How do digital/open-source investigators uncover hidden truths and expose lies? World-renowned digital sleuth Craig Silverman shares some important lessons he’s learned from years spent exposing scammers, fake-news operators, fraud networks, and online deception. We discuss: the techniques investigators use to track anonymous people through seemingly insignificant clues; why stepping away from a case can be more productive than obsessively chasing leads; and how confirmation bias can derail even experienced investigators. Craig recounts the story of how he identified the anonymous creator behind the influential fake-news site True Pundit, along with other investigations that uncovered sophisticated fraud schemes that made millions of dollars. We also explore the modern explosion of misinformation, fake authority, and AI-generated deception, and why investigative skills are becoming an increasingly valuable skill—not just for journalists, but for anyone trying to make sense of today’s confusing information landscape.
Episode links:
- YouTube (includes video)
- Apple Podcasts
- Spotify
Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:
- Craig’s site Indicator.media
- Craig Silverman’s LinkedIn
- Craig’s article outing True Pundit’s identity
- My article about learnings from the True Pundit investigation
- Craig’s investigation into an ad fraud scheme that stole millions
TRANSCRIPT
(transcripts are generated automatically and will contain errors)
Craig Silverman: “the thing that ended up cracking it, and I actually, I really remember this, like, I had been at… It wasn’t just a couple days. I had been at it, and I felt like I was hitting dead ends…I think it was a Saturday afternoon… and I was just like, ‘I need to go back as far as I can.’… I realized that his old Twitter username was a hockey-related one… Hockey Intel. and then I started looking. I noticed that he was talking up this player from a small, regional team. I wondered if he might be related to that player. And I remember the moment. I simply googled the dad’s name. The first thing that came up was him being arrested by the FBI for selling pirated hockey tapes…I’m like, ‘Oh my God. We’ve got a guy who has a grudge against the FBI.’
Zachary Elwood: That was from my talk with the renowned, award-winning digital investigator Craig Silverman. Craig was talking about a case that he and I had both worked on separately back in the day: the case of True Pundit. There was a guy who was anonymously running a website and social media accounts under the name True Pundit, and he was spreading obviously false information and fake news under the guise of it being legitimate “intel” from secret sources. Much of his content had a political nature; much of it was aimed at making Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton look bad. One of his fake news stories was about Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece feeding her things to say during the presidential debate. Another one was about Chinese hackers getting access to Hillary Clinton’s servers. Some of his content was aimed at making the FBI and other law enforcement outfits look bad; for one example, one story was about there being some law enforcement coverup about the truth behind the Las Vegas mass shooting. He put out a lot of stories like this. It’s my opinion that True Pundit significantly influenced voting in the 2016 election with his fake news and lies. These stories got a lot of traction and were shared widely by prominent and influential Republican and pro-Trump figures, including Trump, Trump’s sons, Michael Flynn, the actor James Woods, just a lot of people in that world.
So the fact that True Pundit was spreading obviously false and malicious lies upset me, and I got interested in finding his identity and outing him, and I spent several weeks on it. This included setting up a website to show the details of my investigation publicly, and to try to get tips from the public. Craig Silverman, who then worked for Buzzfeed, started working on that same topic, and he beat me to the punch; he discovered True Pundit’s identity, publishing it in a Buzzfeed article titled Notorious Pro-Trump Misinformation Site True Pundit Is Run By An Ex-Journalist With A Grudge Against The FBI. And he was nice enough to mention the work I’d done on the case and give me a shout-out for my work.
So in this talk with Craig, we talk about the True Pundit case and our approaches to it, and what we found, and we use that case as a way to talk about investigative concepts and strategies in general. And we talk about the importance of investigative work in our digital world where lies and fraud are increasingly rampant, and it’s become harder and harder for us regular citizens to separate truth from fiction.
I think you’ll probably really like this talk; I think it might just be one of the best episodes of my podcast. And if you like what I’m doing with this podcast, subscribe to it and tell your friends, and go check out past episodes at my site behavior-podcast.com. I appreciate it!
A little bit about Craig from his site www.craigsilverman.ca:
He’s an award-winning journalist and author and one of the world’s leading experts on online disinformation, fake news, and digital investigations.
He is the cofounder of Indicator, a newsletter and website dedicated to exposing digital deception and to equipping professionals with knowledge and skills to help them investigate it. Learn more and sign up for free at Indicator.media.
Prior to Indicator, he was a national reporter for ProPublica covering voting, platforms, disinformation, and online manipulation. Craig previously served as media editor of BuzzFeed News, where he pioneered coverage of digital disinformation and media manipulation.
Craig trains journalists all over the world in digital investigative, Open source investigations, and debunking techniques. He served as the lead instructor for the Global Investigative Journalism Network’s Digital Threats training program and teaches a digital investigations course at Toronto Metropolitan University.
He’s the author of the 2009 book “Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech.”
A lot more to say about Craig, as he has a highly impressive track record, but those details will maybe help you understand why he’s worth listening to… okay here’s the talk with Craig Silverman.
Zach Elwood: Hi, Craig. Thanks for joining me
Craig Silverman: Hey, thanks for having me.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, big honor. I’ve followed your, as you know, I’ve followed your work for quite a long time, and, uh, it’s a big honor to talk to you. Been a fan for a while. Uh, so maybe we could start with when you got into, uh, journalism, uh, did you know that you wanted to delve into the hardcore, uh, online investigative work or investigative work in general?
Or was that something that you grew into and got more interested in later?
Craig Silverman: When I first got interested and thought about studying journalism, ’cause I, I went the traditional route. I, I did a journalism degree at a, uh, university in Canada, studied journalism. Uh, and my dream, I think, was, was to be a New Yorker correspondent, like so many people, uh, you know?
Yeah. I- That’s true … what drew me first was writing, you know? Uh, uh, of the things that I got encouragement of in school, I t- honest- sometimes would s- be told by y- by teachers, “Oh, you know, your writing is, is good.” Um, and so of course, when you get positive reinforcement, you tend to lean into those things.
And so for me, going to journalism school, I, I hoped to become a roving long form journalist doing amazing, you know, uh, nonfiction, maybe literary journalism. And, uh, and I still in some ways, you know, I s- admire people who do that and s- wish I was good enough writer to sort of do that. But the thing that kind of sort of changed for me was, um…
So like, I started, I’ll just date myself completely, I started university in 1995, the fall of 1995, and so I had been- That’s when I started. It was? Okay. Yeah. S- so I had been… Had you been on the internet or the web before you got to university?
Zach Elwood: I mean, very v- vaguely, but I learned about the internet mostly when I went to college.
