Creators Worry Porn Platform Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’

0:03Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Get access to that content at 404media.co. I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are the other 404 Media co-founders, the first being Sam Cole. Hey. Emmanuel Mayberg. Hey, what's up? And Jason Kebler. Hello, hello. Jason, you wanted to talk about zines.

0:45Yeah, so at long, long, long last, we have all of the zines printed. I immediately after recording this, I'm going to go mail them. It's going to take many, many hours. We've got some help. We're going to have a mailing session. So a few people have asked, hey, where's my zine? The answer now is in the mail. And if you... So a couple things. One, I'm going to have some extras. So they've been sold out for a while. We will put more on our Shopify in the next day or two if you are interested in it. Again, the zine is about our reporting on ICE's surveillance apparatus. So very timely at the moment.

1:32Also for subscribers, we'll have a PDF of the zine on this site. And we're also trying to figure out how to make it more widely available. I think we'll probably do a pay what you want. And it's okay if that's free, just because it's such an important topic. but we're going to get that up probably later this week. And I actually don't have the URL right now. We'll put it in the show notes what the URL will be for that. But basically, Zine is done. It's going to be on the internet very soon. And if you bought one, it's in the mail. So thank you to everyone who ordered. If you didn't get one, there's probably going to be about 100 more that are going up on our Shopify in the next day or two.

2:21This is your announcement. So thank you so much. Check it out. So DDoS our site by refreshing the Shopify. Actually, it wouldn't even be our site. It would be the Shopify. So we're going to be fine. If you keep spamming refresh to get the zine, you'll be fine with that. Let's get to this week's stories. The first one, written by Sam, and I think Emmanuel worked on it as well. Aliens and angel numbers. creators worry porn platform ManyVids is falling into, quote, AI psychosis, end quote. Sam, let's start with simply what is this platform? I'm not sure if everybody will have heard of it. I'm sure some listeners have, but probably not everybody.

3:07What is ManyVids exactly? Yeah, so I think most commonly people refer to many vids as a competitor to OnlyFans. So you can buy subscriptions to different creators, you can buy custom videos, you can watch live cam shows, stuff like that. So it's a porn platform, essentially, but it's more for independent creators. so and it's been around since 2014 sorry that's important context because it's been around for a really long time oh i see so it's been around way longer than only fans yeah well okay so the ceo and the founder bella french what do sort of what's their background and what do they usually post about online i'm sure listeners can tell where i'm getting to which is the stuff in the headline but what what was her background and what does she usually post about yeah so bella is a former sex worker herself she's been very open over the years about that being the reason why she started many vids she wanted to create a platform that was good for online sex workers and content creators she had been on you know like cam platforms and things like that herself so she was like i can do it better i can do it more with like the interests of creators in mind and that's been the position that she's had since the beginning basically and many business pretty much yeah it's like she launched it very publicly like i am formerly a creator in this world i want to create a platform that's like beneficial to other creators um so that's that's also kind of been like the um i mean it's it's a marketing strategy right like it's like come to my platform and use my platform because i understand you and i understand uh the adult content creators needs so and you know as as a former cam cam model i can do this in a way that like the big you know like even like it was pre-only fans but even like the big platforms are doing it.

5:28So that's been the pitch for many years. A lot of people are hot and cold on many vids who use it. It takes a big cut. It takes a bigger cut than a lot of other platforms on different types of content. It's pretty flawed in a lot of UI type of ways, but a lot of people use it. It's got millions of combined users and creators. So it's incredibly popular. um yeah it's that's that's her background as far as like where she's coming from she's always been about i want uh to make a better uh more profitable experience for the people that i'm serving which are the creators on the platform first and foremost versus like you know i want to make a bunch of free tube sites for guys it was like you know i i believe in sex workers i I want them to succeed.

6:25So it's been her thing. So I'm just curious before we get more to the news. You say it became very popular. It has millions of users and creators combined. Do you think it became popular because of that sort of marketing pitch and position, right? You know, I think there's... This is a sincere position as well. Do you think it was that or the fact it came before OnlyFans or a bit of both? Why do you think it actually got successful? Because also, it seems like sometimes the product can be a bit faulty, as you say, with the UI and that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, I think that that has been a big part of it.

7:06It is a good platform. Most people who are on it are like, Yeah, this is a platform that I use in conjunction with a bunch of other platforms, which is usually how adult creators operate. It's like they're diversifying their revenue through like being on OnlyFans, selling custom content on ManyVids, doing like sexting shifts on Sex Panther. It's like different platforms do different things for people. And so you might find your niche here, you might find your niche there for different things. So I think that's been a big part of it. But I would say definitely that pitch and especially just like so many people being on ManyVids and using it as a huge part of the revenue stream is why the site is as big as it is today.

