The second episode of episode of Show & Tell — the new Indicator podcast where go go inside investigations on digital deception — features a conversation and hands-on demo with Clara Jiménez Cruz CEO of Maldita.es, a nonprofit Spanish fact-checking and digital investigative outlet. You can view it in the above embed or watch it on Youtube channel.
Clara showed us the tools and methods that her team used on three recent investigations. We talked about the power of OSINT bookmarklets, how her team sets up spreadsheets to collect data about social media accounts, and why they often flag violative content through a platform’s own reporting flows as part of their work.
Clara walked us through a global investigation that exposed a rampant Facebook scam:
She explained how Maldita found hundreds of TikTok accounts that spread polarizing AI-generated political videos in order to earn money:
And we talked about the powerful and disturbing findings from Maldita’s investigation of child sex abuse material on TikTok:
About Show & Tell
Show & Tell is Indicator’s monthly podcast hosted by us, Alexios Mantzarlis and Craig Silverman. It takes you inside digital investigations as leading journalists, OSINT investigators, threat analysts, and researchers walk through a real story, report, or case they worked on. Each episode features a recognized figure in the OSINT, digital investigations, or trust & safety community.
Our previous episode featured Jeff Horwitz, an investigative reporter for Reuters. He walked us through his great series about how Meta has earned billions from online scam ads and at times thwarted efforts to rein them in.
We hope you enjoy and learn from the conversation with Clara. Catch every episode by subscribing to our YouTube channel. We’re also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Have a suggestion for who we should feature next? Email us.