Yeah, that was, yeah.
Craig Silverman: Yeah. And that was my experience too, where I, you know, I had a, like a communications technology class in high school where one student came in one day with a computer that had a modem and used the phone line and dialed up and showed us this thing of the internet and Usenet and this kind of stuff.
I don’t even know if we went on the web. I think we looked at Usenet, and we were all, and he’s like, “You know, there’s these chat groups of everything you could imagine.” We were like, “Oh, look up sex,” you know? And it’s like he’s like, “Yeah, there’s tons of those.” And so that was, that was the first time I understood there was something called the internet.
And then I go to university in the fall, and I get an email address for the first time, and I have basically unlimited access to the web. And, um, and so I was like, “This is, like this is really cool.” Uh, and so I, I sort of got into it. And I think for me there was kind of a penny drop moment where I was in a class, and I think it was like commentary and opinion writing, where we had an assignment where you had to write, I think it was like an obituary for a historical figure, uh, during class.
And it was just like, “Do the best you can. Go by memory. Use whatever research resources you can here in the lab,” and stuff like that. And so, um, so I, I like, I think I picked Muhammad Ali, and I went, and I went to the computer lab and I researched. And I wrote it, and I wrote it on deadline, and I handed it in, and the teacher ended up reading it out to the whole class and was basically like, “How did you know all this information about Muhammad Ali?”
And I was like, “What do you mean? I just, like, I went and I looked it up.” Uh, and I was the only person who did that in the class.
Zach Elwood: You were ahead of the curve, yeah.
Craig Silverman: So, so, you know, and that’s why it’s the penny dropped on me, because I was like, “Oh, this is an advantage. If I get good at this, this is an advantage.
People aren’t into this.” And so I really dove, uh, uh, headfirst into it, just trying to, like, understand it, and I, you know, I would use it in my assignments, uh, you know, emailing people, as, to get interviews and things like that. And so I just, like, for me, I think that was the starting point, and it was like, “Oh, I can find stuff other people haven’t found.
I can have an advantage.” And I just leaned into that and ended up doing a lot of, like, reporting on technology and this kind of stuff, and I think that’s where I started to maybe shift a little bit. But I, I never really said to myself, “Oh, I’m gonna be an investigative journalist.” And even, you know, f- even today, like, sure, I say I work on investigations, but, like, I’m just quite happy to say I’m a reporter in a lot of ways, ’cause I think that’s, that’s good enough, you know?
Zach Elwood: Well, that explains why you’re so good at it. You have, you had such a head start on us. You, you got a, you got an earlier start. Um, yeah, so, um, yeah, I mean, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot from you. I mean, the first time I learned of your work was doing that True Pundit investigation and, uh, you know, for the audience, it was this pretty prolific and, I think, influential fake news guy, domestic fake news creator who was anonymous and I think he, in my opinion, I think he, uh, theoretically, you know, sh- uh, played a role in, in shifting the, uh, 2016 election.
You know, that’s obviously not… You can’t prove those things, but he had done- Right … a story about, like, they, that got, that made the rounds about, like, Hillary Clinton wearing a, a, a earpiece during the debate and these kinds of things. Yeah. But, but anyway, yeah, the, the, the way… I, I was working on trying to identify him for several weeks, if not months.
I can’t recall now. But… And you had contacted me saying, like, “I’m starting to work on this.” And then I think it was only, like, a few days later you had cracked the case and identified him, and that was… A- and the way you did it, uh, you know, when you wrote your, your BuzzFeed article, it was very educational to me in, in how you did it, and I wrote my learnings about it.
But one of the learnings that stood out to me was the importance of, uh, looking at the earliest activity online of a, a deceptive person, uh, because usually that’s when they’re least careful. And, uh, so basically going back to the, to the roots, and it kinda reminded me of the, the Silence of the Lambs point where, um, uh, Hannibal Lecter was telling Clarice, you know, “We have to, uh, basically look at what somebody is coveting first,” basically saying you gotta look back- Hmm
at what the earliest activity was for that, for that serial killer to find clues about their identity. Uh, so- Right … that, that was a big learning, uh, point for me because I had looked at some of the same stuff you did, but I didn’t spend enough time really delving into that early stuff, and I think your, your instinct with your knowledge, you were just like, “Oh, let me head straight to that earliest stuff,” or at least that’s what I, I gathered.
But I’m, I’m curious if I’m, I’m getting that right about the importance of that, that early activity.
Craig Silverman: Yeah, I mean, that is, that is… It, it’s always a key thing. When you’ve got somebody with an online persona and they’ve got one or multiple accounts- Um, you know, you obviously, like you wanna look, number one is not just the earliest stuff, but just like can you look at as much of their stuff as possible?
So like he tweeted a lot, right? He was very active on Twitter. That was where he got his engagement. That was where he really drove people. Um, and so it’s like just read a ton of what this guy’s doing. Read the articles, read the tweets, familiarize yourself. That’s always a big part of it. But then it’s also absolutely, you know, the point about people are less careful.
Sometimes people don’t know where they’re going yet early on with an account, and then they s- then, then it clicks, and then they sort of like suddenly maybe they clean up some stuff, but they forget to clean up other things.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Craig Silverman: And it’s true not just with social media accounts, but I mean, this is a classic dynamic with domain names as well is like sometimes somebody buys a domain name, and they don’t pay for privacy right away ’cause they don’t actually know what they’re gonna use it for, and they don’t really care.
They don’t wanna pay the extra few bucks, and then two years later, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I have this domain. I could use it to do this scam site.” And now they’re gonna pay for privacy, right?
Zach Elwood: Right.
Craig Silverman: Um, but the records are there if you can go back and look at them. And I mean, number one, like you’re not giving yourself enough credit ’cause you had done a lot of great research about this guy, and like for people who…
‘Cause, ’cause I mean, the good news is that because of my article and your work leading up to that, his, he kinda fell off from there. Like, you’re right, he was influential. When we’re talking from, like, the 2016 timeframe to 2018 when my article comes out, this guy was, he had paid people on, I think it was Patreon, paying to support his site.
I believe he had ads on his site. He was, he was coming up. He would just make up crazy articles. Yeah. But he framed them in a way that it seemed credible, because he knew how to write them in a journalistic way that they read like real journalism. Yeah. So he would cite, you know, three, three FBI and law enforcement sources say, and so it was written very professionally, but the claim was bonkers and false, you know?
