iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 20h

New on @indicator.media: There's a whole lot of online manipulation on Wikipedia that's just sitting there ready to be explored. With much help from journalists, researchers, and Wikipedians, I put together a guide on how to dig into the data.

indicator.media

How to investigate potential sockpuppets and manipulation on Wikipedia

The encyclopedia's public investigations and community tools provide useful leads for journalists and researchers

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

You’re right, save it for the weekend when you can really enjoy it lol

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

A fair point! I really appreciate you reading and recommending the piece.

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 26/05/2026

Today on @indicator.media: A handful of anonymous bots have taken over fact-checking on X. This isn’t hyperbole. In the first three weeks of May, just eight AI contributors wrote 50.3% of all visible Community Notes on the platform.

indicator.media

8 AI bots now write 50% of X’s Community Notes

The crowdsourced moderation project faces a choice between scale and legitimacy

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Absolutely awesome to see that my guide to using Skills in Chrome helped an investigator with his work! Here's the post: indicator.media/p/the-indica...

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 14/05/2026

In May's Show & Tell, @craigsilverman.bsky.social and I are joined by Amnesty International's Barbara Marcolini. Barbara spoke about her role as a journalist in a human rights org. and walked us through how she documented the Israeli military's destruction of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.

youtube.com

How an OSINT Investigator Documented the Israeli Army’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon

YouTube video by Indicator

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 29/04/2026

Today on @indicator.media: Would you be willing to live alone in a remote Norwegian cabin for 90 days in exchange for $8 million? What about forgoing your phone to stay in a tropical overwater villa for $3.7 million?

indicator.media

How “isolation challenge” videos on TikTok act as lures for online scams

TikTok removed hundreds of videos pushing hoax reward schemes after Indicator reached out

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 17/04/2026

Today on @indicator.media’s free Briefing: Google ran ads on search results for queries about removing nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII). Most of the ads promoted generic content removal products that don’t provide a tailored service for NCII. Most importantly, all of them are paid services.

indicator.media

Briefing: Google shows ads when people search for help removing intimate images

Plus: X pays clickbait accounts a little less

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Was fun to contribute to this great, free training initiative from GIJN!

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I would absolutely love to know who Adam Back thinks is Satoshi, and to hear his reasoning.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I’ve been mulling the Times piece and I think one important critique is that the story compared writing but did not compare code. Satoshi and Back have written a decent amount of code. People have pointed out that the styles are different & Back isn’t as strong in the language used for Bitcoin…

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Agree the NYT piece is not a smoking gun. But seems to be a strong case. Do you have alt theories? I’m not very steeped in the Satoshi lore

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

It would always have presented a trail for investigation. I def would not have had the self control to sit on it, but then again I’m not a crypto, ecash, and privacy genius!

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Very rude of him to not send me any bitcoin tbh

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

But if any of that bitcoin gets spent, it will set off a massive hunt to see where to goes. So if Satoshi is alive he’s kind of trapped. And Back is wealthy enough to not need to spend it. Plus, if he really is Satoshi then he likely has his own personal Bitcoin stash outside of Satoshi’s.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Pretty surprising to wake up and discover that a guy I worked with at a tech company in Montreal is likely Satoshi Nakamoto: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/b...

nytimes.com

My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

We did a great podcast with @koltai.bsky.social where she walked through the tools and techniques used to expose the infrastructure and people behind abusive AI nudifier websites. It's a fun OSINT tutorial about holding awful people accountable: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn58...

youtube.com

Unmasking AI Nudifier Networks: OSINT Techniques from Bellingcat's Kolina Koltai

YouTube video by Indicator

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 02/04/2026

On the pod, @craigsilverman.bsky.social, Craig’s cat Rosie, and I walked thru these investigations with Kolina. Kolina showed us how she uses tools like DNSlytics, DomainTools, and OpenCorporates to connect nefarious websites together and reveal their ultimate owner(s). Check it out!

youtu.be

Unmasking AI Nudifier Networks: OSINT Techniques from Bellingcat's Kolina Koltai

YouTube video by Indicator

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Great to talk to @craigsilverman.bsky.social from @indicator.media about why 2026 is a year of change in the beneficial ownership world - and what it means for people trying to find out the real owners of companies and trusts indicator.media/p/finding-th... #beneficialownership #OSINT #GODIN

indicator.media

Finding the real owner of a company: a guide to beneficial ownership in the EU, UK, and beyond

2026 could be a turning point for universal beneficial ownership data. Here's what investigators need to know.

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexander Howard @digiphile.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I bet you a loonie that Musk’s embrace of "unreliable information" -- actual false news – "extreme hyperpartisan rhetoric," "AI slop, & sexualized imagery" will both undermine AND derail Bier’s product roadmap, @craigsilverman.bsky.social: it's a structural conflict. indicator.media/p/briefing-x...

indicator.media

Briefing: X planned to rein in overseas info hustlers. Then Elon stepped in

Plus: Tools for Telegram, geolocation, and running AI models locally.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Today's free Briefing looks at how Musk's embrace of extreme politics and slop threatens to derail X's product roadmap. We also cover essential news and tools for digital investigators: Telegram search, a geolocation model you can run locally, and more. indicator.media/p/briefing-x...

indicator.media

Briefing: X planned to rein in overseas info hustlers. Then Elon stepped in

Plus: Tools for Telegram, geolocation, and running AI models locally.

