jkoebler

I wrote this article. The quote is in the headline because Instagram is calling it an error, I am not calling it an error. People have been wondering what happened and why, and have been posting on Reddit wondering why there’s no media attention. It’s a small signal, but I put the quote around “error” to indicate that I did some reporting and got official word from Meta about what happened, and was not just speculating.

Naming the site was a big struggle sesh. Lots of good names are taken, weren't the right vibe, etc. We sort of made the joke "404 Media Company Not Found" to ourselves but, I think to be honest we:

1) Like how it sounds

2) People get it right away, even folks I know who don't care a lot about tech journalism or aren't super internet savvy (maybe they are even more likely to find themselves on 404 pages!)

3) This is a little pretentious and not the actual reason we chose it (i.e. we realized it later), but we really do want to tell stories from "hidden" parts of the internet / tech and the undercovered parts of it. 404 pages are full of easter eggs, and maybe it's just something about accidentally stumbling onto a community or wold you didn't previously know existed.

AI will be one of our core coverage areas and I'm sure we will be doing pieces both short and in-depth on AI alignment, doomerism, optimism, etc.

We're going to join Mastodon I promise. Honestly the reason we haven't joined Mastodon yet is because there have been a million little things to adjust/fix in the days leading up to launch to make sure the site didn't break, to edit the stories, get art done, backend business stuff as well.

There are a lot of things we wanted to launch with that we haven't had time to do yet, which doesn't mean it's not a priority. As you can imagine we've had a few (very minor) urgent fires in the leadup to launch, so tbh our social media accounts across the board have taken a temporary backseat. Mastodon is high on our list and I'm sure we'll be there by the end of the week if not the end of the day.

Thank you for your support!

We know that it has an audience because millions of people read our journalism at Motherboard every month. We are making a bet that a small fraction of those people will be willing to pay for accountability journalism and offbeat stuff that people care about (porn, for one, but lots other things) but that might make advertisers nervous.

We are under no illusion that this will be easy but we are excited to give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is that we tried our best on something we really believe in and enjoy doing, it doesn't work financially, and we ultimately have to go do something else. We are hopeful and optimistic that we CAN make it work, but already we are overwhelmed and thrilled with the response. It's only our second day but we're committed to becoming a vital publication for people who care about how tech impacts humans, and how humans impact tech. We understand we will need to prove this day in and day out for people to feel like they are getting their money's worth, or that their money is supporting a force for good in the world/the internet. But we really want to make that happen. Thanks for the kind words

Thanks for reading! Lots more to come :)

Hey there, Jason from 404 Media here. We're humbled that someone posted this and just wanted to say I'll stick around for an hour or so before I have a few interviews for articles scheduled, if anyone has any questions/thoughts/feedback. We're very grateful for the support and thrilled to be here

I'm the author of this article—both CTIA and CompTIA are lobbying against these bills, but CompTIA is the most actively outspoken.

If you are a member of CompTIA or certified by them or have any thoughts about them please reach out to me (my Twitter DMs are open: twitter.com/jason_koebler ... are Signal numbers allowed on here?), because I'm working on a deeper investigation about the group's shift from a certifications body to a lobbying arm of big tech.

From the article (which I wrote, happy to answer questions) ... this is quoted in the court decision i.e., was written by a judge not by the defendant:

"PCKompaniet does not pretend or market itself as Apple authorized and does not give any indication that the repair comes with an Apple warranty.”"

Hey—I wrote this article ... if anyone forks this and makes it real please let me know. @jason_koebler on twitter or [email protected]

Scalpers join fan clubs and have people on the inside who can do name changes for them