Why tech site 404 Media began requiring email address from readers

Hanaa Tameez of Nieman Lab writes about 404 Media, the new tech news site founded by four former members of Motherboard.

Tameez writes, “Until January, most stories from 404 Media were available to read for free. But after the four cofounders discovered — through their own reporting — that their stories were being scraped, paraphrased by AI text ‘spinners,’ and published on other websites, they decided to start requiring readers to provide their email addresses to access stories, and they explained why.

“‘We see how Google is degrading in quality. We see how AI content mills are digesting our stories and gaming the system to get more views than our original reporting they’re ripping off,’ cofounder Emanuel Maiberg told me an email. ‘It’s important to us, and we think it’s important to our readers to know why we’re doing what we’re doing, but it’s also in the public interest to know what Google, AI, content mills, etc. are doing to the general health of the information environment.’

“These are the types of stories, with that level of transparency, that 404 Media was founded to report, cofounder Jason Koebler said. It launched last August as a news outlet covering the impacts of technology on users in ways that are accessible, transparent, and relatable.”

Read more here.