7:51Which is the case for like so many different platforms. OnlyFans, Pornhub, all these other platforms that host adult content are relying on the creators. It's like they can't actually make any money or be profitable without the people making the content. So it's kind of like, you know, a cycle effect. But yeah, for sure. That's a good question. I mean, I think it's definitely a big part of it that she's been like, yeah, I'm here with you. I'm in it with you. I want your needs to be heard. Sure. So she's been posting like that for a long time, running the site. Then something changed recently, or rather I will say, people believed something changed and they started to notice a shift.

8:37When was that? And what exactly am I referring to? Like, what was this shift that people perceived? Yeah, so around August, as far as I can tell, just kind of going back through Twitter posts and the news post, which the site itself has like a news feed that acts like Twitter, basically, or like X. but around August September August it started to look a little different it was a lot more like engagement farming like influencer bait type stuff like they would reply to other like prompts on X and be like our purpose is to protect feminine energy to return the balance and was posting bullet point lists about the boldness scale and how everything and all the leadership is connected.

9:30And it got like woo-woo. It got really like pseudo-spiritual business guru type stuff. And it stopped being consistently like, here's a new creator on the platform who's doing really well. Everybody check her out. It then turns into like, here's a flow chart that's hand-drawn showing a new safe for work model that we're going to do next to bullet points written by ChatGPT about member verification flows without a lot of context. And that's the thing is like, these aren't like formulated thoughts or like statements from the company. They're just kind of like weird, not even the level of like LinkedIn lunatic posts, like weirder than that.

10:23Like talking about like social API for the AI age, phase one, pride engine. It's like if I read all this stuff out loud, it would sound absolutely insane. It's like talking about high universal income engines, the distribution hub of the new economy. and it's doing a lot of the parallels that chatbots, especially ChatGPT does. So it'll say, this is not a charity. This is the pride engine. It's like, this is not this, it's that. We're not doing this. We believe in that. So that's why people think these posts are generated by ChatGPT or AI more broadly because of those characteristics? Yeah, I mean, it's that.

11:06It's just like when things are really like titles are randomly bolded, there's a lot of like bullet point emojis. There's a lot of like really choppy text that's like, I don't know, kind of like chopping up one paragraph into like a list. And then you also have AI generated images and videos as parts of those posts. So it would be just like videos of like an alien ship coming through a window next to a post about like the aliens asked why it took us so long to get here. And then you also have just like screenshots of literal chat GPT. Oh, okay. Which is like a big hint that it's all inspired by chat GPT.

11:48Obviously, we don't know for sure. I asked, I mean, you know this, but I've asked many vids many times who's doing the post and also if they're AI generated. and then they send me back more of the same, more very suspicious stuff. So yeah, again, it's like, I want to be careful about like just calling it definitely AI because we don't definitely know that it is, but like the videos definitely are, the images that are going along with the post definitely are and it's all kind of lines up to a lot of what we see just with different people who are really into AI chatbots kind of fall into a different kind of like pattern in this way.

12:31Yeah, a different pattern of posting, of what they're saying, all of that sort of thing. I'll come back and ask you about how creators are reacting in a second. But Emmanuel, I think he works on this as well. What did you find and sort of what did you think of it as you were looking into it? So we've been looking at this for a while. I think initially Sam told me that some sources who use mini-vids flagged it to her. And we looked at it and it was definitely weird at the time, but we kind of put it on the back burner. And honestly, we're a little unsure about how to cover it. But then in the last couple of weeks, some more creators reached out and some of them reached out to me and told me about it.

13:26And I think ultimately, the thing that made us want to cover it is that these type of... Well, let me... I should state again, just so we're very clear about this. We don't have full insight into Bella French or whoever else is operating these accounts. we're not psychologists um but our sources defined or described uh the the post as exhibiting what we now call ai psychosis and a lot of people as we mentioned before reach out to us with similar delusions and there's definitely a lot of parallels between like the content of the post and and other behavior like that that we've seen and all that you know has already been in the news and we've all seen various forms of it.

