Jason Koebler Profile picture
Oct 18 9 tweets 3 min read Read on X
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) Image
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: Image
In Pittsburgh, they are targeting traditionally Jewish neighborhoods, including the neighborhood where the Tree of Life massacre happened several years ago, as well as several suburbs with large synagogues Image
In Philadelphia, the targeted areas align exactly with neighborhoods and suburbs that the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia says have "vibrant Jewish communities" Image
They are also targeting the town of Hanover, Pennsylvania. I am not sure exactly why they are targeting Hanover, but it is home to the Utz chips factory, and Utz has highlighted that it makes Kosher products and has a rabbinic coordinator Image
A related PAC also funded by Elon Musk is targeting Black voters in battleground states with ads that say Dems are going to ban menthol cigarettes. These ads are targeted using "interest targeting" that a political operative might think is more likely to hit Black voters Image
Here are ads Jewish voters in Pennsylvania are getting:
and here are ads Muslim voters in Michigan are getting

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More from @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 Image
Read 7 tweets
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." Image
Here, Nvidia employees discuss specific YouTube channels they want to scrape, including @MKBHD's ("super high quality") Image
Read 5 tweets
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." Image
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
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
Image
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. Image
Read 4 tweets
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 Image
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 Image
Read 4 tweets
May 23
Scoop: I obtained the contract Samsung requires independent shops to sign to buy phone repair parts from them.

It requires:

- "Daily" dumps of customer data
- The "immediate destruction" of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts

404media.co/samsung-requir…
The contract shows that "independent" repair through this program isn't independent at all. And if you're a customer, you think you're going to an independent shop but that shop is required to share your information directly with Samsung Image
Four experts told me this clause means: If you own a repair shop and a customer has previously done a repair with an aftermarket part, you must refuse to work on it, "immediately disassemble" it and then snitch to Samsung about it Image
Read 7 tweets

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