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This week on Indicator
Craig showed how to use free bookmarklets to find hidden data for online profiles and speed up your OSINT workflow. He also shared the video, transcript, and slides from our recent members-only workshop, which showed how to use tools to connect websites together.
Alexios reviewed TikTok’s new community moderation feature “Footnotes,” concluding that “it appears to be an axiom of crowdsourced moderation programs that a significant majority of the contributed notes are not going to be useful.” On Monday, Alexios’ prior reporting on Meta’s Community Notes was quoted on The Washington Post.
This week we also published an “impact” page where we keep track of the quantifiable results of our reporting. Check it out!
Deception in the News
📍 Meta on Thursday was running at least 114 ads for AI nudifiers. Several ads were for websites we’ve previously covered; one pointed to an app on the Play store. A simple Ad Library search for “undress” also returned multiple ads promoting erotic novels with an incestuous theme (h/t Indicator reader Shelby). We reached out to Meta and Google and the companies took down the content we flagged.
📍 In other non consensual deepfake nude news, Grok generated AI videos of Taylor Swift dancing topless without being prompted for them.
📍 Leaked documents reveal that Chinese company GoLaxy has pitched an AI-powered "Smart Propaganda System" product to the Chinese government.
📍 The California law challenged by a YouTube creator behind the Kamala Harris parody ad was struck down on Section 230 grounds. The judge also said he intended to overrule another bill requiring labels on AI-generated content.
📍 NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo fell for an obvious deepfake that showed Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussing the Sydney Sweeney / American Eagle saga on the floor of the US House. Instead of apologizing, Cuomo told AOC “it really does sound like you.”
📍 The Guardian reports that “Airbnb has apologized to a woman after an apartment host falsely claimed she had caused thousands of pounds’ worth of damage and used images she says were digitally manipulated to back up his allegations.”
📍 Google’s healthcare AI model made up a body part, which the company then included in a research paper and blog post. Google framed the error as a “common misspelling.”
📍 Donald Trump’s health is the subject of misinformation on TikTok, especially in Spanish. 11 videos published in the past few weeks variously claim the US president is paralyzed, dying1, or dead. Some of the videos use AI avatars of news anchors Lester Holt and Jorge Ramos to spread the false claims. We previously reported that the app struggles with Spanish-language “fake news.” TikTok did not respond to our requests for comment about the videos, which have been seen 7 million times.
Tools & Tips
📍 Instagram Monitor is a Python tool “for real-time monitoring of Instagram users' activities and profile changes.” (via The OSINT Newsletter)
📍 Am I Being Persuaded? is a Chrome extension that “uses Gemini 2.5 Flash to evaluate page content against metrics from the book Foolproof by Sander van der Linden.” More from creator Preyen Nair here.
📍 Kathleen Siminyu and Christo Buschek produced a free course, “Investigating AI datasets: A journalist's guide,” for Deutsche Welle Akademie. More info here.
📍 Lam Thuy Vo wrote a “Guide to Investigating Social Media Algorithms” for the Global Investigative Journalism Network.
📍 Sofia Santos wrote, "How to access geoblocked websites without a VPN."
📍 Mike Reilley wrote, “How I Built a CustomGPT in ChatGPT ... and You Can, Too.”
Reports & Research
📍 German researchers published a draft paper, “OSINT or BULLSHINT? Exploring Open-Source Intelligence tweets about the Russo-Ukrainian War.” They analyzed close to 2 million OSINT-related tweets about the war and found that “pro-Russian messages tend to distribute more misinformation than pro-Ukrainian ones, with neutral stances in the middle.”
📍 Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a government body, published a new handbook, “Weapons of Information Warfare.” It’s a detailed overview of the information warfare mechanisms and tactics used by Russia against Ukraine.
📍 Israeli researchers unveiled at the Black Hat conference multiple exploits that used Gemini and Google calendar to “create real-world havoc,” including turning off lights and opening smart shutters.
📍While investigating misinformation about the separatist Bosnian leader Milorad Dodik, Correctiv uncovered a network of at least 26 pay-for-play websites posing as established media outlets. The publications, with names like “New York Mirror“ and “Berliner Zeitung“ are all part of the GNN Group, which purportedly sells bundles of articles on its “reviv[ed] iconic brands” for up to 45,000 euros. Here’s an English-language thread about his reporting.
📍Alex Sammon at Slate went all in on one of those job recruiting scams to show how it works. He lost $96 in advance fees but made a great friend along the way.
Want more studies on digital deception? Paid members get access to our Academic Library with 55 categorized and summarized studies:
One Thing
The Centre for Information Resilience did great walkthrough of how it used various OSINT techniques to uncover the location of a military camp belonging to the Rapid Support Forces, a Sudanese paramilitary group.
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1 To avoid hearing it from his friend Brian, Alexios would like to add a caveat that it is technically true that Donald Trump is dying, as we all ultimately are. The problem with the videos is they claim the US President is literally moribund.
