The Kremlin’s Digital Pirates: How Russian Tracking Pixels Harvest Romanians’ Data to Fund Conspiracies and Extremism
For five months, we tracked over 100,000 ads displayed across 131 websites in Eastern Europe. After decoding the hidden mechanisms behind these ads, we uncovered a network of Russian companies. This investigation reveals what data is harvested from Romanians, who ends up receiving it, and why the ads shown on platforms with conspiratorial and extremist content are among the most valuable to this network.
Are State-Controlled Chinese sources trying to dominate Xinjiang coverage on Google News?
The last CrossOver study on the representation of the Xinjiang province in People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Google News has shown that the content produced by Chinese state-controlled sources has outnumbered top western media outlets.
Check First publishes its OSINT investigation review process
You might have read some of our investigations, but why should you trust us? In an effort to be as transparent as possible on the way we work, we just published the review process Check First uses prior to any publication of our OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) investigations.
Why is “Nazis” regularly trending on Twitter in Belgium?
An analysis showing how Russian official narratives get pushed whenever “nazis” show up on the platform.
The maze of content moderation on Odysee
Check First uncovered the complex content moderation policies of the Odysee video platform and its underlying LBRY blockchain. Our analysis shows governments are few to ask for take-downs of illegal content.
Mastodon, the rise of the Fediverse
Mastodon, Fediverse, do you already feel lost just by using those 2 words which aren’t quite as new as you’d think? … Flashback
The Francophonie chooses CheckFirst again to run ODIL
CheckFirst is proud to have been chosen again to help run ODIL, the platform for French speaking initiatives fighting disinformation
CheckFirst to join COM-PRESS project
COM-PRESS aims at combating disinformation by equipping journalists with new image manipulation insights and detection methods.
Disinformation on Donbas is only a Google autocomplete away
An investigation to demonstrate how French speaking Belgians were hinted at searching for dubious sources when looking up the word “Donbass” in the Google search bar.
Replay: 22vlalapub, an analysis of political advertising on Meta, Google and Snapchat during French presidential election
We had the pleasure to disclose our findings on 1 September. Watch the replay!