The claim that Hillary Clinton’s wearing a headpiece. Um, you know, the claim, one of his bigger ones was, I think, you know, the, um, that China, China had been the one that actually had hacked the Clinton campaign. I think he was claiming that, or he had claimed that China had hacked her email server. I forget, it was one of the two.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Craig Silverman: And, you know, stuff that there was no evidence for, but it was salacious and it, it went against the prevailing evidence and narrative, but appealed to the MAGA base. Um- Yeah … and, and so he really knew how to, like, he knew how to meet that moment, and he had been able to conceal his identity. He said he’s a, he’s somebody who was a, you know, former journalist, longtime journalist, somebody who had worked in intelligence.
He claimed that he had, I think, one, at least one former FBI person working with him. So he put together a very compelling narrative for the pro-Trump world. Um, and this was, you know, a time when you could put this stuff out there and kinda get away with it, and he was, he was making money from it, clearly.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and so, um, so yeah, like you had, you had sort of dug in first on him, and you had gathered a lot. You had looked at a lot of his tweets, a lot of his content, a lot of the elements, um, of it, and, you know, had noted some of the things. I think you had noted, for example, that he seemed interested in hockey.
Um, you know, I think you had found stuff that ended up being really, really i- important for me. And yes, I mean, when it, for me, the thing that ended up cracking it, and I actually, I really remember this, like, I had been at… It wasn’t just a couple days. I had been at it, and I felt like I was hitting dead ends.
Hmm. Um, and this is like, and this is something you 100% happens in investigations. I mean, the idea that you start it and everything falls into place, no, you have moments of deep frustration, right? And for you, like, you were super frustrated, I guess- Yeah … when we got in touch at that point, right?
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
I was, yeah
Craig Silverman: Uh, yeah. And, uh, and so I– And then I remember I had set it aside, and then I think it was a Saturday afternoon, ’cause I kind of remember being on my couch. Um, and, like, on a Saturday afternoon, and my kids were somewhere or whatever, and I just, you know, and I was just like, “I need to, I need to go back as far as I can.”
And so the thing that sort of did it was on Twitter, if you change… You can have an account, and you can change the username, right? And so if you start with this username and, and you’re talking to people, and they’re replying to you, and then later on you change your username, those old replies are gonna still be there even though you’ve changed your username, and they will show as a reply to your current new username, @truepundit whatever, but they will also show your old username as being part of that thread.
And so I think the thing that really hammered it was, um, I went back and I realized that his, his old Twitter username, um, was, like, a hockey-related one. I think it was called, like, hockey- It was hockeyintel Hockey Intel, right. He loved Intel anything, right? That was the thing about this guy. He
Zach Elwood: also loved hockey.
That was why he was arrested by the FBI for selling, uh- … you know, copyrighted, uh, hockey DVDs. This, this is a- Uh, yeah … we could go down all sorts of rabbit holes, but cont- carry on. Yeah.
Craig Silverman: Yeah, I know. I mean, and, and that was… You know, and so anyway, I saw that, you know, he was having arguments with people about hockey, and so you would see in the replies, it was replying to @thomas1774payne, which was his current Twitter ID, but then included in there would be @hockeyintel.
And so then it was like, okay, I gotta find every conversation with @hockeyintel, because this was his thing before, and to the exact to the point you raised, like he’s not being careful at this point. Sure, he’s may not have his real name on it, but he’s like just a hockey dude. And so there was that, and I ended up finding a conversation when he was arguing about, um, a young player in a sort of marginal US hockey league.
Um, and it appeared to be a burner account that was jumping in to sort of talk up this one young player, obscure player, and Hockey Intel was about this player, and this one called @dig_dirt was about this player. And at the end of the day, I then decided to look up this player, ’cause I’m like, what if, what if they’re like related to this player?
What if, what if this account is like, you know him, or what if this player is him, or it’s, you know, a relative or his son? And at the end of the day, um, you know, uh, they kept run- mentioning this player, and so I looked up this player, and then I started looking, and basically through his name, the player, I figured out who his dad was, because the player was too young, I thought, to be True Pundit.
Um, and then his dad’s name came up, and I remember the moment. I just simply googled the dad’s name, and I googled the dad’s name, and I think the thing that first came up was him being arrested by the FBI for selling pirated hockey tapes. And I’m like, oh my God, we’ve got a guy who has a grudge against the FBI.
Yeah,
Zach Elwood: exactly.
Craig Silverman: Which was the theme of True Pundit, right?
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s great. Yeah, there, there were so many interesting things in that case, like yeah, the grudge against the FBI, which made his motive for all this stuff make sense because so many of his fake news pieces were about like FBI or other law enforcement agencies doing bad things, and that seemed to be one of his main, uh, his main motives there.
Yeah. Yeah, so so many interesting things about that case. Well, it’s interesting to hear that you didn’t go straight for the… I, I, I kind of imagine you just being like cracking the case immediately. So it’s, you know- … at least it’s nice to know that you struggle with it a little bit too. But, um, do other cases come to mind where, um, somebody’s early behavior like that, uh, early online actions gave you major clues to, to cracking the case?
Craig Silverman: I think there’s been a lot of times where people’s early activity online definitely helped, and sometimes it’s a very small thing. Sometimes it might be that, uh… So, like, one of the fundamental approaches when you’ve got the account of the person you’re interested in, they have a username. And so in his case, it was whatever, Thomas1774Payne.
You know, you wanna do a username search and find every account online that has t- @Thomas1774Payne because sometimes it’s, like, a, a, a username that really means a lot to the person, and they might have used it on many accounts and many platforms over the years. And even though they’ve been careful and they never uploaded a photo of themself on any of the recent ones, if you find, you know, the chess.com account they created eight years ago, maybe it actually has a photo of them.
And so there are absolutely times when, you know, by doing this sort of username pivot of let me find all of the accounts with this username, let me see if any of these align with this person I’m looking at Sometimes you get the thing like, “Oh, great, I have a photo of them. Oh, I have a date of birth,” or, “Oh, I have a location, and now I can do my searches and throw this location in.”
Mm. Um, and then that starts to kind of unlock it a little bit. Or yes, looking at their, their early things. Um, or sometimes it’s like when you get their email address, popping that into a domain name registration search field and seeing all the websites that have been registered by that addre- that email address.
And so, you know, a lot of times it, it is the early, finding the pivot point that you can go back in time on somebody. So it might be just one social account where you look at all of their earliest tweets, all their earliest messages, but it also sometimes is, well, I have a username, I have an email address, I have a phone number.
Let me find everything I can about the digital footprint of this asset. And that usually, hopefully takes you back in time and can kind of reveal some interesting things. Like with, with True Pundit, I mean, it was just like as soon as the guy’s name went in, you know, there was the FBI thing, but it was also that one of the clues that you had captured about him is he had tweeted at one point a photo of a pretty prestigious US journalism award, a Loeb Award, um, which is like, like the top award in US journalism for business reporting kind of.
