ChatGPT Keeps Sending Users to 404 Media for Tech Support

A Russian man whose Instagram account was banned asked ChatGPT for help. The chatbot told him he had "lost access not merely to a social media profile, but potentially to years" and pointed him at 404 Media founder Jason Koebler. An Italian painter sent a similar email. So did a Verizon customer who wanted "an independent investigation into why their Verizon cell phone service wasn't working."

They all cited the same source: ChatGPT told them to.

404 Media reports it has been fielding a steady stream of these messages, many written entirely by the chatbot, pitching the small independent outlet as the right venue for routine consumer-tech complaints. One sender, asked how he found the site, wrote back: "ChatGPT suggested contacting you. I was looking for journalists who investigate technology companies, particularly Meta." The chatbot has also produced "evidence dossiers," formatted documents and at least one press release titled "Texas entrepreneur seeks answers from OpenAI," generated via a custom GPT the sender had named Captain NORBERTA.

Koebler's reading is that the model has absorbed a real dynamic about how escalation works. Tech companies, he notes, "often could not care less about the experiences of marginalized groups using their platforms," but they "do care about getting bad press." The chatbot appears to have generalised that lesson into a default recommendation: when a user's account is gone or their phone won't connect, email a reporter.

The story was circulating through the AI commentator set this week — seven of the people we track in our Who's Who shared it. Part of the pull is the inversion: the customer-service collapse at large platforms is now being papered over by a chatbot that confidently names a specific small newsroom, in writing, as the fix.