[6][7] Among the founding members of 404 Media were Jason Koebler, the former editor-in-chief of Motherboard, senior editors Emanuel Maiberg and Samantha Cole, and writer Joseph Cox.

[1][3] Fast Company summarized the outlet's creation as "bootstrapp[ing] a spartan setup consisting of a Stripe account and the Ghost web-hosting platform".

[8] In January 2024, the website began requiring email addresses to deter artificial intelligence (AI) article spinners from scraping its content.

[7][5] In February 2024, 404 Media released a report alleging that Tumblr and WordPress were selling users' data to AI companies OpenAI and Midjourney for training purposes.

[13][16] On July 25, 2024, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced 404 Media would receive one of three 2024 EFF Awards for their "incisive investigative reports, deep-dive features, blogs, and scoops" on various topics.