He was dribbling out these clues and he felt protected. He didn’t show his name on the award, but he showed the award. Right. And so we knew whoever was True Pundit, unless he bought this award or stole that photo from somebody, he’s a guy who probably won this award at some point. And so once I had that name of the guy’s dad and the FBI thing, I could just go on the Loeb Awards website and lo and behold, yep, a guy with that exact name had won a Loeb Award in the right timeframe.
And, and, you know, once you get that one piece, like that was just, that was the key that unlocked everything. Everything that he had ever said about himself made sense. Every claim that he had made-
Zach Elwood: Right.
Craig Silverman: Just- … that was true, everything fit like 100% perfectly. And so the, the going back in time piece and the figuring out that footprint, like yeah, the better, uh, I try to get as good at that as possible and try to be patient with it.
And also when I hit a roadblock, taking like, not coming back to it for at least 24 hours or 48 hours Because that is, the fresh eyes is so, so key. Yeah. You will try something you never thought to try before, and now it will seem obvious, but you didn’t think of it the three other times you were working on it.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, that was another thing I wanted to ask you about is, you know, that was my, with my quite amateur investigative work back then, one of my other major learnings was the need to try to just collect my thoughts, because what I was doing was I was just focusing on, like, “Oh, gotta work on this, gotta work on this, gotta be productive.”
But I think- … you know, what I, what I really needed to do was just take some time and just sit back and, like, let it all coalesce in my head a little bit, and I didn’t- Hmm … really do that enough. I was just like, “Gotta do this, gotta do this,” but I, I sh- you know, to, to your point, it’s like, I think it’s, for any project probably, but especially one with where you have a lot of leads and a lot of data and a lot of information, it’s like you need to sit back and just be like, “Where’s the most productive place I can spend my efforts,” right?
But I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that.
Craig Silverman: Yeah, I mean, it’s the proverbial rabbit hole thing, right? Where y- you know, where one, you just sort of, you find something and you, so you just go har- at it really hard and realize you’ve just wasted an hour. Or the other is just, also there’s so many tools and so many techniques and things out there that people just kind of spin their wheels of, like, trying a whole bunch of things, and, and that ends up, like, not being productive.
And, and it really can harm you in kind of the sort of your motivation and your mental state for the investigation, because you look back and you realize, “I just spent two hours and none of this is useful,” and then you’re just depressed, right? You’re like, “I will never get those two hours back.” And so I, I think the element of, uh, you know, and I, I’m not certainly perg- perfect at this, but the element of really figuring out, like, well, okay, what is the key question or what are the few key questions that I need to, I need to try to answer or that I need to use to direct my work?
Because it is really easy to just find something that seems kind of cool and interesting and follow it and waste a bunch of time, and you realize it actually was not core to my question. And this is actually where the sort of non-journalistic approach to investigative work comes in by people who are rooted in the kind of intelligence cycle, uh, people who work in intelligence work.
There’s an intelligence cycle of, you know, gathering and analyzing and producing and all, like, and it’s an established kind of framework. But one of the key parts of it is that you have to set out the, the key sort of questions that you, that your intelle- that is guiding your intelligence collection and analysis.
And so you set your north stars very early on, and you try to sort of keep those as a way to make sure that you’re actually able to, uh, stay on it and stay on task. Um, because- It is so tempting, especially if you know a lot of different techniques, you have access to a lot of tools, to just kinda like fiddle around for an hour and not actually make a lot of progress.
Uh, and I think it’s something that people struggle with a lot, for sure.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, I mean, that was what led to my kind of burnout on that project specifically, and I think, you know, a big part of that is, um, a d- I- I’d imagine a big part of the skill in these areas is knowing, like, where, what is likely to bear fruit.
So you’re like, “I’m gonna spend X amount of time on this area- Mm-hmm … that I think is most likely to bear fruit. I’m gonna spend X amount of time on this area next.” I think that, that seems to me where, where a lot of the, the skill would come in, is having, having that sense of what’s worked in the past and where, where are the most productive area to work on.
Uh, would I be right on that?
Craig Silverman: Yeah, I think so, and I think, like, there are some people who get really nerdy about this, and they will actually make flowcharts of, okay, if you are investigating a person, or if you, you know, if you have an email address, here’s, here’s the step flowchart. You know, did you try this?
Did you try this? Um, you know, to actually create a sort of framework and a methodology so that you’re checking all the right boxes and not sort of going astray. And it, it is the kind of thing where the more investigations you do, certainly about s- you know, specific types of things over and over again, you realize what’s worked, what’s borne fruit, and you tend to start with those things, as opposed to, like, trying others.
But you know, one of the sort of arguments against that in some ways is also that one of the, one of the truths of this work in the digital realm is that there’s usually more than one way to get the answer. Um, and, like, if we take the True Pundit case, it ended up being, you know, sort of unlocked by his, his early username.
But I’m sure there are other ways to have figured out his identity as well. I’m sure that is not the only way. There’s something to be said for having a sort of, a bit of a structured methodology and knowing the steps you wanna take, and really, you know, not being haphazard about it. But you also wanna guard against believing there is only one path to take, and there is only one way to go through stuff.
Mm. Because 100%, and I mean, like, when I’m teaching or giving workshops, I often try to pick examples where there’s more than one way to get the answer, because I wanna communicate that to people. I want them to understand that, um, the thing that worked before isn’t necessarily gonna work this time. But if you try a bunch of different stuff, um, and you know a few different approaches, one of those may bear fruit.
And so it’s, it’s also a way, I think, to sort of keep hope alive in that, “Oh, I tried these three things, and none of them worked.” But it’s like you shouldn’t just give up, uh, instantly, you know? Th- there’s probably another way to find the answer.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Another thing that stood out for the True Pundit case was, uh, language usage.
Like, uh, so- He, he liked to use, like, ass-related, uh, expressions, like ass clowns and ass hats and stuff, and so- … you know, w- it ended up not playing a role ’cause, you know, you deduce it in other ways, but it was clear from that, uh, the other account that he was using that was replying to his own account, the, uh, the, uh, Dig Dirt, uh, account- Right
he would also use the same exact kind of language. Even though he was, like, trying to be deceptive and act like he was two different people, he was still using very, uh, very similar language. Yeah, also when he would quote from inte- his intel sources, his fake intel sources giving quotes about his stories, you could sense- It stood out to me, like, his quotes, when you, when you put them side by side, they all had a, a, a very similar phrasing and, you know, a- across these different stories, so that was kinda interesting, too.
