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Alexios Mantzarlis

@mantzarlis.com
3.7K followers 1.3K following 2.6K posts

Tech, facts, and carbonara. mantzarlis.com

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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 7h
Today on @indicator.media: Google is breaking its promise to label ads for unofficial government services providers. Travelers are paying the price.
indicator.media
Google promised to label ads for unofficial visa providers. It’s doing a lousy job of it.
An Indicator audit found labels on only 8% of ads for visa providers that overcharge their users
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 11h
i had not realized george osborne was working for openai. meta had clegg. pick your fighters, i guess
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026
Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 25/09/2026
i'm looking to chat with folks who overpaid for a tourist visa recently because they landed on the website in a rush searching on Google and it looked like the real deal... ping me here or at alexios at indicator dot media plsss
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 25/09/2026
Big Friday energy
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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
With Claude I did a systematic literature review of misinformation prevalence, exposure, and concentration. There is a companion website that allows you to play with the data and signal me if an estimate is wrong or missing: altay-research.github.io/misinfo-prev...
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 23/09/2026
with the little information I see, this new centre sounds a bit like France's VIGINUM
bbc.com
UK to fight Russian disinformation and push new global AI standards, Burnham says
The UK could act as "an honest broker" on AI and other global challenges, the prime minister tells world leaders at the UN.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 18/09/2026
burn all the glasses down
futurism.com
Influencers Are Using Meta's AI-Glasses to Film Manipulative Feel-Good Slop of People in Public
A content creator is using facial recognition software paired with Meta's AI glasses to film "joybait" of people without their knowledge.
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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This was a fun convo! It was also sort of an intimidating one since I don’t normally talk ab the process —which is often very hacky and experimental!— behind early investigations. I love Indicator. I regularly forward it to an agent that keeps track of tools & techniques for me. 🔎 Subscribe!
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 17/09/2026
Nice deep dive into an operation mentioned in Anthropic's most recent threat report
theverge.com
The sexy AI-powered dating app scams are here
Thousands of people have been catfished by scammers supercharged with AI.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 17/09/2026
We continue to track the share of AI contributed posts on X's Community Notes on @indicator.media. Last Friday we saw a new high, with more than two-thirds (67.94%) of the notes coming from a bot. indicator.media/ai-community...
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 17/09/2026
Pod drop alert! The one and only @noupside.bsky.social joined me and @craigsilverman.bsky.social on @indicator.media's Show & Tell to chat Grokipedia, Community Notes, and the wobbly state of platform disclosures on influence operations.
youtube.com
How Renée DiResta realized Grokipedia’s suddenly stopped accepting edits
YouTube video by Indicator
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 17/09/2026
IDK if I'm going to take this Masterclass from you, Pedro
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 15/09/2026
Father files police report against son after he creates fake nude photos of a classmate using AI.
metropoles.com
Pai registra BO contra filho após criação de nudes falsos de colega com IA
Adolescente, de 15 anos, teria contribuído na criação e no compartilhamento de imagens íntimas falsas com o rosto de uma colega da escola
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
If walking costs you $1, we all pay $0.01. If biking costs you $1, we all pay $0.08. If bussing costs you $1, we all pay $1.50. If driving costs you $1, we all pay $9.20. Via study that still underestimates climate cost. This isn’t about choice. It’s about who pays for your choice. #citymakingmath
Detailed math as shared in the post. “How much does your commute cost (or save) society? Source is Discourse Media.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 10/09/2026
oh no, the US government actually asked decent questions about content moderation and online information quality (this re: the UK's green paper on boosting "trustworthy media providers" online) uk.usembassy.gov/u-s-governme...
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 10/09/2026
New on @indicator.media: Community Notes on Instagram covered just 3% of false posts debunked by the US bureau of AFP Fact Check. This analysis comes one day after Meta announced it would expand the program to 16 new countries.
indicator.media
Meta says Community Notes is bigger than fact-checking. That's not the whole story
Crowdsourced fact-checking on Instagram covered just 3% of false posts debunked by one fact-checking website
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 09/09/2026
Meta is expanding Community Notes to 16 Latin American countries, data still nowhere to be seen.* *I've got a story coming out tomorrow about this, as chance will have it
about.fb.com
Iniciamos los Tests de Notas de la Comunidad en Hispanoamérica | Acerca de Meta
En enero del 2025, lanzamos las Notas de la Comunidad en Estados Unidos: una forma colaborativa para que las personas que utilizan nuestras plataformas aporten información contextual a publicaciones e...
