Introducing Tutki: We simulated social media to teach how it gets weaponised
We run OSINT investigations. We contributed to create methodological and ethical guidelines to frame the practice. Logically, we developed a platform to help organisations strengthen their staff’s resilience against information manipulation, foreign influence, and disinformation campaigns.
In the latest years, we’ve been working on numerous OSINT investigations, from examining the Beirut port explosion to uncovering GRU ops, using Phaleristics. We’ve always constructed our OSINT trainings based on real cases. But with a growing and increasingly diverse audience, it became harder to deliver training that truly reflected reality.
What makes Tutki unique is that trainers can build custom scenarios from scratch, drawing directly from local information environments, or select pre-built templates inspired by real disinformation campaigns. The aim is not only to reflect the reality but also to provide the people we train with the good reflexes.
Tutki is also available in 8 EU languages and in Armenian (because we helped Armenian CSOs working on election disinformation). It can be easily translated to fit trainee’s needs.
Social media is fake. We faked social media.
Sometimes, in a near-perfect illustration of Murphy’s Law, and no matter how carefully a trainer prepares a set of posts for analysis, those posts could’ve been taken down or moderated by the following day. Relying on live social media content makes training sessions inherently unpredictable and difficult to replicate.
Besides, social media content encountered during open-source investigations can be graphic, violent, or otherwise harmful. Simulating platforms and the content learners are exposed to, enable to remove the risk of unplanned exposure to disturbing material during a training session. It also enhances security of people who do not necessarily have an account on the platforms they are being trained to investigate.
On Tutki, participants investigate five realistic social media simulations without needing accounts, without exposure to harmful content, and without the risk of content disappearing before the session starts. A six-character code is all they need to join.
Professional OSINT tools complete the picture: cross-platform search, timeline analysis, network visualisation, and coordinated inauthentic behaviour detection.
In March 2026, we partnered with the French training organisation Samsa to run a one-day immersive session for Radio France journalists: a full foreign interference scenario set in a fictional French Mediterranean city, tailored to the context of local elections.
A training platform for the community
Tutki offers three investigation modes (easy, medium, and hard) to match the room, whatever it looks like. Learners are active participants in a shared investigation, not passive recipients.
We love delivering trainings. But we’re not exclusively a training platform and don’t aim to be. That’s why Tutki is also built for professional trainers who want to run their own sessions independently.
Whether you’re a trainer or an organisation looking for a tailored programme, reach out at info@checkfirst.network or access the platform directly at tutki.tech.
Related project
Tutki is a specialised open-source intelligence (OSINT) training platform designed to help organisations strengthen their staff’s resilience against information manipulation, foreign influence, and disinformation campaigns.
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CheckFirst and Samsa immerse French journalists in a virtual foreign interference campaign
We constructed a one-day training with the French training organisation Samsa to help French journalists to learn how to identify and analyze information manipulation, disinformation campaigns, and coordinated inauthentic behavior in electoral context.
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