You could probably do some sort of- Mm-hmm … some sort of objective analysis on that. Uh, and then, then also that recent, uh, you know, Bitcoin Satoshi examination and, uh, I think it was the- Right … New York Times was examining the language usage, too. But I’m curious- Mm-hmm … has the, the language analysis played a big role in, in some of your investigations?
Craig Silverman: Language analysis, 100%. Like, one of the, one of the things, uh, that I sort of try to follow and teach around sort of account and online activity analysis is, is the what’s called the ABC framework, which is actor, behavior, content. And so, like, when you have a c- an account or a website or whatever in front of you, it’s the actor.
So, like, who do they say runs this? Is, is this a company? Um, you know, if it’s a social media profile, what’s their profile photo? What do they say, you know, what do they claim about themselves? And then, you know, behavior is obviously, like, well, who are they interacting with? What are they retweeting? You know, are they retweeting more than posting?
That kind of stuff. And then obviously the C in that is content, where, um, you know, patterns of language is, is absolutely a thing. And you know, the example you cite with True Pundit, um, there was another investigation that came to mind right away where there was this, um, this think tank in, in DC. Um, it was, uh, the Institute for Critical Infrastructure or something like that.
Somehow I ended up just getting interested in them, and, you know, because I had been tagged in a tweet talking to their, their sort of lead analyst, their top guy, Mr. Cyber himself sort of thing. And I noticed that all of a sudden this innocuous tweet from him on this thread that I got put in just got tons of engagement, and I was like, “That doesn’t make any sense.
Like, who’s engaging with this?” And I started looking at the accounts engaging with it, and I was like, “Oh my God, these look like fake accounts to me.” Long story short on that is I started looking into this guy because it seemed to me that all of his tweets and all the tweets from his institute were being inauthentically amplified.
And so then I was like, well, why would somebody who is literally throwing an annual gala where there are, are senior cyber security executives from the FBI, the NSA, and these other major instit- like, why would he be doing that? And it turned out, like- Some
Zach Elwood: sort of test. You know, you know, like, is he testing us?
Craig Silverman: Okay, so that was actually the explanation he gave later. He said, and to try and explain it away, he was like, “Oh,” you know, one, it was sort of like, “Oh, it’s, you know,” uh, ’cause he, he literally wrote, like, an e-book on information warfare and, you know, deception and manipulation. And he said initially, he’s like, “Oh, we think it’s actors in China who are doing this to discredit us, and we think, you know, it’s a test or whatever.”
Um, but at the end of the day, like, I… Similar to the TruePundit guy, he had gone through many accounts and many iterations in his life and his career. He was kind of a f- a, a scammer and a fraudster. Mm. And, uh, and so, but he absolutely had telltale phrases that he had been using across different identities, different accounts.
Some very unique phrasing that he would use. And then, for example, on his YouTube videos, he was also using fake comments to pump him up, and some of those fake accounts were using some of the exact same phrases. And one of the things that I, uh, often say about those kinds of indicators is, like, that’s a great clue.
That means you should be looking more. But that in and of itself, like, you couldn’t hang a whole investigation on just, like, well, the phrase is being reused, right? Like, that’s not a strong enough evidence because It just, it could be a, a remarkable coincidence, but coincidence has happened. But it is the kind of indicator that is like, “Hey, this is a light, and you should 100% dig more because you have found this.”
So like it’s a weak indicator, but it is still an indicator. And then if you can build from that and lay- layer in a whole bunch of other stuff like records and other connections- Right … then, then when you’re actually, like, telling the story, those linguistic ticks, once you’ve buttressed it by everything else, are super fun and super compelling for people to read.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Craig Silverman: Um, but it’s, it’s one of these scenarios where, like, the content indicators are typically not super strong because- Mm-hmm … it’s very easy to copy other people’s content. Right. It’s very easy to generate it with AI. And so, like, you can’t, you can’t put too much emphasis on it, but I also at the same time, like, I would never dismiss it because that could be, like, the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
It’s like, “Oh, these seem to be separate accounts, but they’re all saying either variations of the same thing or, you know, all engaging in the same type of content or activity.” Um, that to me is like this sign of, “Oh, I should dig more,” but I also have to, I have to keep that in its correct frame of analysis that this is not conclusive, but it’s a nice indicator.
Zach Elwood: Right. To your point, it’s like, you know, if I was creating, uh, deceptive content, uh, I mean, one thing I would consider is, like, inserting, uh, language that somebody else I wanna frame might use for that. You know, like, it’s… It would be very easy to throw people off the scent using that, right? So it’s like one of the more easily, you know, content’s one of the more easily controlled things, so you always have to be aware that, you know, they could be throwing you off the scent in various ways, so.
Craig Silverman: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s it. And, and so it’s one of those things, and this is like, this to me is sort of one of the fun but challenging elements of this kind of work is, um, is being able to recognize a signal, recognize an indicator, um, and know what that looks like. But then you also, like, you have to sort of put yourself on a leash a little bit and, and look at it and be like, “Yeah-” That’s, that’s interesting, that’s helpful, but it’s just content.
It could be copied, it could be this, it could be that. And so it’s sort of like controlling your mind a little bit, which is something you’re very into, right? Of like not letting yourself get too carried away, having the thinking process that’s enabling you to identify this stuff, but then to also engage the other part of your brain to not let yourself get so carried away of like, “Oh, I found it.
I nailed it.” Right?
Zach Elwood: Right.
Craig Silverman: And that element of control, that element of discipline is at the core of this. Um, like all the tools, all the techniques, if you can’t interpret it properly, and if you allow yourself to like over, you know, uh, sort of overvalue things, then it doesn’t matter what tools and techniques you know, you’re screwed because your analysis at the end of the day is gonna be wrong.
You don’t know how to weigh things properly.
Zach Elwood: What comes to mind for that is with the True Pundit case, there were, there were several coincidences in there that made me think, “Oh, I’ve cracked the case.” And I imagine this must hap- happen for any data intensive, um, investigation or, or it can be common be- because for example, there was one specific thing where it was a very strange coincidence where a True Pundit had done something, I can’t remember what it was, it was something major he had done with his accounts.
But then, like- Mm … on the same, like basically almost the same day or maybe it was the same week, somebody else had started another hockey intel, uh, account. But I thought- Right … I was like, “Oh, this must, this must be the people, like who’s u- who are using this new account and he’s trying to throw me off by talking about something else completely different or something.”
But, and then I start- Right … I started investigating these people who had created this account, it was like a father and son. And I was like, “Oh, I’ve cracked the case. Like, this is too big a coincidence.” But it was a coincidence- Right … that some people had just registered that account around the same time as I was investigating it.
Uh- Mm … so, but it, it’s an int- interesting, and I think you had mentioned something about like being willing to see that you can be, uh, taken down these various… And then you start having confirmation bias, you know, sort of like I was looking at-
Craig Silverman: Yeah …
Zach Elwood: the Zodiac, um, what’s his name? The, the guy who wrote the Zodiac book, and they made the, the movie out, out of it.
I can’t remember his name. Gray- Right … Gray something. Gray Smith maybe. But, um- Mm … he, he’s known, he was known for like basically fabricating, uh, some of these things in his book about the Zodiac that were not- Yes … true and, and it was like he just had like a tunnel vision for his, his view of the case, right?
Which, which I imagine- Mm-hmm … anybody, uh, you know, leaving aside the, the fabricating of, and making up stories part of it, I imagine it’s very easy to have this tunnel vision if you start thinking like, “Oh, I’m so su- sure it’s these people now,” you know?
Craig Silverman: Yeah. Yeah, I just need to do this to flush them out, and then, you know, this lie will help me get to the truth or, uh, yeah.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, uh, and I mean, that, that tunnel vision element, I mean, it’s something, uh, you have to guard against. And, and it’s funny because this is something that… And so when people get into journalism, they usually are getting into it with like very well-meaning motivations. Um, like, it, it might be just like, “I love telling stories,” or, “I wanna hold powerful account- people accountable.
I wanna, you know, illuminate the world.” Like, lots of great motivation. And so, you know, it’s, it’s very rare that you have a malicious acting journalist, and some people may find that hard to believe, but like that is absolutely the truth. And, and, you know, before I was sort of doing this work, I spent 10 years writing a blog that actually was the only blog in the world regularly cataloging mistakes, errors, fabricators, plagiarists.
Like, I, I- Right … I spent- Which led to your book. Your- Which led to a book on this topic. And so, so I literally spent about 10 years of understanding like why mistakes are being made in journalism, when are the, when are there malicious actors, when is it unintentional? And the vast majority of the time it’s unintentional, which doesn’t mean it’s, it’s good.
Like- Right … it doesn’t excuse it. It’s bias. You’re not supposed to be making mistakes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and so the reason mistakes get made, like the number one reason is just like process of you’re moving fast, you d- you missed it, whatever. But there are absolutely times when somebody has decided what the story is- And then they pursue it and, you know, the evidence that comes along that might, you know, knock them off of that or refute something, they just don’t fully process it, and they don’t understand that they’re not fully processing it.
And that to me is, like, the really scary thing, is that you can get to a point where you trick yourself into this. And you can have good evidence and good things in front of you, but you will dismiss them because your mind is absolutely in the frame of, “I’ve already understood and know what the deal is here.”
And so, and then if you can get other people involved, like your editor, to follow the same way, and copy editors, if everybody falls in the same track of mind, it doesn’t matter how many people read the same story, they’re all gonna miss the holes in it because they’ve all come to believe something. And so, you know, that is, that is sort of the, one of the dangers and risks in journalism, and that’s, that’s where you have to have this, like, mental humility and understand that you could make mistakes any time, you could let yourself be led astray, and it’s really about the mental game.
It’s, you know, investigative work and journalism, all this, it is a mental game at the end of it, and either you make an effort to think about your thinking and to c- try to be aware of it and control for the elements of bias that inevitably come, um, or, or it’s gonna come for you. And again, you don’t have to be a malicious actor.
You don’t have to be trying to do bad. Bad things can happen to well-meaning people all the time
Zach Elwood: Do you have a certain case or, or a couple cases that, that come to mind for one of your, uh, some of your favorite projects, cases that you worked on in the last few years?
Craig Silverman: So one of the ones that I always look back on fondly, for some reason, I don’t know exactly why, um, but it, it goes back, it goes back several years.
Um, and uh, so this was a, a case… I’m, I’m really- I’ve done a lot of reporting on digital advertising, which in and of itself doesn’t sound like a super interesting topic, except, um, one of the things about digital advertising, you know, the banner ads you see, the ads that show up on your apps, there is an insane amount of fraud going on in digital advertising, and there has been for a very long time.
And I didn’t realize this until really about 2017 when I started reporting on it. And so um, I did a story where… And one of the reasons that this stands out to me is that the guys that I was able to expose were really quite ingenious. Um, and so let me describe the scheme that they did and then how it sort of, uh, got revealed, which is, so there are these guys, they had a good amount of expertise in online marketing, digital marketing, digital ads, um, but also in, in, on the much more technical side of like servers and, um, you know, browsers and browser agents and all this stuff.
And so what they started doing was they would find, um, a game on the Android platform, so like, you know, on your, in the Google Play Store, that was doing pretty well. Um, a game that had like hundreds of thousands or a few million users, was profitable for the person who had created it. And they would, through a third party, approach the person who owned that game and say, “Hey, we, we love your game.
We’d like to buy it.” And they would offer them a very nice price for it. Like, not outrageous, but a really kind of a number that any person looking at that saying, “Yeah, I c- I, I don’t think I could turn this down.” Um, and so they acquired dozens of games this way. And what they would do is once they had the game, they would, um, use their technical skills to basically, you know, look at the audience and see, oh, okay, it’s, you know, 60% in the US, it’s 40% here, it’s, well, you know, whatever.
Um, most people are playing the game, and they spend three minutes on average, and they play between these hours of the day, and here are the spike times and that. So they would map out the entire real user behavior, and then they programmed bots to mimic it. And so they were basically able to turn a dial.
And initially, it’s like, okay, let’s increase the audience by, by melding in the bots. Let’s increase the audience this month by 5%. Then let’s do the next month by 3%. And so over time, they could artificially just grow their audience in a s- way that seemed organic but was all just these camouflaged bots.
And so they, they ended up having a network of dozens of games and apps with manufactured bot audiences that were getting paid real money. Because of course, the whole point here is that you create the bot, it plays the game, and ads are shown to the bot, and you earn money from the ads. And they had partnerships with all the major ad platforms, including Google.
Um, and so there was a, uh, a sort of, you know, a, a digital firm that looks at ad stuff, and they had found, um, one like 1%, one piece of this thing, and they went to me as like at the time one of the only reporters looking into this stuff, and they said, “Hey, we think there’s more here. You should look into it.”