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 03/09/2026
New on @indicator.media: Simple text searches for repeat offenders could have caught ads for AI nudifiers on Meta and prevented them from being served to millions of Meta users this year.
indicator.media
Meta ran at least 11,000 ads for AI nudifiers this year – many from easily detectable repeat offenders
Indicator’s latest audit reveals the company let a network of identifiable bad actors run thousands of ads for nonconsensual deepfake nudes
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joe bodnar @joeabodnar.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Amazing that this renewed interested in foreign disinfo is being driven by overhyped reports about Chinese interference in data center debates. The X update mirrored OpenAI's report, which categorized the Chinese operation (Spamo) as Category One on the breakout scale. That's the lowest category.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 02/09/2026
Once again: The Trumpian crusade against Trust & Safety was never about free speech. It was always about making sure platform policies applied only to adversaries and never to those shouting "censorship" for facing consequences after denying election results or the existence of COVID-19.
reneediresta.com
Suddenly, Foreign Influence Research is Good Again
What X’s Chinese bot takedown tells us about the counter-disinformation infrastructure we dismantled   On Monday I wrote about Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers’ extraordinary effor...
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 27/08/2026
on the one hand: bad on the other hand: this is already a terrible show
404media.co
Cocomelon's Studio Tells Its Artists to Start Experimenting With AI
Moonbug Entertainment, which makes Cocomelon, Blippi, and other popular content for children, says it will begin using AI but will always have a 'human in the loop.'
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 27/08/2026
The important thing that isn't clear is whether this team rolls into the VP of Trust & Safety or into the VP of Public Policy. If it goes into T&S this is a reasonable move; much less so the latter.
wsj.com
Exclusive | Google Moves AI-Responsibility Team Out of DeepMind Lab in Latest Shake-Up
Researchers have raised concerns about the change’s effect on their independence and ability to detect threats from newest models.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 26/08/2026
it took me 90 minutes to get a terrible 90 second short video out there i have entirely new respect for youtubers
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 26/08/2026
Today on Indicator: AI-generated fake employees got over 100 million views on Facebook and Instagram by pushing fake gift cards for ALDI, Costco, The Home Depot, Target, and more.
indicator.media
AI-generated Costco employees got over 100 million views on Facebook and Instagram
We tracked it back to a single scammy affiliate marketing operation
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 25/08/2026
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose” RIP Dolly www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/a...
nytimes.com
Dolly Parton, Country Music Superstar Whose Songs Spoke to Millions, Dies at 80 (Gift Article)
Known for her outsize persona, appearance and talent, she rose from rural poverty to become a top-selling singer, songwriter and entrepreneur.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 25/08/2026
A consistent pitch by the makers of ai wearables is that they solve the problem of getting to know your child. www.businessinsider.com/parents-brea...
Molly, who runs a startup to help parents book activities for kids, is willing to use AI for logistics, like meal planning or sorting through her email to surface the most important messages from their daughter's school. Sean, who works in tech sales, wants to go further. He has his eyes on Omi necklace, an AI wearable that listens in on your day and includes a feature called Parent Whisperer. It records and analyzes interactions between parent and child, logging things like school assignments and supplies to order. The device also picks up on tone, alerting parents when their kid may be unhappy — registering everything from "from toddler tantrums to teenage mood swings," per its ad copy — and offering "expert-backed guidance" on how to respond.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 22/08/2026
This is what the fake "free speech" advocates have built: an administration that harasses critics. Produce research showing the expensive National Guard deployments didn't lower crime? Get sued by Trump's lawyers www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/u...
nytimes.com
Trump Threatens Defamation Suit Over National Guard Report, Aiming to Intimidate a Critic
It was the latest example of President Trump’s bid to use the legal system against those who voice unflattering facts and opinions generally protected by the First Amendment.
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Soumaya Keynes @soumayakeynes.ft.com · 21/08/2026
The Economist has published @dacemoglumit.bsky.social's response to their critical column and it is spiky www.economist.com/letters/2026...
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 20/08/2026
Not quite, YouTube auto caption, not quite
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 19/08/2026
In this month's @indicator.media Show & Tell, we heard from Caitlin Ostroff and Neil Mehta, who investigated Polymarket's outrageously deceptive marketing campaign. (ICYMI: Polymarket made a fake version of its own website, then paid creators to film themselves winning fake bets.)
youtube.com
How WSJ reporters caught Polymarket faking its own site
YouTube video by Indicator
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Andrew Couts @couts.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
NEW: Meta ran ads for an AI-porn-generation tool that encouraged people to create nonconsensual nudes of politicians. @telliotter.bsky.social & @mattburgess1.bsky.social w/ the scoop www.wired.com/story/meta-r...
wired.com
Meta Ran Ads for an App That Promised to Nudify Female Politicians
One advertisement featured a pornographic video with a deepfake closely resembling a prominent US politician. Apple removed the app from the App Store after an inquiry from WIRED.
