Francesco Poldi

Happy Friday, everyone! 🎉 The weekend is just around the corner! Grab a Psylo promo code for a free one-month subscription:

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📊 Operation Overload on Telegram:
• 673 channels analysed
• 7M+ messages
• 2M+ media collisions (39% of 5.5M total)
• 550+ channels share admins
• 70% of Overload-linked emails point to Telegram
• 10 verified channels drive core narratives

vera.ai presents its outcomes - and invites you all to attend two webinars! VERification Assisted by AI. R&D & innovation co-funded by the HorizonEU. Continuing WeVerify work. And much more!

Tomorrow (Tuesday 17th) from 2-5 pm CET, our first workshop in which we present project results kicks off.
With @sympap.bsky.social @anaromero.bsky.social @dteyssou.bsky.social @nicolarighetti.bsky.social @kamilakoronska.bsky.social & others.
You can still join via Zoom! Registration required

YouTube video by Bellingcat Unmasking MrDeepFakes

Here’s how we found the identity of a key figure behind MrDeepfakes —one of the largest providers of non-consensual deepfake pornography in the world. Our latest investigation is out on YouTube now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTMa...

iOS 18.4 introduced a new option in System Location Services called "Improve Location Accuracy" and it is enabled by default. You can find it under:
Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services

#Privacy

Elon Musk’s Starlink Expands Across White House Complex (Gift Article) Trump administration officials said the company donated the internet service, saying the gift had been vetted by the lawyer overseeing ethics issues in the White House Counsel’s Office.

A Musk lieutenant ventured onto a roof to install Starlink. The Secret Service didn’t know he was there. The incident triggered a confrontation over conflicts of interest & cyber and physical security www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/u...

“Pravda” Network: Worldwide Expansion and LLM, Wikipedia Pollution - CheckFirst CheckFirst, in partnership with DFRLab, shows how the Russian propaganda and disinformation “Pravda” network extended its coverage and aims (and succeeds) at polluting large language models (LLMs) and...

🚨 NEW REPORT

🔎 The Russian propaganda and disinformation “Pravda” network extended its coverage and aims (and succeeds) at polluting large language models (LLMs) and Wikipedia. 

🗒️ X’s Community notes are unable to aptly address the spread of “Pravda” content on the platform.

AI-Generated Images of Pope Francis Drive Traffic to Network of Suspicious Websites in Coordinated Campaign VERification Assisted by AI. R&D & innovation co-funded by the HorizonEU. Continuing WeVerify work. And much more!

Researchers at Uni Urbino uncovered a significant #disinformation campaign on #Facebook pertaining to #PopeFrancis’ health. Here's what they found.
#InauthenticCoordinatedBehavior
By @fabiogiglietto.bsky.social, @giadam.bsky.social, @informativeicts.bsky.social @mterenzi.bsky.social.

Update your iPhones.. again! iOS 18.3.1 out today with a fix for an ITW USB restricted mode bypass (via Accessibility) support.apple.com/en-us/122174

We publish a new version (v0.84) of our verification plugin. It improves the keyframes file mode and assistant (both from @veraai_eu), archiving (from #DisinfoArchiving @factchecknet project) and includes a Japanese localization!

Good to see registrars taking action over content - often "content regulation" is up to the hosting company

I learned a TON about Elon listening to this series. Hours and hours of great stuff that never felt drawn out. Now’s probably a great time to give it a listen.

Join Us as a Beta Tester for the Coordinated Sharing Detection Service! VERification Assisted by AI. R&D & innovation co-funded by the HorizonEU. Continuing WeVerify work. And much more!

Just launched: the beta-testing program for the Coordinated Sharing Detection Service (powered by #CooRTweet), developed by ATC Athens Technology Center.
More here: www.veraai.eu/posts/beta-t...
cc @fabiogiglietto.bsky.social @nicolarighetti.bsky.social

Influence by Design: How Meta Accepted Russian Propaganda Payments Despite Sanctions - CheckFirst Check First, in partnership with Reset.tech and AI Forensics, unveils the extent to which Kremlin-linked entity SDA have exploited Meta platforms to disseminate propaganda.