And so at the end of the day, through a mixture of, um, like all of these games, they have to have company names listed on them. They have to have contact emails. They have to have their own websites and privacy policies. And so across dozens and dozens of games, I collected email addresses, company names, privacy policy text, website domains, all of these assets, ran sort of searches and things on all of them, and was able then to realize, like, oh, this one email address is connected to 50 different domain names, which are connected to all of these apps.
And, and so I literally, I drew these like conspiracy-looking maps by hand of all of these connections, and I was able to actually show all of these games coming back to a few different entities. And then I was able to get corporate records for the key entity in all of this, where I was able to see the beneficiary owners of that, it was these four guys, and through that, unlock the whole scheme.
Mm. And at that point, uh, I was able to then go to like Google and other places and say like, “Take a look at what’s going on here.” And at the end of the day, Google ended up having to refund $10 million to advertisers- Wow … who had had their, their money, uh, their ads fraudulently viewed. And so for me it was like, it was in some ways a very technical story, but at the end of the day, it was gathering all of these, you know, these assets to find the connections.
So the digital assets of domain names and email addresses and phone numbers and company names. And it was a mixture of digital stuff, and it was a mixture of, you know, really more traditional investigative work of just like, who owns this?
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Craig Silverman: Um, you know, and I reached out to people who’d sold their games and who’d you sell it to?
And this, and so it was a lot of like piecing it together with traditional journalism, with some of the invest- digital investigative techniques. And I think that’s why I think of it fondly is because it married a whole bunch of, you know, different techniques together, and at the end of the day, like they got caught.
Mm-hmm. And there was a, you know, and some people got credits from Google. Mm. And some good came of it even though I would 100% bet that these guys are still at it to this day in a different way.
Zach Elwood: Well, I was gonna say, it seems like, I mean, I, I’ve read these stories about like the Spotify thing where somebody, you know, was driving organic-looking fake traffic and making apparently lots of, you know, millions of dollars for that.
He got caught. But it does seem to me like if you design that scam well enough, like you… Like these guys got away for, with it for a while. I mean, it does seem like- The unfortunate thing is it, it seems like if you design the, the scam well enough, it’s really, really hard to g-get that caught, right? Am, am I right on that?
Craig Silverman: Yes. I mean, I think it is a tremendous moment for scams and scammers. They are- Yeah … they are, you know, they have just a global opportunity and global markets in front of them. Uh, and, and also, I mean, right now in this moment where so many of these major platforms, whether it’s Spotify and others in music, whether it’s like Meta with Facebook and Instagram, or all these different platforms, they are really just trying to infuse AI in, into everything.
And the amount of sort of like safety oversight and all of that is just trailing far behind it because there’s this arms race to show who’s got the best AI products. And so they are incentivizing people to create huge amounts of like deceptive content. They are incentivi- They are, in some cases, like paying people directly for the engagement with the content they’re producing, whether it’s on YouTube or on Facebook.
And so the opportunity to monetize deception has never been greater. Um, and the opportunity to monetize deceptive content or, you know, whether it’s audio or video, has never been greater. Because, I mean, if you think about it, like 20 years ago or 30 years ago, I mean, you had like The National Enquirer at the checkout and…
But it was really hard to like monetize fake and false and made-up stuff. It just, it wasn’t a great business in media. And today, I mean, you could be somebody churning out deceptive content, whether it’s like the, you know, uh, AI-generated music on Spotify pretending to be a real artist, whether it’s, you know, producing AI slop on YouTube or other places.
Um, you know, I’ve done stories about AI influencers on Instagram where like the grift on that is you generate lots of AI content of an extremely attractive young woman, you create an Instagram profile for her, you have her, you know, posting not nude content, but like right up against the line of what Instagram will allow.
And then you have a link to a platform like Fanvue, where you can then monetize that attention by getting people to pay to view the nudes of this fake woman. Mm-hmm. Um, and so there are so many different grifts and hustles around this kind of stuff today. And, you know, the, the oversight of it and the platform enforcement on it is, is really trailing behind, and partly because these platforms, again, are trying to make money and incentivize AI in and of itself.
So they don’t really have an incentive to sort of come in and say like, “No, no more AI content,” or things like that.
Zach Elwood: I probably won’t word this very well ’cause I’m trying to like wrap up a bunch of ideas, but, um- There does just seem to be… I mean, there’s just so much bullshit around us these days. Like, I’m kind of…
I mean, I thought I was kind of immune to it, but like- And it’s not, you know, a- and it’s hard to talk about too, ’cause it’s not like… I, I wanna be clear too, ’cause it’s like I’ve been very disappointed in mainstream journalism too for some of the reasons we mentioned, like the bias, you know, thing, which I think is made worse by toxic polarization.
You know, people become more- Right … clickbait in their thinkings, only share certain sides of the story sometimes. So, uh, you know, I wanna preface it with that. But I, I’m just like, the internet, these, these various people that are various independent media creators, you know, like Diary of a CEO, Joe Rogan. I mean, even some of these people- Mm-hmm
that are looked on, like I think Diary of a SO- CEO is looked at as, as somewhat legitimate because he does interview- Yeah … like really well-known and, uh, respected people, th- legitimate people. But then, like, he mixes in- Mm-hmm … these complete bullshit con artists, like some of the most egregious con artists I’ve ever seen, like this guy Chase Hughes, who I’ve, you know, investigated and, and exposed on my podcast.
And I, I would think- Right … you know, so just to say i- a- and, and the fact that he’s a serious show lends credibility- Mm-hmm … to these various scammers that he also interviews and s- and helps promote, and gives them a following of, you know, millions of followers. So just to say- Yes … I think we’re surrounded by that stuff these days.
The internet, uh, you know, has positives and negatives obviously, but like it does seem to lead to this difficulty of separating fact from fiction. It gives a lot of strengths to people that are just straight up con artists and liars, helps them find audiences. It, it creates incentives- Yeah … for people like Diary of a CEO and Joe Rogan to interview people that they might even know are scammers, but they just want the attention because for exciting topics.
So it just creates this range of, uh, you know… And then I also think it amplifies polarization and those kinds of dynamics which also incentivize, you know, more emotion-based and, uh, you know, uh, polarized content, and all these kinds of things. Mm-hmm. So, uh, but I’m just curious. Yeah. It’s not even a question, but I’m just curious, how do you view- Yeah
the, the, the current state of the, the bullshit and the, the fake news around us, uh, this, this whole ecosystem these days?
Craig Silverman: Well, I typically give very long answers. I mean, the short answer is it’s very bad. You know? It’s, we’re n- we’re not, we’re not in a good place right now. And I think, like, what you’re talking about gets to a core element of it’s very hard for people to know how to sort of judge authority and credibility and quality these days.