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J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Is AI convincing seniors to stop taking their meds? Worrying deep dive by Cody Sumter, who monitored a slopiverse of 150 medical advice YouTube channels for months as they put out daily videos of dangerous advice, with millions of views. cc @mantzarlis.com codysumter.substack.com/p/this-is-me...
codysumter.substack.com
This is Medical Advice*
The AI slop doctors of YouTube, and the prompts instructing them to lie
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 12/08/2026
Detector tools built and made available by AI providers are mandatory -- but often missing, according to a new report we published today on @indicator.media. We found detectors for 6/13 companies and fooled all but one.
indicator.media
AI generators are now required to offer detection tools. We tested them (and they need work)
We found detectors for six out of thirteen companies, and fooled all but one
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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Trump's job approval in the Economist / YouGov poll is 9 points *lower* than it was in their January 16-19 2021 poll, post-sacking-of-the-Capitol docs.cdn.yougov.com/4k61xul7y7/e...
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Nick Ames @nickames82.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
New – Norwegian FA to formally demand Infantino's resignation: www.theguardian.com/football/202...
theguardian.com
Norway’s Klaveness tells Fifa president Infantino to resign: ‘There is no trust now’
‘There is no way back for him’ says the NFF president as Infantino battles for support around the world
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James Dart @jamesdart.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Gianni Infantino held talks about rebranding the ill-fated European breakaway the ‘Fifa Super League’ in 2021. Full contents of the term sheet revealed, by @nickames82.bsky.social
theguardian.com
Fifa Super League: Infantino discussed having governing body’s name on European breakaway
A document has shown how Fifa staff were involved in the European breakaway and that the global governing body was prepared to sideline member associations
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 05/08/2026
Grokipedia be grifting
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Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
NEW: Over the last few months, Meta has run dozens of paid ads that included AI-generated CSAM. The ads, some of which were linking out to “nudify” apps, targeted men in the US, UK, and a dozen European countries. Some were running in the last few days
wired.com
Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
More than 50 offending image and video ads were published across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Threads, according to Meta’s ad library data. Some ran as recently as this week.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 05/08/2026
sure why would we need to know
axios.com
White House plans to keep AI framework under wraps
The White House does not plan to publicly release its new framework for evaluating advanced AI models.
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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
CHAFETZ PLANS TO LOSE WEIGHT ON ALL-FRENCH-FRY-AND-GIN DIET
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 05/08/2026
I wrote a guide to red teaming AI tools for safety for @indicator.media. It's a combination of simple frameworks and snippets of worked-through examples built from my experience at Google, running a pro bono clinic at Cornell Tech, and doing this kind of work as a journalist.
indicator.media
How to red team an AI tool for safety
Indicator’s no-code and product-agnostic guide to probing for harmful stuff
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Steffen Rayburn-Maarup @rayburnmaarup.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
I don't think people are ready for this kind of joke yet.
A town sign seen through a train window.
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 03/08/2026
"Kew Gardens has had a weather station since 1871. This July was, based on third party analysis of Met Office data collected at the site, the first calendar month on record where no rainfall was measured at Kew."
londoncentric.media
London's first month without rain
Plus: There's nowhere to bury the dead • London wants to keep its money • When will it stop being so damn hot • Who is to blame for turning off the air conditioning in the tower block?
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 31/07/2026
Today's free Indicator Briefing is *full* of things you need to know, tools you can use, and research you should read on the digital deception beat. Check it out:
indicator.media
Briefing: Musk sues Minnesota over synthetic nudes law
Plus: Tools for tracking foreign interference and LinkedIn launches "AI slop" button
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 31/07/2026
Brazilian politics is nothing if not creative. Former president Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest and cannot communicate publicly in support of his son Flávio’s presidential campaign. So Flávio used an AI avatar of his dad at a rally on Saturday. The opposition has presented a legal challenge.
youtube.com
Jair Bolsonaro uses AI avatar to endorse son's campaign
YouTube video by Reuters
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 31/07/2026
no one asked for this
digitaldigging.org
How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran
The question is: what on earth is Google doing?
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Google Earth, a tool often used as a source of satellite imagery to verify photos and videos, has added a feature that allows you to alter satellite imagery with AI, for reasons. blog.google/products-and...
blog.google
Transform any place with Nano Banana in Google Earth
Custom images — generated from Google Earth satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery — help you redesign any location.
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Ross McKay @rossmc11.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
We need to take a moment to salute Gianni Infantino for being the first person in history to get 55 European countries to unanimously agree on anything.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 30/07/2026
I feel like @dwillner.bsky.social will have thoughts on how useful this "Seems like AI slop" reporting button will be for LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/posts/hsrini...
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