Published Aug. 14, 2026at6:00am
The person behind the person behind The Dissent (opens in new tab), a 5-month-old San Francisco newsroom “staffed” by AI agents, is Maddie Frost. She’s the girlfriend of Dakota Carrasco, a 27-year-old BlackRock “portfolio specialist” who’s listed as the founder and publisher.
Frost, who works in finance, cheerfully said she hoped the story would make The Dissent “go viral” during Carrasco’s photo shoot for The Standard earlier this month. She’s been largely bankrolling the operation since they moved to San Francisco from Albuquerque a year ago and spent much of the shoot stage-managing to make sure Carrasco’s best angles were lit. She declined to be photographed.
Carrasco’s own account of the project is more high-minded. He says The Dissent, was inspired by news deserts and the amount of local information young voters get from Instagram instead of legitimate news operations.
The Bay Area is hardly a news desert; San Francisco alone has 35 publications covering local news, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative.