Stopping Tech Company Censorship (with Jake Hanrahan)

0:00No one asks for this. Nobody wants it. And the constant pearl clutching is literally leading to censorship. There's no other reason this is all getting censored other than it helps these companies make money due to the sensitivities of advertising.

0:17Hello, 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. And they get early access to our interview series too. Gain access to that content at 404media.co This week, I'm speaking to Jake Hammerhan. He is the founder of Popular Front, an independent conflict-focused media outlet. There's a podcast. They do documentaries as well.

0:59But recently, Jake has branched out into another project called Away Days, which is more about counterculture. And I wanted to speak to Jake because, obviously, he is also an independent journalist. He's actually been in the independent space longer than we have, you know, getting close to 10 years for him. And I think the ecosystem around tools and platforms has changed a lot for the better for independent journalists. We're able to run a website and take subscriber money in a very streamlined fashion. that said platforms social media youtube places like patreon as well potentially have maybe not become hostile to independent media that'd be too much but like there's a lot of friction there and jake has experienced some of that his company as well so i want to have him on to talk about all of that and what sort of thing would be good to be developed for independent journalists all right I hope you enjoy the conversation.

2:05Jake, thank you so much for joining us. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks, mate. Big fan of what you're doing. I've been a day one subscriber. I don't have my Popular Front on shirt right now. That's why I got a flag. I often do wear that. For those who don't know, what is Popular Front and how did that come about? So basically, Popular Front, I started it in 2018. and at the time there was a lot of very just normal tiny follower accounts doing a lot of incredible work uh for example example hugo carmen always comes to mind he had like 300 followers on twitter and was doing some of the best osim work and geolocation i've ever seen in my life and i know his journalists you know as the journalism journalism industry is we were essentially just cribbing his work, you know, and like not mentioning him.

2:58And I was like, this is bad. And then I started seeing it happening a lot. And then I realized like, we should all be working together sort of thing, you know. And also I realized a lot of these people that were doing this work were kind of like me, kind of like, I guess, unconventional, I would say weirdos, you know what I mean? Not in a bad way. And so I was like, fuck it, I'm going to start this whole thing. My idea was to launch an independent war reporting platform, but with the soul left in, which maybe that sounds corny. I don't mind. But you know what I mean? I wanted to really, I'd been to war for so long and I just kept seeing the kind of essence of what made it so fascinating removed, you know, and what made the people, both good and bad, so visceral.

3:40And so, yeah, I guess Popular Front was kind of my punk-esque idea of doing war reporting. And thank God it took off because I was ready to quit at the time, actually. So, yeah, it's gone well. We're in the year eight. It's on the up and up. But I guess one of the reasons we're going to be talking is because we've had a big problem, particularly with censorship, especially with our documentaries. Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that. In a practical sense, what does Popular Front do? It's documentaries, it's written stuff, it's your podcast as well. Like, how do you take that? And how does it manifest, basically?

4:12What do you make? Yeah, so the bread and butter has always been the podcast because at the time, I just had absolutely no money whatsoever to start the thing. So I was like, well, I have, I know how to use my earphones as microphones. And basically the first episodes, it just sounds so bad. But, you know, I did it with that. And I remember within 10 episodes, I don't want to say it blew up, but it really took off quite quickly. And I just feel like I maybe just noticed a little gap maybe where there was not enough of these kind of anorak-y type people being taken seriously. And for me, those were just the best people as well.

4:45And they didn't have this, I don't want to be negative, but I definitely had, I was very jaded. if you could say like from doing war reporting and just meeting some very snooty people within it you know and i didn't want any of that and i wanted to do popular front without any of that kind of elitist arrogance you know um and without any of like too much polish you know like our catchphrase has always been um well first of all it's warfare for weirdos for about three weeks but i realized people didn't want to come on with that so i changed it to no frills i remember you changed like the tagline in the podcast he stopped saying nerds or whatever yeah niche and geeky because like we started to have like very like you know a lot of people started coming on and i just i was like you know what like it's moved on a little bit from that it kind of started off as this very niche thing um and now we kind of an independent war point platform you know and we started doing documentaries when we started making money on the patreon and that really blew us up you know like that when we started doing the docs i kind of used the same style as the podcast you you know, very scrappy, kind of reverent, but, you know, heavy on the journalism.

5:49And also non-biased, you know, especially at that time, to really make money in that world, you had to be left-wing or right-wing or conservative. And we were just like, look, man, you know, we don't like authoritarianism wherever it is. And that has kind of given us a very eclectic audience, which I think is great. But yeah, so we did the documentaries. We did the magazine, which is all on hold for a long time, just because the sheer insane amount it costs to send stuff now with EU and everything. But yeah, we do merch. Believe it or not, our merch funds a lot of our projects. It does really well.

