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Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Jan 18 • 7 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

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Google News is indexing and promoting websites that immediately rip off others with AI clones of their articles. These websites are absolutely littered with Google ads. Our website, in which real humans do journalism, is not indexed by Google News

404media.co/google-news-is…

Google's stated position on this is that it doesn't mind AI-gen content: “Our focus when ranking content is on the quality of the content, rather than how it was produced. Automatically-generated content produced primarily for ranking purposes is considered spam..."

Let's look at what Google considers "News":

Here is a site called "WorldTimeTodays," which is indexed by Google News. Its website is almost entirely ads. Lets check out its writers and articles...

Here's is "Gary B. Graves" Gary has "written" 40 articles in the last 24 hours. Many of the articles straight up steal identifiable images from other outlets. "Gary" rips off multiple times a day. Here's Gary on the left and Heavy on the right Heavy.com

This AI farm published the cloned article within 5 minutes of posting their article. The article itself is obviously a direct rip, with very minor AI gen tweaks (AI on the left).

The AI altered direct quotes in the article, for example. Heavy.com

Here they've ripped off a Distractify article about Star Wars YouTuber drama and write "let's be honest, War of Stars fans"

This is just one "author" on one website. There are dozens of these. The site , which has decades of "Google Juice" built up because it was once a real news website (sorta), is AI generated clones of articles from @WatcherGuru now Examiner.com

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Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Oct 18

An Elon Musk-funded PAC is microtargeting Muslim people in Michigan and Jewish people in Pennsylvania with opposite messaging about Kamala Harris using ZIP code targeting, according to data I pulled from Snapchat. Few things from this investigation:

404media.co/this-is-exactl…

They are targeting areas of Michigan that have many Muslim voters with ads saying Kamala stands with Israel. I mapped the targeting and it is very specific. They are targeting an area outside of Flint that has a major mosque (but no other parts of Flint)

They are targeting a section of Detroit that is majority Muslim. Then not targeting an adjacent area that is 95% Black. Then they are targeting an area immediately above that which has several mosques. It looks like this:

Read 9 tweets

Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Aug 6

After months of digging and reporting, I have learned where Facebook's bizarre AI spam (like "Shrimp Jesus") comes from, who is making it, how it works, and how it is monetized.

Turns out Meta is directly paying people to spam FB with this stuff

404media.co/where-facebook…

Here's what I learned:

- Facebook is paying for virality directly via its "Creator Program Bonus"
- Influencers in India, Philippines, Vietnam have picked up on this and are making YouTube courses / Telegram classes
- Images made with Bing AI Image Creator

The images are weird because:

- They are copypasta prompts from Telegram groups

OR

- They are speech-to-text in Hindi, run through Google translate. Translations are bad (or generated directly from Hindi)

AND

- They are a best guess of what will play with American audiences

Read 7 tweets

Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Aug 5

SCOOP from @samleecole: Leaked Slacks and documents show the incredible scale of NVidia's AI scraping: 80 years — "a human lifetime" of videos every day. Had approval from highest levels of company despite staff legal/ethical concerns:

404media.co/nvidia-ai-scra…

“We need a volunteer to download all the movies,” one senior NVidia employee said. “We have to be very careful about Hollywood hypersensitivities against AI.”

Approval to download at scale framed as "an executive decision. We have an umbrella approval for all of the data."

Here, Nvidia employees discuss specific YouTube channels they want to scrape, including @MKBHD's ("super high quality")

Read 5 tweets

Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Jul 12

A blistering Goldman Sachs research report wonders if the massive investment in Generative AI will ever pay off, says stock gains are already baked in "outside of the most bullish AI scenario," and posits that Gen AI is likely a bubble:

404media.co/goldman-sachs-…

This one of Goldman Sachs' top analysts: "This is not a matter of just some tweaks being required here and there; despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful for even such basic tasks."

Goldman Sachs ran an experiment where they had AI do a task and also did a task manually and found that it cost six times as much to have AI do the same task as humans. Cites "illegible and nonsensical results"

Read 5 tweets

Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Jul 8

Ticket scalpers have reverse-engineered how Ticketmaster generates the revolving barcodes for its tickets. They are now able to generate authentic tickets on their own infrastructure, which removes resale restrictions and lets them sell

404media.co/scalpers-are-w…

This solves a mystery lots of fans who bought on secondary market had, for why they were being asked to open their tickets on "" or "" or some other non-Ticketmaster website. secure-tickets.com
amosa.app

Revolving barcode tickets work essentially like app-based 2FA. So the broker have figured out how to grab the token and how to use it on their own websites to generate a new ticket that no longer has resale restrictions and scans exactly like a genuine ticket.

Read 4 tweets

Jason Koebler

@jason_koebler

Jun 10

New: I've been reading the Gateway Pundit's bankruptcy documents. The election workers suing the company for defamation say the company is not actually bankrupt and is using bankruptcy as a 'delay tactic'

404media.co/gateway-pundit…

Gateway Pundit's own filings show that it has $2.3 million of assets against $102k of debt. GP has only one employee (Jim Hoft). One of its largest debts is owed to Hoft's husband. Company just loaned Hoft $800k

Gateway Pundit filed a request with the court to keep various info in its filings private, including info about who its contractors are and who it owes money to. A rep with the US argued this is the antithesis of what bankruptcy court is for

Read 4 tweets

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