3.7M+
posts collected across investigations
General tech overview
Arbiter
See the accounts shaping your feed before they shape your views.
An AI copilot for public discourse · by SimPPL, a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit
SUPPORTED BY GOOGLE · MOZILLA · WIKIMEDIA · FORD · OMIDYAR · MIT · COLUMBIA · UNDP
arbiter.simppl.org
Where there’s smoke… is there fire?
Repeated baseless claims make people doubt everything, including what is true.
SRC · Hoes et al., Nature Human Behaviour 2024 · Gallup, Sept 2025
ARBITER · SIMPPL
Manipulation reaches the decisions that matter
Jobs, health, elections: real, documented cases, sourced on every card.
Jobs · trafficking
Fake job ads lure workers into forced-labour scam compounds.
Src · BBC News ↗
Health · vaccines
Samoa's vaccination rate fell to 31% amid online anti-vaccine fear. A measles outbreak killed dozens of children.
Src · The Guardian ↗
Elections · Romania
A court annulled Romania's election over a coordinated TikTok operation.
Src · Al Jazeera ↗Three documented cases · full source on each cardARBITER · SIMPPL
Campaigns cross platforms. Moderation stops at each platform's edge.
False stories reached 1,500 people six times faster than true ones (MIT, 2018).
CrowdTangle shut down in 2024; paid replacements cost thousands a month. Each platform sees only a quarter of the picture.
OnPassive recruited investors on every platform at once. The SEC charged it with raising $108 million from 800,000 investors.
SRC · MIT (Vosoughi et al., 2018) · SEC v. Mufareh / OnPassive, LR-25809
ARBITER · SIMPPL
Arbiter reads public conversation across platforms
01 · COLLECT
Public data, collected within platform rules
Ten platforms plus 20,000+ news sites, within platform terms.
02 · AGGREGATE
Themes, actors, networks
Posts cluster into themes; each theme surfaces its driving accounts.
03 · INVESTIGATE
Agentic investigations
Agents answer your questions and cite every post they use.
20B
interactions a month across platforms
100+
organizations with journalists signed up
21
countries with newsroom and civil-society partners
SRC · arbiter.simppl.org live counters (May 2026) · simppl.org/about
ARBITER · SIMPPL
Under the hood: three hard problems
01 · SEARCH
Your question finds posts that never used your words
Coded, multilingual wording shifts weekly; keyword lists miss it.
02 · AGGREGATE
Map who drives which narrative, across languages
Millions of posts become a navigable map of narratives and actors.
03 · INVESTIGATE
Interrogate millions of posts on demand
An agent writes and runs the analysis, returning cited answers.
Other tools search what they already collected. Arbiter decides what to collect.
SRC · SimPPL methods talk, NYU CSMAP (Mar 2026)
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Adaptive listening
>Climate skepticism and pushback on glacier-melt reporting
01 · PLAN
Your question expands into the actors, places, and domains it implies.
ORGANIZATIONS · Danish Met Institute · Columbia Climate School
LOCATIONS · Antarctica · Greenland · Andes
DOMAINS · sepp.org (skeptic) · nature.com
PLATFORMS · X 68 · YouTube 46 · Bluesky 16
LOCATIONS · Antarctica · Greenland · Andes
DOMAINS · sepp.org (skeptic) · nature.com
PLATFORMS · X 68 · YouTube 46 · Bluesky 16
02 · RETRIEVE & RERANK
Keyword and meaning search fuse, then rerank to what answers.
10,231
collected
→
138
relevant
03 · THE PAYOFF
Nobody labels their own post skeptical. Arbiter finds the pushback that shares none of your words.
81% → 99%
relevant results in the top 200, after reranking
SRC · SimPPL retrieval pipeline · entity prefilter cuts rerank GPU ~99% · climate-skepticism case, arbiter.simppl.org
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Platform enforcement lines up with what Arbiter flagged
X 2023
Our 2023 reporting prompted X's internal investigation into pro-Russian bots.
Investigation opened
Meta Q1 2024
Meta removed 50 accounts and 98 Pages with 3.4M followers after our reporting.
Network removed
YouTube 2025
YouTube terminated flagged channels on its own; we filed no report.
Channels terminated
SRC · transparency.meta.com/sr/Q1-2024-Adversarial-threat-report
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Theory of change
We believe reducing time-to-act improves resilience to unreliable information.