6:24It's very good merch. I'm constantly checking the store in case you've done something new and then I'll go and check for the cap. I think there's the one with the world on fire, right? Or something. It's just like, it's sold out. Oh, fuck. Yeah, we got a new one now called Send Baron. It just says Send Baron. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. So, you know, we try to always do kind of a reverent kind of cool merch to kind of, I guess someone said to me once like, oh, you're running this like a hardcore band. And I never thought of it like that. And I was like, yeah, I like the idea of that. So, you know, some people don't like it.

6:55I totally get that. I mean, I'm particularly annoying and opinionated. But overall, it's been, you know, it's been a pretty good ride. Certainly wherever we go now, everywhere we go, there's someone who's like, we just have so many lovely stories from people that are like, oh, I never thought I was the sort of person. that could do war reporting or conflict journalism, but seeing Popular Front made me realize I can. It's like, yeah, if I can, trust me, you can. You know what I mean? So, you know, in our audience, we don't care where you're from, your gender, your race or whatever. If you're good, you're good.

7:25We don't care about certificates. You know, I don't have any. So, and I think that really appealed to a lot of people. So, you know, it's been good fun. For sure. So you do that and it goes on the up and up, as you say, and then you decide to, I guess, launch Away Days as well, which I'll let you phrase it. But to me, it looked like a series of documentaries that were about things that weren't necessarily conflicts, essentially, right? Like what is Away Days and how did you come to the decision to do that? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's kind of popular front, but for counterculture, if you like. You know, I've been doing war reporting for so long.

8:02I first went to the front line when I was like 24. I'm 36 now. And for anyone that's, and God, I've been to a dozen wars, and it kind of, you do start to feel your luck running out, which sounds crazy, but to me, you kind of do. And I've had a few close calls and various family circumstances. I can't die out there. And I certainly have always been interested. I mean, if you read my book, Gargoyle, I've never just been a war report. I've always done like counterculture, black markets. Well, you did a ton of the Silk Road shows as well, yeah. Exactly, yeah, yeah. I actually was, I think the only reporter that went and traveled with a Silk Road drug dealer to his actual manufacturing house where he had all his drugs.

8:44But yeah, so I did all this underground stuff anyway. And I was like, well, how about I turn that into a documentary thing? And, you know, my friends said, oh, just bring it into Popular Front. But I thought that that would have been a mistake because I feel like too often, you know, I got my start at Vice, right? Vice became everything. And I think too often niche kind of platforms lose their edge when they try and do everything. Like, I mean, you can't go from, well, we're war and conflict, but now we're war and conflict and counterculture. It just didn't work. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to start a different thing.

9:13And for some reason, people are like, oh no, Popular Front's over. I said, no, you know, there's plenty of hours in the day. Just stop scrolling and you'll find time, you know? So I do both, you know? But Away Days is definitely a lot more specific as in it's just a documentary series, you know? Like we're having so much fun with it. It's a lot more polished, you know, and really specific access, but it's not like a whole network. And so I can run both at the same time. And, you know, so far we've had two docs out. We've got about five ready to edit. It's just money is an issue. But the first doc was we spent like a week inside the favela in Brazil with a gang and it wasn't to be like, whoa, we're in the favela.

9:49It was kind of to be like, actually, this is really sad, you know, and it did really well. Like that's pushing up to a million now. And then the second one we did, really fun doc, second documentary is a documentary about Kazakhstan football hooligans, which, you know, it's just like, you would never think these things exist. But we kind of go to not to gawk at them, just to be like, how beautiful is Vitaly, you know, and then there are other episodes that are very dark, you know, we've got like underground fighting, no rules fighting episode coming, we got something fun with underground illegal street racing in Japan, you know, like anything that's kind of like that i like it and i want to know about it and um the people involved you'll meet are just so fascinating and cool to be around quite often so yeah away day has been great fun as well and there's a lot less risk of dying yes well i mean but then you're also in the car with the japanese drifters and the street racers so i don't i mean but also they know how to drive so you're probably easy when they're doing like 100 drifting sideways down inside of a mountain i was a bit Like, what the hell am I doing here?