14:20I can't think of another example where a platform that people rely on for their income just spoke in its official capacity about this stuff in this manner. It's like, imagine one day you look at your phone and Stripe, you know what I mean? starts posting about the spirit gods and the future of humanity. And you're like, Oh my God, our entire income relies on this platform. The CEO of YouTube or something. Right. And it's like, who's at the wheel right now? So I think it's a very fair concern to raise and to report on. And unfortunately, I guess I wasn't sure what to expect, but the response hasn't been super encouraging.

15:11I think it's possible that there is a separation between the business side and the technical side and whoever is doing the public facing social side and i hope that that is the case because the platform is still functional but us reaching out and making it a story and asking for official comment and getting official comment back none of that was encouraging um can you elaborate just a tiny bit i know this isn't in the article so you may only want to say a little bit but what do you mean by the response not being encouraging just that any response you got was sort of more of the same sort of posting is that what you mean emmanuel yeah i mean sam could probably because sam did the the communication with with many vids but it's like i guess what i was imagining that there is a scenario where we reach out we highlight all these posts we say that creators are worried and somebody else steps in and says, uh-oh, we didn't realize that this is the impression that we were giving users and that they even knew that this was what was going on and they step in and say, oops.

16:26Or like, hey, this is just something that we post about, but the business is very safe and don't worry about it. It wasn't like that. It was more like, you know what i mean stay tuned for more spiritual awakenings uh that we will bring to you you know what i mean perhaps on the lex friedman podcast or the joe rogan podcast you know it's like that is like officially where we're still waiting for the ultimate comment is i guess bella uh it's bella right sam who says that she the only way to properly respond to this is a three-hour podcast which she suggests either joe rogan or lex friedman another popular podcaster should host And I would, I mean, by all means, it's a heavy, complicated, subject worthy of discussion.

17:12But I don't think Jill Rogan is going to have her on. Well, I mean, I think I could see a world where they would and it's not a good one because just to give more context to why this is all freaking people out, it's not just like, oh, this item on Post Weird. On her personal website, she changed her bio to completely shift her ideology and worldview of sex work. She sometime between November and now, because November is the last time we have an archive of the site and it wasn't there then, but at some point recently in the last couple months or weeks, she changed her bio on her personal website where she says she's working on MoneyVids and she's the CEO and all that, that she wants to transition 1 million people out of the adult industry.

18:04She says when she started the site, she had two choices, surrender to an exploitative industry or dismantle it. And now she's kind of bleeding a lot of that woo-woo stuff into this statement on her site. She says she was guided by first principles and core value thinking. Bella is leading MV's next evolution a fintech social platform hybrid that turns digital presence into economic creation our goal is to transition 1 million people out of the adult industry and do everything we can to ensure no one new enters it we are working to transform an industry we don't believe should exist but recognize that simple elimination creates deeper shadows so like I'm reading that as someone who's a creator and I'm like okay well that's the end of this site like if you're not gonna to allow anyone else to enter the sex industry, what's happening with new users on ManyVids?

19:00Why is ManyVids now this grand plan, this big scheme where you're going to dismantle the sex work industry, the sex industry, and believe it's exploitative all of a sudden? I mean, it's the opposite. Right. It's the opposite of what she's been saying for years and years and years. And like we said, has kind of built the trust of users into, like, I am here and I'm on your side and I believe in sex workers and the industry's right to exist. And then she's like, actually, it's exploitative and I want to dismantle it and transition people out of the industry, which is a talking point that you hear from sex work exclusionary radical feminists who want to ban sex work at large, ban porn at large and believe that like sex workers need to be saved from this vile industry that they've entered so all of that combined with these very public sort of meltdowns i think by the time this podcast comes out for everybody um we'll have published another post it's about like the response and the way that they've responded basically by saying like yeah we believe in aliens, like peace sign, like heart emoji.

20:18Uh, and yeah, the Lex Freeman and Joe Rogan stuff. It's like, I think that we should hash this out on a three hour podcast. Uh, and then more AI videos of her as a fireman with like lasers shooting out of her eyes. It's just bizarre, bizarre behavior from someone who you hope is like steering the ship. Again, it's like a manual We don't really know who's got the reins at this point, but they're hearing the criticisms and they're laughing. Yeah. And someone who holds the livelihood of all of these creators in her hands. And I mean, you can have the woo-woo stuff and maybe some people would already find that concerning.

21:00Obviously, the complete about-face, like ideologically when it comes to sex work, must be probably the most terrifying part to a lot of creators. With that said, what are some of these creators saying? Are they going to switch platforms? Are they going to stick it out? What are they saying? So I think a lot of people are sticking it out. They're saying, well, we're going to... We have so much invested in this platform, so we're going to stay and see what happens, but we're not happy about it. A lot of people that I... Or a few people that I talked to started from that position when I first reached out to them and I was like, Hey, are you going to stay?