Takedown
Evidence reaches platforms while campaigns are live. Meta removed a network; YouTube terminated channels.
Informed interventions
Findings reach the people who respond. NEST published 19 days early. Maryland signed a letter of commitment to deploy statewide.
Vision
No institution is infallible as the arbiter of truth. Arbiter hands people evidence that a campaign is pushing their feed. People retain agency over their beliefs and decisions.
SRC · Meta Q1 2024 threat report · NEST case report · Maryland letter of commitment
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100+ organizations in 21 countries signed up
Rappler
dpa
Deutsche Welle
Bloomberg
Chequeado
Maldita.es
La Nación
Factchequeado
Africa Uncensored
NEST Mongolia
Jagran
DeSmog
Sakal Media
Nepal Fact Check
Migrasia
The Baltimore Banner
Ofcom
UNDP
UNHCR
Internet Archive
Columbia Journalism School
100+ organizations signed up on their own; we work with a growing subset. A leading global fact-checking network wants Arbiter across its 140+ verified members.
SRC · arbiter.simppl.org partner strip · simppl.org/about · July 2026
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We grow in three markets
Grants fund journalist access; contracts pay for programs and measurement.
Journalism
Live
DW Akademie cohorts and Indicator readers use Arbiter today.
Next
A global fact-checking network, on grant-funded seats.
Target
60 flagship newsroom institutions.
Civil society
Live
NEST, Migrasia, and UNDP cohorts run investigations today.
Live
Odisha child-safety early warning, seeded by a foundation.
Next
State election and attorney-general programs, starting with Maryland.
Commercial
Scoping
A pilot with a global marketing agency.
Next
Enterprise accounts in brand and threat intelligence.
Target
Agency and brand accounts at scale.
SRC · SimPPL market plan, July 2026 · live, scoping, and modeled targets labeled per lane
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Newsgathering
A month of cross-platform conversation compiles in 20 to 40 minutes. We have built reports on over 30 issues this way.
XYouTubeRedditBlueskyInstagramFacebookTikTokLinkedInTelegram4chan20k+ newsWikidata
Every number traces back to the posts behind it.
SRC · arbiter.simppl.org/studies · product screenshot
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Consumer and product intelligence
Themes map who amplifies whom, in which language, on which platform.
These reports produced X's investigation and Meta's Bangladesh takedown.
SRC · product screenshot
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Threat intelligence
Sentiment uniformity
Discourse that agrees too much
One campaign read 100% positive everywhere; organic discourse rarely does.
Clickbait score
Bait at 5, camouflage at 1
Heavy bait scores high; polished campaigns score low to pass organic.
Amplification anomaly
Reach with no audience trail
One crypto casino drew 36.9M interactions from four identical posts.
Entity mention share
Who benefits from the story
A banned betting brand stayed most-mentioned through mirror domains.
Impersonation
Borrowed legitimacy
One page posed as 16 real manufacturers to recruit victims.
Sponsorship disclosure
Paid voice posing as organic
Dossiers flag undisclosed promotion that breaks disclosure rules.
These signals add up to tactics, tested from Hindi to Cyrillic.
SRC · public Arbiter studies + partner case reports · arbiter.simppl.org/studies
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Verifiable and traceable agentic investigations
We asked a live study about Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina Faso's ruler.
Engagement traced to a handful of accounts, each one viral post.
Every row ties back to the posts behind it. Answers arrive in under a minute.
traoré study · 191 posts · 3 platformsMAY 26 – JUN 2, 2026
Which accounts drive the most engagement on Ibrahim Traore content in this window, and where do their outbound links point?
ANALYZING PATTERNS…
Engagement is driven by a small set of accounts, mostly via high-performing posts that don't include outbound links: native video and text rather than link-sharing.
| Account | Posts | Interactions | Outbound links |
|---|---|---|---|
| zoomafrika1 | 1 | 56,860 | none detected |
| SahelAlerte | 1 | 29,721 | none detected |
| WelcomeTheGulag | 1 | 23,175 | none detected |
| kelevitch | 1 | 22,426 | none detected |
| WithoutHistory | 1 | 10,499 | none detected |
| kwadwosheldon | 1 | 8,725 | youtube.com |
"Driver" status here is concentrated in single spikes rather than sustained volume.
Which accounts are amplifying this narrative the mostHow did this discussion spike and evolve over time
SRC · live agent answer, Jul 8 2026 · question, table, and takeaway verbatim, prose condensed (research/09)
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Claims assessment
The agent
Arbiter surfaces claims and groups related ones, citing every post.