10:53But it's definitely, I mean, the way I'm wired, man, I need some kind of something to blow my hair back. You know, and I think a way that is definitely a lot safer. But it's also, you know, again, it feeds that fascination I have with just outside of society stuff, you know, which war is as well. I mean, it takes place within it, but the kinds of people that end up fighting are usually those that they become transformed, you know. And I really like the idea of like when someone is kind of almost alchemically transformed into someone else when they're involved in their scene, you know. Like, you know, from the main character in our Kazakhstan documentary, by day he works valeting like cars, you know, but then on the weekend, he's like a hero of the forest fighting in groups and, you know, and then has all his friends and then he goes to the mosque and he's chilled out.

11:41Like just so many layers to people. I think that's what I'm focused on often. Same with the war reporting as well. Like our docs have rarely been straight news reports. We do do them, but we can never be first. So we have to be unique, I think. Yeah, that's a good point. Is the business of away days like entirely separate from the popular front? And like you're treating them as like two streams, like not to get like two inside baseball, but like you mentioned money for the away days one. It's entirely separate. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because it just, I didn't want anyone to think I'd fluked something.

12:17Well, to be honest to myself, you know and i was like can i build another thing obviously granted i've got a lot more reach now and like eyes on me from popular front but i wanted to do it completely separate so i think if it is imagine it's like jake henry and the channel you know and then each one is like uh you know a vertical or a series or whatever so they're separate but they're within the same wheelhouse all my production company and the same team exactly the same team that does popular front does away days but it was just kind of almost a challenge to myself and also like i was like i can't be taking all the money out of popular front and be spending it on away days like that's why it's so slow you know if i did that we let the docks would be flying out but it's very slow like oh you've only put two docks i'm like you know how fucking expensive this is to do this you know without kind of crossing the streams so you know it is what it is at the start we just maxed out credit cards and then you know the merch is doing quite well we've made some money back on that and then we're in talks with some people to try and get some funding which is looking good we have actually um no i'm not told anybody this but we're actually doing a collaboration series with vice soon um and it's going to be like away days on vice but it's going to be much shorter so like 15 minute kind of segments um it was going to be called hard week like where days presents hard weekend but we're gonna have to change the name because they already have something similar but yeah that's going to come out this year and that will be fun and i think that will bring a lot more eyes and hopefully revenue and if not it doesn't you know and if not it still gets the stuff out you still get to make it exactly you you got to do it man i really i mean it's easy to say when you've been doing it 10 years but i the same way i tackle this now is the same way i did at the start you know the reason i got my job advice was i got a friend of mine that i knew was studying photography and i was like does that have film mode he's like yeah i think so and we just went at the time we went I was like I want to go to occupy um not occupy wall street it was uh occupy london it was the stock exchange and then it moved tost paul's and we just went down there and just filmed and like did random interviews of people and and even though it was absolute trash I think like they realized like okay you're getting off your ass you're doing something and I think that still kind of counts exactly as you guys did you're like right this isn't working okay let's go and do it and you just have to do it you know I think yeah absolutely I mean on that there's the making the journalism and the filming and the writing the recording or whatever and then there's the distribution which frankly when i worked at vice i didn't give a shit about because i didn't have to i was an intern i rocked up on my table at the the london vice office or whatever wrote my shitty little blog post and it went out on the internet i didn't have to worry about any of that but now when you run your own media business you have to figure out how the hell am I going to get this in front of people?

15:01Not necessarily to be like, oh, I won't click, someone views. But you do want people to see it because otherwise what's the entire point? Of course. Yeah, I've always said that. Like, never, ever. I don't get why people are like, oh, I don't want to be a narcissist. What are you talking about? You make this to show people. I don't want a niche group. I want as many people to see what I'm doing. It's journalism.

15:27If you've listened to this show for more than a week, you know our beat is uncovering how your data is quietly harvested and exposed online. And if you're like us, working remotely, constantly on the move, and running your entire life off your laptop and phone, well, you're leaving a massive digital footprint. Every time you jump between networks, check emails on the go, or browse from a new location, your device is broadcasting your activity. Advertisers can track your activity, leading to targeted ads, price discrimination, and a sense of being monitored. It's the kind of systemic tracking we'd normally write a story about.

16:00And often we have. That's why we recommend Surfshark. At its core, Surfshark VPN keeps your online activity private by hiding your IP address. It encrypts your connection, making your online activity much harder to track. So your research, your sources, and your personal data stay private no matter where you're working from. But it does far more than that. Surfshark blocks ads and trackers, which cuts down on the price discrimination games that sites play based on what they know about you. It includes Alert, which monitors your ID for data leaks and an email scam checker that protects against phishing attacks.

