Proton, the company behind ProtonMail and other privacy-focused products, told staff on Monday it would be ‘re-interviewing’ staff across the company about how they use AI in their jobs, with the implication that the interviews may decide whether staffers have “continued employment,” according to an internal Proton email obtained by 404 Media.

Garrett Langley, the CEO of automatic license plate reader company Flock, told an audience of police chiefs at a private police conference Sunday that anti-Flock protests around the country are not real, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media.

He also said his wife advised him to never apologize, said he would prefer to never do interviews with the press again, and claimed without evidence that the social media opposition to Flock is driven mostly by Russian bots.

“Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it,” Langley said about the many viral posts criticizing his company’s technology. “Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight. And so look, I’m the last person, my wife as well, she’s like ‘This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things,’” he added, repeating a disproven theory that Ukraine’s strikes on Russian data centers had a significant impact on internet bot activity. 

Apple’s $2,000 folding phone, the iPhone Duo, came out just two days ago and people are already seeing big fat creases down the middle of the folding screen, and some devices are cracked in the same specific spot too. 

People waited in line overnight at Apple stores to get this thing, and now we’re seeing photos of heinous cracked and creased-up Duos all over social media. In some cases, the phone screens have cracked along the crease, causing a crashout people are now calling “crackgate.”

“Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times,” one person wrote on Reddit’s r/iPhoneDuo. “I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen. As I continued opening it, I heard an audible crack, and the screen broke right along the hinge.” 

“How long before I join crack gang?” someone else wrote, posting a photo of their iPhone Duo with a wide, uneven gully down the center of the screen.

Other users report not just a fold, but a bright white line of stuck pixels extending from the center to the outer edge of the screen. iFixit wrote a teardown analysis of the Duo, and speculated that the components around the hinge could be causing this particular white line issue: “One possibility is that a central support bar isn’t retracting properly as the phone closes, potentially putting excessive pressure on the display. Another involves the curved rails that guide the hinge’s movement, which rise above the surrounding components during folding and could, in theory, interfere with the screen if they fail to move as intended,” they wrote.

Plenty of people seem happy with their creased-up new phone that only cost them two stacks. “Folks, it’s a foldable device. The crease is there. Just enjoy the fact that you have one,” someone commented on another happy customer’s crease pic. 

9to5 Mac reported that most buyers seeing the white line screen glitch have been able to get a device replacement from Apple. Whether Apple will replace a phone that’s showing the center line crease everyone else is complaining about is yet to be seen. Apple did not immediately respond to my request for comment about the crease. 

Apple released the Duo seven years after Samsung’s Galaxy Fold hit the market. That line of phones also gets a crease down the middle after using it for long enough that users say gets more noticeable with time. But the wait and hype around the Duo has meant gadget YouTubers and journalists have put this thing through extreme paces. TheCaseTester tested it with 1,000 folds and saw the crease by the end; Tim Pan folded his 11,500 times and saw a similar result. CNET’s test with a folding machine they custom-built to test the Duo just passed 55,000 folds. Journalist Joanna Stern found that after 32,000 folds, it felt “pretty much the same.” 

Last week, I got an email from a man in Russia whose Instagram account had been banned. “I have now lost access to 13 years of personal photos, videos and memories,” he wrote. “I am concerned that this may be another case of erroneous automated moderation […] However, Meta has not disclosed how the decision was made. Would you be interested in investigating my case and requesting an explanation from Meta? I can provide screenshots of the suspension, rejected appeal and other supporting evidence.”

The email seemed AI-generated, like many others we have gotten recently. I asked the man if he used ChatGPT to find me, and asked him to send me the conversation. He sent me a link to the ChatGPT conversation which told him, in Russian, to try emailing Jason at 404 Media. 

“How can I get my account back?” the man asked ChatGPT on Wednesday. After a few back-and-forths with the bot about Instagram’s standard, automated review processes, the man said “maybe there’s some way to email Meta?” ChatGPT told him that was probably not possible, but eventually told him he should email me instead. 

“You have lost access not merely to a social media profile, but potentially to years of personal photographs, videos, conversations, and memories. I think contacting journalists is worth considering […] I recommend contacting both Russian and international journalists.” 

ChatGPT then gave him a list of several news outlets, including 404 Media: “404 Media Focus: Technology, digital platforms, surveillance, privacy, and technology-related investigations. Email: jason@404media.co.” It then wrote him the exact email he sent me, in English. 

Because big tech platforms essentially do not have customer support and make it impossible for their users to contact a human, many people experiencing run-of-the-mill tech problems have turned to ChatGPT. And, increasingly, ChatGPT is telling people that have normal tech support problems that they have discovered something journalistically notable and that 404 Media, specifically, can help them. Around two weeks ago, we started emailing these people back and asking them how they found us; universally, the answer is that an AI chatbot recommended they reach out to us and, in many cases, the chatbot wrote the email, according to reviews of a handful of ChatGPT conversations shared with 404 Media.