Craig Silverman
@craigsilverman.bsky.social
Cofounder of https://indicator.media, your essential guide to understanding and investigating digital deception. Sign up for free! Investigative journalist and OSINT trainer. https://craigsilverman.ca
Excited to be part of this!
Roberta Braga@bragaroberta.bsky.social · 2w agoJoin us TODAY at 12 pm ET for a DDIA discussion on addressing election fraud narratives, w/ Sec. of State of Nevada Cisco Aguilar, content creator @tonolatino.bsky.social, @craigsilverman.bsky.social of @indicator.media, and Jake Engle at Upswing Strategies. Register here! ddia.org/en/event-rec...
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.
8 AI bots now write 50% of X’s Community Notes
The crowdsourced moderation project faces a choice between scale and legitimacy
indicator.media
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...
joe bodnar@joeabodnar.bsky.social · 3mo agoShout out to @indicator.media for its guide on Skills in Chrome. I customized a prompt and made this great Obsidian network map in like 5 minutes.
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.
How an OSINT Investigator Documented the Israeli Army’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon
YouTube video by Indicator
youtube.com
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?
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
indicator.media
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.
Briefing: Google shows ads when people search for help removing intimate images
Plus: X pays clickbait accounts a little less
indicator.media
New on @indicator.media: With @mattburgess1.bsky.social at @wired.com, I built a map of the reported cases where AI was used to create nonconsensual intimate imagery within schools around the globe.
More than 640 students have been targeted by AI nudifiers across 28 countries
Indicator’s map of school-related incidents shows the global reach of these tools of abuse
indicator.media
Was fun to contribute to this great, free training initiative from GIJN!
Photojournalism News@pjournalismnews.bsky.social · 4mo agoGLOBAL INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM NETWORK: Investigating AI-Generated and Manipulated Images gijn.org/academy/inve... @gijn.org @craigsilverman.bsky.social #photojournalism #journalism #photography
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...
My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery
nytimes.com
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...
Unmasking AI Nudifier Networks: OSINT Techniques from Bellingcat's Kolina Koltai
YouTube video by Indicator
youtube.com
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!
Unmasking AI Nudifier Networks: OSINT Techniques from Bellingcat's Kolina Koltai
YouTube video by Indicator
youtu.be
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
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.
indicator.media
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...
Briefing: X planned to rein in overseas info hustlers. Then Elon stepped in
Plus: Tools for Telegram, geolocation, and running AI models locally.
indicator.media
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...
Briefing: X planned to rein in overseas info hustlers. Then Elon stepped in
Plus: Tools for Telegram, geolocation, and running AI models locally.
indicator.media
Wrote up a little guide to building your own reverse image search engine for @indicator.media, steered by the brilliant fellow @towcenter.bsky.social alum @craigsilverman.bsky.social: indicator.media/p/the-indica...
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.
indicator.media
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:
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.
indicator.media
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
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
indicator.media
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...
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."
indicator.media
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:
Alexios Mantzarlis@mantzarlis.com · 5mo agoIn today's free @indicator.media I do my best to set aside the hypocrisy of X launching a fact-checking policy and the State Department applauding it -- and assess the merits of the policy itself.
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.
Inside The Tools & Techniques That Exposed Facebook Transit Scams And TikTok's Polarization Industry
YouTube video by Indicator
youtube.com
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...
Alexios Mantzarlis@mantzarlis.com · 5mo agoNEW 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.
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...
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.
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
indicator.media
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...
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.
indicator.media
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
Briefing: Tracking the AI takeover of Community Notes
Plus: Tools for counting crowd size and generating Google Dorks.
indicator.media
Very cool to see the Canadian Media Association's Healthcare For Real project cite our reporting:
Healthcare For Real@healthcareforreal.bsky.social · 6mo agoSome of the biggest "doctor" pages online are not human. An @indicator.media investigation uncovered more than two dozen Instagram, TikTok and YouTube pages feature AI-generated fake doctors, with many still active despite being reported. Could you tell the difference? #AI #Deepfakes #FakeDoctors
New on @indicator.media: I speak to San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu about his office's landmark lawsuit against 22 AI nudifiers.
San Francisco's city attorney sued the operators of 22 AI nudifiers. He wants others to step up, too.
David Chiu, San Francisco's top lawyer, speaks to Indicator
indicator.media
"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...
“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.
indicator.media
Today on Indicator: How much does a TikTok account cost? Well, it depends. But on one prolific marketplace I track, you can get a handle for anywhere from 95¢ to $235.
How much does a TikTok account cost?
In one prolific WhatsApp group, anywhere between 95¢ and $235
indicator.media
Craig and I were tired of going to the Bar for Newsletter Dudes and getting asked "Bros, do you even *have* a podcast?" -- so we launched one. Our first guest is @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social of "Facebook Files" fame. Jeff loves LinkedIn and handling bees. Check out Show & Tell from @indicator.media:
Using Internal Docs, Burner Accounts and Ad Library Research to Expose Meta's Scam Ad Business
YouTube video by Indicator
youtube.com