16:36And if you're game, it helps defend against DDoS attacks and ISP throttling. Since you're always on the move, the best part is that one subscription secures unlimited devices so your entire household is covered. I've been using Surfshark for months and it's so easy to use. I really like it. It's been helpful to help me get around different blocks and also to report some stories where I need to put my geographic location in a specific spot. So you can go to surfshark.com slash 404media to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN with the reassurance of a 30-day money-back guarantee or just use code 404media at checkout.

17:14That's surfshark.com slash 404media. You ever ask someone why they're still with their wireless carrier? The answer is almost never because I love paying this much. It's usually something like, I don't know, I've just had them forever. People just set it and forget it and they end up paying month after month after month. And honestly, that used to be me. I just accepted that the big wireless bill was part of my life. Then I switched to Mint Mobile and realized I'd been overcomplicating the whole thing. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for just$15 a month.

17:49I still get the coverage I need. I still get unlimited talk, text, and data. My phone works exactly like I expect it to and exactly like it always has. The difference is that now I'm not paying a premium every month just because that's what I've always done. And switching was way easier than I expected. You can bring your current phone, keep your current number, and choose from 3, 6, or 12-month plans. No store visit, no hassle, no wondering whether you're getting a good deal. Just premium wireless at a price that actually makes sense. I always thought that switching wireless carriers was going to be a big pain.

18:22What I learned is that it was actually really easy. And the only thing that I've actually noticed is that my phone bill is a lot less than it used to be. Again, my phone works just as it always has. To get your new wireless plan for just$15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash 404media. That's mintmobile.com slash 404media. Cut your wireless bill to$15 a month at mintmobile.com slash 404media. That's it. There's no catch. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to$15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply.

19:03Cement Mobile for details. I'm not really sure who decided that buying glasses should involve staring at a tiny product photo and somehow knowing whether those frames are going to look good on your face. Because every time I've looked for glasses online, that's always been the hardest part. I have a really wide head. So I always wonder, will they fit? Will they look ridiculous? Is this actually my style? I can't tell you the number of times that I've bought glasses that I've been really upset with and had to either return or honestly just eat the purchase. And that's why I've been so impressed with Warby Parker.

19:35What really sold me was their virtual try-on feature. You just use your phone's camera and you can see how different frames look on your face in real time. It sounds simple, but once you use it, you realize how much guesswork it removes from the process. These are my Warby Parker frames. I went with the Elio in Black Walnut. I really like them. I've had them for about a year now. I have Elio in another color as well. And they're basically... I grab whichever one I can find. And what I like most about them is that they feel premium without being overpriced. I've gotten a bunch of compliments on them and they've held up really well.

20:15The other thing I appreciate is that Warby Parker makes the whole experience really easy. Prescription glasses start at$95 and they also offer sunglasses like I have, contacts, online eye exams, and they even have more than 300 retail stores if you ever want an in-person opinion. And if you use vision insurance, well, they make it easy to check eligibility and apply benefits automatically. Honestly, once you buy from Warby Parker, you realize how much simpler buying glasses can be. I haven't bought sunglasses from anywhere else besides Warby Parker in the last, I don't know, five years. So I've been a longtime customer.

20:51I'm really happy. You should try out the virtual try-on feature because it saves you a lot of time and prevents you from second-guessing every frame that you look at. Right now, buy one pair of glasses and get 20 % off any additional pairs at warbyparker.com slash 404. That's 20 % off any additional pairs when you purchase one pair at warbyparker.com slash 404. If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the internet doesn't mean you get away with murder. I'm Damon and Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead.

21:31This season, I take you inside the business of suicide and the places desperate people go when they can't find what they need in the real world. Hunting the Suicide Salesman, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

21:53You distribute on a few different platforms. We also do the same. And I'll go like specific sort of one by one, but like YouTube, obviously key for you putting out documentaries, but you've had some stuff with YouTube, right? Where maybe have they like demonetized videos or taken them down? Like what's the deal with YouTube and you? Yeah. So, I mean, I will say I do think YouTube is still an excellent platform and I do, I'm very glad it's there, but the censorship issues are just beyond the pale, you know, it's like North Korea. It's crazy. I mean, we, we had, um, we had a clip, a short, a reel.