21:40And they said, Yeah, we're going to see what happens. And then within like two days, as things just kind of kept getting weirder rapidly, came back and said, Actually, I'm going to start downloading all my stuff off the platform and getting out of there. So quite a few people that we talked to and a lot of people that I've seen just like online talking about this are saying we are... It's not even like a protest thing. It's just like, I don't feel comfortable having my financial data and my ID and all these things wrapped up in a platform that is seeming to lose touch with reality. It's a scary place to be.

22:22Yeah, especially now. It's like our data is being used for all sorts of horrible things. So it's a big risk that a lot of people are feeling right now to stay, but it's also a big risk to leave because you're leaving so much income on the table potentially. I don't know. I don't really see how this shakes out as good for them reputationally in any way, but I don't know. It's just like, this is the thing about online sex work, especially it's like, there are so many platforms out there to choose from and so many of them are, they don't have a lot of the best interests of the creators at heart or just trying to scrape some cash off them.

23:00So I don't know. It's like out of the pan into the fire situation for some of these creators. So I don't know. We'll see if it's like a mass exodus or what that inflection point will be. Right now, I guess we should make clear nothing has changed about the way the site operates that I can tell. I guess if you're a creator and you've seen something change, let me know. But I haven't heard anything major being like, oh, they closed new applications or new submissions because they don't want anybody else in the sex industry. It's like, it's all operating as usual. But it's like kind of waiting and seeing and seeing if it actually becomes like real instability versus like hoping it doesn't.

23:42Yeah. Last thing, I know we're not saying AI psychosis, this is how sources characterize it to us. But I think it absolutely still brings up the question of, is this something we have to worry about a bit more broadly? I remember a while ago, I feel like we've seen a couple of examples on Twitter, people having these seemingly AI-induced, very public meltdowns, right? And just what do you think of that? We see, obviously, people have psychosis like this just individually, complete members of the public, almost by themselves. and then on big platforms, on social media or whatever, like, what do you think about it?

24:28Is this something we have to, you know, keep an eye out for or be worried about? I mean, I think it's definitely, like, it's odd that it's happening to people in a very public way, like, once a week at this point. Right. I think we still don't know that much about how, like, quote-unquote, AI psychosis develops. I think I would, I mean, just in general, I know we're quoting other people and it's kind of like the slang term at this point, but it's like using chatbots is inducing delusions in some people that maybe they were already prone to. We don't really know. So like seeing it happen and play out with someone in a very public facing role potentially is really disturbing.

25:24And I don't know, it makes me wonder like how many people are going through this in isolation and are experiencing the same sorts of thoughts and feelings and like big mindset shifts in their belief system in private or in their families or just like among their friends and other people who like don't have the same visibility as the CEO of a huge platform. I don't know. It's definitely concerning. I was reading earlier today, I guess, the Anthropic CEO posted a really long essay, like a 38-page essay about enslavement and mass destruction of mankind via AI. And it's like, does someone need to check in with him?

26:10You know, like, are we okay? I don't know what's going on there. So yeah, it's just a little bit scary the way that these systems are putting people in these boxes that they don't hear outside voices. Even when I'm emailing many vids and I'm like, hey, people are freaked out. They just kind of keep going and they're like, yeah, we believe in aliens. Like, what are you talking about? If you're the CEO of a major AI company, it's not a delusion. It's like a fundraising round. You'll probably get like another billion dollars. Yeah. It's not a weakness. It's a strength. Yeah. It's like, we'll put that on LinkedIn.

26:49Yeah. Very conveniently making the tools that they're warning about and saying we're the responsible ones, etc, etc, etc. All right. Let's leave that there. when we come back after the break. Jason is going to tell us all about this pretty mysterious surveillance footage that did exist. Now it doesn't. Anyway, you'll hear all about that in a second. We'll be right back after this.

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32:05all right and we are back jason you wrote this one the headline is dhs says critical ice surveillance footage from abuse case was actually never recorded doesn't matter so So first off, what is this footage and what did DHS say before? Because you wrote an earlier article and this is building on it. Yeah, so this is like a big giant shit show. It's like a really messy situation that stems from a lawsuit filed by people detained in Broadview, which is suburban Chicago ICE detention center. that got a lot of attention back in October when ICE was doing really high-profile raids in Chicago. And so Broadview is a place where people are supposed to be processed and not held overnight.