Despite international sanctions, #Meta is accepting payments from Russian propagandists. Our latest report with @aiforensics.org & Reset underscore how Meta has failed to moderate over 8,000 political ads from the Kremlin-linked Social Design Agency (SDA). #SDALeak

The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding A field guide and why we need to rethink our expectations

"[...] for now, the most pragmatic approach is to use AI to accelerate learning, not replace it entirely."

#dev #coding #ai

Dear Community,

We wish to draw your attention to a concerning development in the tactics employed by #OperationOverload.

Our ongoing monitoring has uncovered a new technique involving the use of voice-generative AI.

#Luigi #Mangione #UnitedHealthcare #Thompson #OSINT

Secondly, exploiting a killing jus to promote your OSINT skills/platform on social media just to show off that "you are able to", may not be the best move for your brand.

While I absolutely stand and echo these values, doxing a private citizen and their family is a questionable position that hardly provides an added value to the ongoing work carried out by governmental bodies. Doing this just for the clicks, makes it even more difficult to agree with.

We all understand how much it's important to keep the general public informed regarding breaking news, especially for the ones discussing pre-planned killings funded by sociopathic believes.

How to verify your Bluesky account - Bluesky Here's how to verify your Bluesky account by setting your website as your username.

For context, this is how Bluesky account verification works:

bsky.social/about/blog/4...

🚨 Reaching out to all the #OSINT community 🚨

Some of us may recall the osint.team chat and I see most of the long-time members are here on Bsky: if you may like to have a *.osint.team custom handle, please ping me!

I've put together an OSINT starter kit. Let's unite the OSINT community on Bluesky!

go.bsky.app/GaTRbT3

Last week I deleted my X account and I almost have more followers here already. What to do with this modest but unexpected popularity?

Reminding you that last week I also presented a report on how to detect/analyse identity-based #disinformation fuelled #FIMI with simple #OSINT techniques 🏳️‍🌈🔎📒

Operation Overload: how pro-Russian actors flood newsrooms with fake content and seek to divert their efforts - CheckFirst “Please Check”. More that 800 organisations, among which many media outlets have been flooded with emails and social media mentions urging them to verify dubious claims undermining Ukraine, France and...

📢 With the support of Reset & 20+ fact-checking organisations, we unveil "Operation Overload". It is a sophisticated, cross-country disinformation campaign orchestrated to disseminate pro-Russian propaganda in the West.

Find out more about #OperationOverload ⤵️

New report: Confusing Google search predictions and Google News sources, and unbalanced politics on TikTok and Instagram  - CrossOver Last March, Faktabaari & CheckFirst showed the significant over-representation of right-wing voices in YouTube’s video recommendations during the Finnish presidential election.

Today we're presenting our latest focus report from the CrossOver Finland project with @faktabaari.bsky.social. We found that Google News blends articles from news media, political parties and opinion sites without explicitly labelling them as such.

🔎 Read the full report here:

👇👇👇

New report out by Mozilla and @checkfirst.network : Big tech ad #transparency databases under the #DSA have major gaps & are unreliable. We need standardisation for repositories - the EU Commission can & should issue guidelines! @thierrybreton.bsky.social
foundation.mozilla.org/en/research/...

Disinfo Update 16/04/2024 - EU DisinfoLab In this edition, we continue bringing clarity to climate disinformation, tackle foreign interference in elections, and more.

📢💌 Your latest #DisinfoUpdate is out!

In this edition, we keep bringing clarity to climate disinformation, tackle foreign interference in elections, and more 🌿🌐🗳️

⬇️
www.disinfo.eu/disinfo-upda...

🚨📢 We are thrilled to announce that 🥁🥁🥁 the registrations for #Disinfo24 is open! Don't miss this opportunity to learn, exchange & network with the counter-disinformation community.

Register! ⬇️
www.disinfo.eu/conference/

...and stay tuned for the programme & line-up updates!