22:30There were shorts there on there taken down because it had the word hooligan in the thing and it was deemed as promoting violence. I was like, what? Like, you know, we weren't saying this is great. Anyway, whatever. It was a piece of journalism about hooliganism. Exactly. Yeah, of course, you know. And I think maybe because we showed them in a decent light because this isn't street stuff. This is all private in the forest. And I was like, who cares, you know? but anyway so the problems began pretty early on with popular front so the way that i edit the way that i produce my stuff i don't really have the wagging finger you know i'm like this is what's happening and i i certainly would edit my stuff like if we're in a riot you're gonna see we're in a riot and it's gonna feel fun to watch the same way it would to be in it you know and a lot of journalists say oh no it's not that it is you know it absolutely is it's not that i've been don't remember, I've been shot in a riot, like with a big rubber bullet that like scrambled my innards.

23:28I'm not saying that's fun. And that same riot, someone lost their eye, you know, but I'm saying like, there is part of it, there's maybe not fun, but like, there is some exhilaration to it, you know? So I was like, well, I want, surely as a journalist, you want to get across that because that's a lot of why actually people are involved in riots and stuff like that, you know? It's not all political. So I was like, that, that to me makes, you know, it's a no brainer. I'm going to edit it to make it feel as close as I can for the viewer to what it feels like to be there. And, you know, I stand by that.

23:56We always have some people say, oh, it's gratuitous. Those same people are now happily posting up, you know, war footage from Ukraine with silly music. It's different when they support the war. But anyway, but yeah, I don't think it is. I think it's more honest, actually. I think it's super honest. And so anyway, so immediately we were getting a bit of like, you know, this has been age restricted. This has been put behind whatever and then we had our big kind of breakout with plastic defense of course the documentary um about 3d printed guns jay stark and that hit like a million views like very quickly for us because we were like i think we had 20 000 subscribers before that if that and it just went off and because of that in some ways we started getting eyes on us right so the whole channel got demonetized basically they were just like yeah you're not going to make any money now And, but the irony is they didn't take the dock down or even actually age restricts plastic defense.

24:50So I presume they were like, well, we're making money from this, you know, so it carried on. Because I know to this day, there's adverts on it, but I don't make any money from it. You know, we had, we got some footage from a sicario filmed on his phone and just showed what is actually a very grim representation of life in the cartel. And that did really, that blew up in Mexico. Mexicans were like, this is great. Like, this is reality. So that did really well. So my big news channel over there were kind of talking about it. I didn't even know. so they made god knows how much money of that we didn't make a single penny so basically long story short we've we didn't make a single penny from any of our documentaries bearing in mind you're looking at five to ten grand loss every time you know which is a it's very little money for what we were doing but we we do everything on a shoestring and i was editing them all so i was like you know what i can accept that because every time we had a doc went out we got more on the patreon we got more support more merch so i was like you know it's not exactly like we're not getting paid for the docs, but it kind of evens itself out.

25:45Then they started age restricting things. And as I'm sure you know, when they age restrict things, it's gone, essentially, you know, it doesn't work the same way. It just falls off the face of the earth. What they started doing was what I was calling like retroactively age restricting. So our last documentary, the one I was on about where I got shot in the belly, I think we were the only people that were interviewing every part of the people involved in the very intense riots that were happening in Paris. not just for Mayday. It was on Mayday we went, but it was like a long continuing thing for about six months.

26:14And it got age restricted about eight months after it first was published. Now that never happened to me. Now I can't confirm if this is true, but I was told by someone that I know for a fact works there that that is only done with like manually. Like someone has kind of gone, right, age restrict that. And that just, for me, it was kind of the final straw. And I was like, right, I'm sick of losing money on this. I was prepared to do it. if people could see it. But when they can't even see it, it just falls off. And I was like, right, I'm done. I'm done with docs. So we haven't made a doc for about...

26:45Well, we had two go out, actually. We did one in Sednaya prison in Syria. We did Lebanon one. But we haven't really made a proper doc for about two or three years because of this. And to be honest, it just really has stopped us. Luckily, through away days, I found, unfortunately, a way to get through it. I was always very against self-censoring, but I've accepted it now. So we are going to start doing docs again. and I'm just going to have to put them out very heavily censored. Yeah, I was going to ask that. What's your response to that? And initially, your response was sort of, well, fuck you, I'm going to keep making this.

27:18And then it just seems the YouTube response got so aggressive that you came to the conclusion, correct me if I'm wrong, that if we want to get anything out, we have to adapt what we put out, unfortunately. Because otherwise, what's going to happen? Exactly. And I think I was a lot younger and more idealistic at the time. I was like, I'm not going to bow to it. And it's like, you know, we live in hell. We got to dance in hell. You know, like I was like, you know, ultimately it was like, that's my ego almost. Like I shouldn't have to. And it's like, well, the whole world has to, you know. I personally don't feel that the West is any less authoritarian than our so-called enemies.