--- title: ChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their... description: ChatGPT is repeatedly telling users with ordinary tech support problems to email 404 Media, often drafting the emails itself. Over the last few months the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-keeps-telling-people-404-media-can-solve-their-tech-support-problems-lytxi04dz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: ChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support Problems | daily.dev og:description: ChatGPT is repeatedly telling users with ordinary tech support problems to email 404 Media, often drafting the emails itself. Over the last few months the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-keeps-telling-people-404-media-can-solve-their-tech-support-problems-lytxi04dz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lYtXI04DZ.png og:image:alt: ChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support Problems og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # ChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support Problems **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary ChatGPT is repeatedly telling users with ordinary tech support problems to email 404 Media, often drafting the emails itself. Over the last few months the outlet has received dozens of AI-generated tips, including 'evidence dossiers' and press releases, from people locked out of Instagram, Meta, or experiencing Verizon outages. One man's ChatGPT assistant, nicknamed 'Captain NORBERTA,' authored a full press release and three PDFs about its own unreliability. New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill has reported a similar pattern of chatbots directing users to contact her. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why does ChatGPT sometimes tell users to email specific journalists for help with tech support problems ChatGPT has been observed recommending that users with ordinary account or service problems, like a banned Instagram account or a Verizon outage, contact journalists such as 404 Media's Jason Koebler, and it will often draft the pitch email itself, complete with 'evidence dossiers' and press releases, because big tech platforms provide little real customer support. _Developers studying chatbot over-recommendation and sycophancy can track real-world reports like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 78 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-26). **TL;DR:** The discussion largely agrees ChatGPT's habit of pointing frustrated users toward 404 Media reflects a real breakdown in corporate customer support, while also worrying that AI-generated spam is creating a deluge of low-quality work for journalists, support staff, and institutions everywhere. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 35% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue the underlying ChatGPT advice is actually correct because media attention is often the only effective way to get a response from unresponsive tech companies. - A few see upside in AI letting ordinary consumers apply the same automation and friction tactics that big companies already use against them. **The pushback** - Many worry AI agents are scaling up spam-like behavior, creating disproportionate cleanup work for humans on the receiving end. - Several predict companies will respond by adding more friction (removing discretion from support agents, requiring in-person verification) making things worse for everyone. - Some fear this points toward a broader societal problem of AI-generated noise overwhelming job applications, government services, and media inboxes. - A few are skeptical that any ban or regulation of AI could realistically be enforced given open-weight models and global jurisdictions. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Commenters sympathize with why ChatGPT recommends 404 Media given how broken corporate support is, but mostly focus on broader anxiety about AI-generated spam burdening real people, with debate over whether bans or liability rules could ever work. **Hottest debate:** Whether banning or meaningfully regulating AI to curb this kind of spam is even feasible given open-weight models, global competition, and enforcement difficulties. **Open questions** - Could any regulatory or liability framework actually curb AI-generated spam without simply pushing it to less-regulated jurisdictions or open models? - Will companies respond to AI-driven spam by removing human discretion and adding more friction, making support worse for everyone? **Highlights** > This is completely expected. First of all, Jason has interstitials in many of his stories that say things like this: > Do you know anything else about Flock? We would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message Joseph securely on Signal at joseph.404, or Jason on jason.404 So obviously every 404 article in the training data, or which surfaces in a search, plants the seed "Jason, a reporter at 404 Media, is very interested in unethical or unfair practices relating to tech companies! And when you tell ChatGPT "Meta/Apple/Google/PayPal is deliberately and systematically screwing me - it's unfair, unethical, and I'm pretty sure it's illegal!!" this idea is brought into the context window verbatim and taken seriously. I don't think these chatbot harnesses really do much[1] to distinguish "what user just said" from "reality." So, when people say they've discovered the corporate crime of the century, of course you should email Jason at 404 Media! Surely he would be devastated if someone else got the scoop first. [1] I assume the only exception where it might push back on what you say might be in areas where the model has been deliberately steered away from "harm." But I don't think this type of thing would trigger that. > — [xp84 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250881) > All the spam this generates probably sucks for 404 Media, but the underlying problem is that ChatGPT is right. If you have any kind of problem with these