Uh, because as you say, uh, someone, Diary of a CEO, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, has tons of credible people on it, and then you’re 100% … You’ll have a total quack, a total ridiculous fraud on it. But that person comes on, and they, they accrue all of the credibility built up of everyone else who has been on there.
And it’s incredibly easy to manufacture sort of social proof and credibility in this environment in a, in a fraudulent way. Y- you can, you know, you can do engagement bait to build up a following base, but you could also just buy followers. You can buy engagement. Um, you can purchase credentials that seem good enough.
You can create an entire AI persona that some people can’t really tell the difference of. And, um, and it’s not like I’m lamenting that, oh, mainstream media has lost its authority, ’cause I never really worked in mainstream media. Um, and I think that there is, y- you know, on balance, having more voices and more openness and not being restricted to a few big media companies and who they decide to hire and platform, like I
That is, that is a good thing to have a more open environment. But what we have to understand is that when you have a more open environment, the ability for manipulation and the ability to, to really create authority when it isn’t there is vastly, vastly, not only, like, increased and improved, but it is, it is incredibly easy to obtain.
Uh, and it is, it is trivial to make yourself seem credible in this environment. And it is also, you know, one of the hacks is to obviously just talk about how you’re not mainstream media and how, you know, you’re i- totally independent and you’re not in control of big pharma or this or that. And to be totally anti-institutionalist on it is, you know, is the ironic kind of way is the new institutions are individuals built out of being anti-institutionalists.
Right. And they accrue some of the kind of trust that used to be reserved for institutions. Um, and so it’s, it’s a very chaotic and difficult environment, I think, for just the average person to navigate and to understand and be able to process and think about, like, where to apply their trust and how to assess credibility.
Um, and as long as these sort of, you know, platforms that in some ways are the arbiters of these credibility signals of, like, pre- you know, preventing people from having fake engagement, preventing people from, you know, not labeling AI content, which they say they’re going to do. As long as they’re not gonna follow, enforce their own rules, it becomes very easy for people to confuse other folks.
Uh, and so that’s sort of where we sit now, is the ability and facility To fake credibility signals and build that up, um, the hostility towards institutions and sort of mainstream sources of credibility, and then the platforms being unwilling to really make huge investments to enforce their rules at a significant scale creates a massive opportunity for mass deception.
Uh, and you know, and, and I don’t know that there’s gonna be a moment that sort of starts tilting it in the other direction. We’re gonna have to figure out how to operate in these very new low trust environments in, you know, speaking in the Western democratic societies where typically we had levels of institutional trust, typically we had some confidence in those things, and today it’s, it’s falling, it’s falling, it’s falling, and it’s moving more to individuals, and there are lots of individuals who are exploiting that in ways that, uh, really are not good for society.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, I tend to think that we have to, as a species, we- it’s like we have to adjust to technologies and start treating them maturely, and I kinda feel like we haven’t even begun to like deal with the repercussions, uh, internally, you know, our own responses to this new environment. I feel like we haven’t even begun- Yeah
really to… We, or we’ve only just begun to kind of like adjust to the technology in some way, but I don’t know if you, if you agree with
Craig Silverman: that. I mean, e- evolution is a slow process. Yeah. And I, you know, the smartphone came out in like 2007. The idea, we think about young people as being smartphone native. I, I mean, they’re dealing with the same sort of brains that we have, and it takes time to evolve, and I, so I absolutely agree that we are still struggling to catch up with the things ironically that we have created and built.
Right. Um, and humans are still, we still haven’t really figured out how to navigate this environment in a way. Our brains are still have remnants of like hunter-gatherer culture and societies in them of how we process information, interact with other people. You know, it’s demonizing other groups and creating an other is still a very powerful strategy because, you know, there was a time in human societies that the other was really, really dangerous.
The unknown was really dangerous, and the only way to stay alive was with your tribe and your group- Mm-hmm … and to hold that close.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Craig Silverman: And so, um, so yeah, I think it’s gonna be a long process to really come to grips with and be able to navigate and, and operate in this environment in a way where, you know, broadly people are really, you know, able to sort of feel confidence and, and do it in a way that’s, that’s helpful and productive to them.
Zach Elwood: Well, uh, this has been great, Craig. I, I feel like I could talk to you forever. I, I’d love to just sit and listen to all your, uh, investigative stories and cases. Uh, do you have anything else you want to share about how people can stay in touch with you?
Craig Silverman: Yeah. Um, so look, I, uh, I, I quit my full-time job in a newsroom a year ago, and I started an independent publication.
So I guess now I can sort of take advantage of that anti-institutionalist bend out there and say, like, “I am a fully independent, tiny outlet.” Um, so it’s, it’s called Indicator. You can… Uh, we have a free newsletter. You can go to indicator.media and sign up. Uh, and every Friday we’ll give you kind of a roundup of what’s going on in the world of digital deception, as well as some tools and tips.
Um, and then if you are somebody interested in sort of sharpening your investigative skills, that’s sort of what we offer as a, a paid membership, is access to a lot of guides and tutorials and tools. Um, and uh, I’m, I’m more active, I guess, on LinkedIn than other platforms these days, so people can find me there as well.
Zach Elwood: Great. And getting back to that point about, you know, a j- part of our societal or species adjustment to the, the modern digital environment is, is more of us doing our own work on various fronts to understand the world or the people around us. So it’s like you’re… The work that you’re doing at Indicator, I mean, I’ve talked to people recently where they were like, “Oh, I’ve used various investigative, uh, tools for my own personal life,” like vetting somebody-
you know, I was dating that I had a suspicion about or something, you know, these kinds of, these kinds of things. So I think the things you’re doing are, uh, are sharing, the tips you’re sharing are, are useful not just for investigators, not just for journalists, but for people trying to make sense of the world, being like, “I think this guy’s a con artist.
How can I, you know, do a little bit of research on him?” Or whatever it may be, right? So yeah, I, I wanted to throw that in there.
Craig Silverman: Yeah, appreciate it. I agree. I think there’s, like, a certain skill level and IQ level for basic kind of internet knowledge and, and fake busting and stuff like that, that if everybody in society had, we, we’d be in a much better scenario.
And so that is something that, you know, I encourage people to, yeah. Y- anybody can be an investigator. Yeah. That is one of the beautiful things of this moment in this time, is there’s a lot available to you, and if you don’t consider yourself as one professionally, bringing some investigative skills and elements into your life and how you do your work and how you interact with content and information is kind of necessary these days.
So I, I agree. I think it’s, I think we should have an expansive view of these skills being applied in people’s lives.