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 24/03/2026

Cool guide out today on @indicator.media! Reverse image search is a valuable verification tool. But sometimes you want to search within an image bank that is not public. @ishaan-jhavs.bsky.social explains how to do it:

indicator.media

The Indicator Guide to building your own reverse image search engine

Step-by-step instructions for how to index a private dataset of images (or videos) and run reverse image search queries against it.

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 18/03/2026

NEW on @indicator.media: Tech companies have promised to help limit the damage to online truth-seeking by labeling AI content. But Indicator's latest audit found that this labeling infrastructure has multiple failure points

indicator.media

AI labeling is still very much a work in progress

Indicator’s latest audit of three generators and five social media platforms revealed multiple gaps

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

A real doctor hid behind a pseudonym to flood social media with AI-generated health slop — and sell books off the back of it. He accumulated tens of millions of views & millions of followers and sold books like "Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally.” New investigation: indicator.media/p/a-real-doc...

indicator.media

A real doctor used a pseudonym to post viral health AI slop and sell books

Dr. Hakim Bahdo generated tens of millions of views and attracted millions of followers as "Dr. Kim Bado."

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Folks, this is best edition of our free newsletter that we’ve ever published. Absolutely jam packed with insights, analysis, and tools to make you a smarter consumer and investigator of digital information. Check it out:

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 02/03/2026

Check out the latest episode of @indicator.media Show & Tell! Maldita.es has been doing some incredible work investigating scams, disinformation, and worse on the biggest tech platforms. So Craig and I got @cjimenezcruz.bsky.social to walk us through three of them, spreadsheets in hand.

youtube.com

Inside The Tools & Techniques That Exposed Facebook Transit Scams And TikTok's Polarization Industry

YouTube video by Indicator

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 27/02/2026

Toronto's @thestar.com sent a cease and desist letter to the creator of the podcast network that @indicator.media wrote about on Wednesday. He has promised to reverse course. www.thestar.com/opinion/publ...

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

It’s absolutely a challenge and concern!

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

They unfortunately often won’t comment on specific accounts. Meta said what action they took at the time but didn’t explain why some accounts were left untouched.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Here's a video about my recent investigation into more than two dozen accounts using AI-generated doctors and health professionals to push dubious advice and sell products on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube: indicator.media/p/ai-generat...

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 25/02/2026

NEW on @indicator.media: I found an AI-generated podcast network that has published 350,000 episodes in the past month. That's 11,000 episodes a day, or about one year's worth of audio content. You'll be shocked to find out it's not generating original material.

indicator.media

This AI-generated podcast network publishes 11,000 episodes a day. It also ripped off media outlets

Daily News Now tops search results for local news podcasts with AI content

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Ecommerce fraud is rampant. It's also easy to launch and hard to trace. My new guide to investigating ecommerce sites covers how to ID the store platform, trace ownership, analyze traffic, do a safe test purchase etc. I also found a few free, new-to-me tools: indicator.media/p/the-indica...

indicator.media

The Indicator guide to investigating ecommerce sites

A practical walkthrough of the tools, techniques, and indicators used to analyze online stores and identify ecommerce fraud operations.

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Reposted by Craig Silverman

Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 13/02/2026

Last week I speculated that by the end of the year a majority of “helpful” Community Notes on X could be AI-generated. To monitor this sorry milestone (and rate my forecasting abilities), I decided to build a free dashboard that tracks the share of AI notes. Check it out on @indicator.media

indicator.media

Briefing: Tracking the AI takeover of Community Notes

Plus: Tools for counting crowd size and generating Google Dorks.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Very cool to see the Canadian Media Association's Healthcare For Real project cite our reporting:

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

The marketers are bragging about it publicly. The platforms know. The FTC doesn't respond. And now they're moving to AI-generated creators and overseas stock footage to scale even further. Full investigation at @indicator.media: indicator.media/p/crying-gir...

indicator.media

“Crying girls will make you rich”: How marketers trick users with mass-produced "organic" content

Indicator analyzed UGC campaigns that generated over 2 billion TikTok views and found rampant violations of disclosure rules.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Behind it is an industrial operation that figured out how to make advertising invisible. I found a Miami creator who posted ~300 videos going back 8 months that often say she caught her cheating husband and will leave him "tomorrow." It's all a paid ad for an app, but users don't know.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

The result? Users scroll through feeds unable to distinguish genuine recommendations from paid promotions. They make decisions about apps, services, and personal data based on what they believe are authentic peer experiences.

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

→ Creators making misleading or false claims about their lives in order to pitch products → Platforms failing to enforce their policies I analyzed 6+ campaigns, spoke to creators, and interviewed marketers who openly talked about how their ads are "undetectable."

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

2+ billion views generated by campaigns with rampant violations of TikTok's Branded Content policy, and likely violations of FTC rules for social media endorsements → College students recruited to mass-produce "authentic" content

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Craig Silverman @craigsilverman.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

"Crying girls will make you rich." That's the actual pitch from a marketer selling packages of emotional videos that brands use to flood TikTok with undisclosed ads. I just published an investigation into industrial UGC campaigns. What I found is troubling. 🧵 indicator.media/p/crying-gir...

indicator.media

“Crying girls will make you rich”: How marketers trick users with mass-produced "organic" content

Indicator analyzed UGC campaigns that generated over 2 billion TikTok views and found rampant violations of disclosure rules.

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