attacks. And more than a month before 404, legitimate mainstream press outlets had sufficiently and more accurately covered the SIM-swap/ransomware story.

More materially dated is a dumb, recycled-from-the-last-job follow-up article on “remo-running” - in which the writer admits that the tactics literally comprising the article’s headline no longer happen. The story is as timely and relevant as a slide rule manual, and its “sources” are quotes from a nearly two-year old blogpost and from a guest on a nearly two-year old podcast episode). Plucky.

Idiocratic Activism

In a September article, 404 Media expressed shock and consternation that a legally recorded video - provided properly to police by its owner - showed criminals attempting to steal a delivery robot in Los Angeles. Its clickbait headline promises a police cover-up.

The same public records through which the reporter learned of the incident show clearly that everyone involved behaved correctly: A crime-victim notified and provided legally obtained evidence to police, who followed the law and policies; the process was properly documented. Arrests were duly made, and the suspects convicted in a court of law.

Despite some aspirational sleight-of-hand about FOIA requests, the only “evidence” proffered in the article that even hints at potential wrongdoing is a speculative comment from an uninvolved fellow who says he, “thinks we can fully expect” that, in future, legally obtained videos will be shared with police².

Far from advocacy, this article has a chilling effect: any crime victim reading this story might reasonably consider whether providing to the cops legally obtained video of their victimization could result in being accused in the press of villainous surveillance. Irresponsible reporting harms communities.

If the reporter’s purpose was to call attention to abuse, he succeeded.

Not Stupid. Compromised.

From September to November, 404 published three breathlessly self-promoting feature-length stories about a well-intentioned but stupidly-executed feature in the MTA’s payment system. A subsequent story on a related bug not only didn’t credit the bug’s discoverer, Greg Sadetsky, but actually seemed to specifically claim discovery credit for 404).

Ultimately this “story” boiled down to an easy-to-fix configuration issue that could potentially disclose private data. In the scheme of tech vulnerabilities, this was just a lotta gum-flapping about how the article prompted the MTA to fix a routine software problem. Such power.

Another feature comprised misleading bait-and-switch codswallop about hackers “targeting” (but, it turns out, failing in all respects to exploit) a legal service platform that increases transparency of government requests for user data.

Still another took to task a tool used successfully to research and combat human sex trafficking, for its gathering of publicly posted information.

Perhaps the most imbecilic story 404 published³ was an ignorant “expose” on the United States Postal Inspection Service, which despite the fact that former journalist Joseph Cox had apparently never heard of it⁴ is America’s oldest law enforcement agency. The article details literally how Postal Inspectors properly did their jobs and apprehended - wait for it - a guy breaking into US Mail Boxes and stealing mail. The article unintentionally describes how, in their desperate gambit to arrest this man, USPIS inspectors shamelessly resorted to entirely legal means including use of automated license plate readers, video recording in public spaces, and use of GPS data provided to law enforcement by the private company that legally obtained it for their own purposes and not at the direction of law enforcement. Scoundrels! All!

Yet another babe-in-the-woods jejune ransomware follow-up finally spells correctly the name of the group being discussed, but the story itself is so … Well, TL;DR: Some online casino customers are people who steal money. Stop the presses.

They said “no” to giving me back my money - but, they tell me, that was for my own good. To empower me to retain, in my hands, control⁵.

Make a Difference.

I urge the writers at 404: if you still feel strongly that journalism can make a difference (and I certainly feel that way), please: go write for a legitimate press outfit, or a not-for-profit. If you want to make money, go work for someone better at selling and paying you for the great reporting you are capable of writing. Because, seriously, this stuff you’re churning out now is both childish and far beneath your skills and talents.

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¹ As I write this, all banner ad space on the site seem to have been filled by a banner from a marketing company, and another one, ironically, from the firm DeleteMe. Like the suit I wore at my bar mitzvah, I suspect, but I cannot prove, that a discount was involved in the procurement. having the same banners on every page of the site is as subtle as a frying pan to the face and if anything make the site look even more like kids playing Newspaper - even public service banners from the Ad Council would at least give the appearance of … interest. Fortunately for their cash flow, 404 also sells hats.

² This reporter (who writes often about surveillance) knows he’s being disingenuous as he admonishes a company for making video recordings in public spaces; in a November article, the same reporter wrote specifically of the difference between private property, “where,” he wrote, “you expect privacy”, and public spaces, where it has been clear since the 1960s that, in most cases, it is not reasonable to expect privacy.

³ This, friends, says a lot.

⁴ Hahaha, Cox refers to the “oft overlooked role of the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the law enforcement arm of the USPS, and how they catch mail thieves.” It would seem the only people who oft overlook Postal are those who actually don’t understand how American law enforcement works - this is yet another Coxian moment in which he unintentionally reveals the depths of his ignorance, while appearing to say, “No one knew how complicated stopping mail theft was.” Next up: The United States Marine Corps, which lets armed men and women shoot at people.

⁴ “Because we strive to put control in the hands of the reader with this friction-free subscription management interface, we do not offer refunds unless there are extenuating circumstances—please email us at support@404media.co” [source]