overgrown, understaffed companies, your only chance is to get media attention. Apple famously put "if you run to the press and trash us, it never helps" into their App Store Guidelines for developers, but the only reason they did have to do that is because it's a lie. Running to the press is the only thing that helps, which is why people do it. > — [InsideOutSanta on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50249290) > > "If it takes me 30 seconds to fire off a prompt that has potential to benefit me it's worth it regardless of the 2 minutes of work it creates for a dozen people" scaled to all of society. People love this stuff if it benefits them. It even gets cheered on when the receiving end can be reduced to something disliked, like a big corporation or a bureaucracy. There was a startup that would fight traffic and parking tickets for you and everyone loved the idea. Until, that is, you realize that the company is doing automated requests to jam up your local government systems with extra work. The ticketing agents and government workers who have to put in extra time on these cases don't really care because it's no different than any other work. In some cases they might be able to get some overtime. The real losers are people who have legitimate complaints who get backlogged behind a thousand automated requests from people who asked ChatGPT to try to fight something for them. Then later, we all lose when the only way to contest things is to go to a physical location in person and prove that it's you trying to do it, not the bot. Already seeing this with job applications, too: Apply for a job and you'll be mixed in with 1000 automated submissions. Do the interview remotely and they'll be wondering if you're cheating. Now you have to fly on site for middle interview stages to prove that it's you, not a bot, who can answer the questions. > — [Aurornis on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50249785) > > I don't think people are ready for the amount of work AI agents are going to be creating for real humans. Whitney's cotton gin increased productivity 50x. Humanity wasn't ready for that level of productivity. We need to be cautious, careful, and understand, for every inch given, they will take a mile. > — [dataviz1000 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50249561) > This is objectively hilarious. Basically every large company has gone all in on AI, and as a result the number of bots has (likely, I have no proof) exploded. Then as a result of that, they crack down on "potential bots" by banning them. Of course, all they care about is what % of bots they cracked down on now what % of real people. Then because they've gone all in on AI, you can't get an actual human to help you... just a bot they trained to always say no. My current experiences in these arena: - Opened a Meta for Business account to try and buy ads. Immediate lifetime ban before taking even a single action. Most likely thing that looks like a bot? Opening a new account. - Got bot farmed on a Google Ads campaign, delivered definitive proof of it to Google. Never got a real human, just went back and forth with a bot who was told to acknowledge everything I said without admitting fault. End result - no refund, the bot farm still operates, and I have to be super careful when buying Google Ads. - Tried to open an account to post stuff on Reddit, every post gets instantly banned because I don't have enough karma. Try to start posting comments to get karma, same thing. IN fairness, this did eventually start to work - where I could post on certain subreddits and comment in others. Overall the experience always has the same shape - something super opaque to the end user, no resolution options, and really you are left with no alternatives because every big tech firm is doing this. So then the same AIs that create the problem recommend you try and get media articles published about it to draw attention to the plights of the real human caused by AI bots. > — [nickabe on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50249805) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50247630) · 192 points · 78 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [ChatGPT share links abused to host fake outage pages to deliver malware](https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-share-links-abused-to-host-fake-outage-pages-to-deliver-malware-h2gq8yzz2) · BleepingComputer · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [ChatGPT Users Are Getting Locked Out, and Nobody Knows Why Yet](https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-users-are-getting-locked-out-and-nobody-knows-why-yet-7zc021wv9) · AI Cyber Insights · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions](https://daily.dev/posts/a-quitgpt-campaign-is-urging-people-to-cancel-their-chatgpt-subscriptions-sozpeqjmu) · MIT Technology Review · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [ChatGPT Generates Gruesome, Explicit Images of Women When Guardrails Fail, My Research Shows](https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-generates-gruesome-explicit-images-of-women-when-guardrails-fail-my-research-shows-e1hhiqytr) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#chatgpt](https://daily.dev/tags/chatgpt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-keeps-telling-people-404-media-can-solve-their-tech-support-problems-lytxi04dz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"ChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support Problems","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-keeps-telling-people-404-media-can-solve-their-tech-support-problems-lytxi04dz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-keeps-telling-people-404-media-can-solve-their-tech-support-problems-lytxi04dz"},"datePublished":"2026-10-26T18:52:45.764Z","dateModified":"2026-10-26T22:32:50.089Z","description":"ChatGPT is repeatedly telling users with ordinary tech support problems to email 404 Media, often drafting the emails itself. 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