Indicator’s mission is to expose digital deception and to teach people how to do it for themselves. This page shows how our work has resulted in real world impact that holds bad actors and platforms accountable: banned accounts, removed content and ads, lawsuits, new policies, etc.

We measure our success in a variety of ways. To us, it’s equally important to expose a bad actor as it is to help a trust and safety professional recognize and mitigate a new threat or to teach a journalist or researcher a new technique and tool. Each helps defend the information space and fight digital deception. But some are easier to track and quantify than others.

Here’s a look at some of Indicator’s impact since launching in May 2025. If you want to read and support our work — and learn how to do it yourself — please become a paying member.

Indicator Impact

  • Google stopped providing single-sign on services to 23 AI nudifier websites we wrote about as part of our special investigation on the ecosystem.

  • YouTube terminated 33 videos and the related accounts tied to a group of creators we found were posting fake highlights of Club World Cup matches before they were even played.

  • TikTok deleted 96 accounts and 3 videos tied to an organized network using videos of allegedly moribund celebrities to source leads for an advance fee scam on WhatsApp. Meta also blocked at least 6 WhatsApp business accounts.

  • YouTube terminated 16 channels and demonetized several more after we showed they used generative AI to spread false claims about the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial.

  • Amazon deleted 198 of error-filled, AI-generated children’s books that we found on the platform.

  • Meta sued the company behind a noxious network of AI nudifiers. The suit comes after we published multiple stories that caused Meta to remove more than 10,000 of ads from the same company.

  • LinkedIn removed multiple fake accounts after we reported on account rental schemes.

  • Meta removed more than 1,000 pornbait ads that we found had deceived users and broke its rules.

  • Trustpilot and Meta removed fake online reviews that we showed were linked to a notorious global scam network.