The human
Journalists and researchers draw the conclusions; Arbiter keeps evidence attached.
Scope
One verified fact-check covers thousands of posts, built with Wikimedia.
Every case in this deck is a public study.
SRC · arbiter.simppl.org/studies · methods grounded in peer-reviewed research
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Scaling agentic investigations to millions of posts
The agent writes and runs analysis code in an isolated environment.
3.7M+
posts across investigations
20B
interactions a month across platforms
9 + news
platforms, multilingual, entity-resolved
540
agent runs hand-graded across 9 studies
We grade the code the agent writes
An LLM judge scores each answer's code against our reference analysis.
analysis functions the agent composes 30+
every answer replays from its code deterministic
An answer is accepted only when its code reproduces the reference.
SRC · code: run-case-study-agent.ts (8-step TS sandbox), packages/agent-eval, tooling/scripts/replay-*
ARBITER · SIMPPL
When partners publish, institutions act
Partners publish
19 days early
NEST caught a secret defamation bill from under 60 accounts.
Mongolia’s only internationally accredited fact-checkers · public case report
Platforms act
2 platforms
Meta removed a network; YouTube terminated flagged channels.
Meta Adversarial Threat Report Q1 2024 · Burkina Faso case
Governments act
5 governments
Maryland, California, New York, Odisha, and the Philippines opened conversations.
Maryland committed to a statewide rollout; the rest are scoping.
SRC · partner case reports · transparency.meta.com Q1 2024 · status as of July 2026
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Asks
Pick the one that fits your organization.
Fund us
Grants pay for free access for journalists and fact-checkers.
Invite us
Bring us into an investigation, a cohort, or a convening.
Introduce us
Connect us to a newsroom, a regulator, or a funder.
team@simppl.org · arbiter.simppl.org
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Case studies
Three follow. The full library is public at arbiter.simppl.org/studies.
arbiter.simppl.org/studies
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Case study
Job scams
Fake job ads promise work abroad and deliver workers into scam compounds.
With Migrasia, we traced 2,251 ads into 14 recruiting networks.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance invited us to present in Bangkok. The investigation compiled in under two hours.
14 recruiting networks mapped
Recruitment tactics by post count, Indonesian study.
SRC · two public Arbiter × Migrasia reports, linked on the partners slide · arbiter.simppl.org/studies
ARBITER · SIMPPL
Case study
AI-generated propaganda
01Detect
A fake PR wave for a military ruler
Pages promoted Ibrahim Traoré at 100% positive, 100% joy.
02Identify
The videos are AI-generated
Fake factories and railways drew millions of views.
03Impact
YouTube terminated the channels
We filed no report. A year later the network rebuilt; we caught it again.
Uniformly green panels are the anomaly that starts the investigation.
SRC · public Arbiter study panels · arbiter.simppl.org/studies
ARBITER · SIMPPL
Case study
Elections: Maryland's mail-in ballots
What officially happened
A printing error sent some voters the wrong primary ballot. Replacements and unique envelopes rule out duplicate voting.
The official explanation, cited in the study.
What the feed made of it
The claim: 500,000 fake ballots. False per the election administrator and fact-checkers.
Rated false
The claim: a million ballots circulating. Originals plus replacements, recast as duplicates.
Escalation
One sentence, 50+ accounts. The same wording appeared across platforms within hours.
Identical wording
The top post, 1.32M interactions, demanded a new federal voting law. Maryland’s election administrator signed a letter of commitment to deploy statewide.
SRC · 1,485-post study, saved claims + coordination runs · elections.maryland.gov · FactCheck.org · AP · congress.gov (H.R. 7296)
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The team, and the board behind it
Swapneel Mehta · Founder & Executive Director
AI safety at MIT and BU; Integrity Institute board member.
Dhara Mungra · Co-Founder, leads engineering
Ex-Bombora data scientist; NYU M.S. in Data Science.
Six full-time engineers build and run the platform.
Board of directors
Mukund Sudarshan · Anthropic
Christian Schroeder de Witt · University of Oxford
Chirag Raman · TU Delft
Sandra Khalil · All Tech Is Human
Rebecca Harvey · UK FCDO
Karan Dhabalia · entrepreneur (exited to Stripe)
Mansi Panchamia · World Bank
Stacey Peters · ex-VTDigger
Full board and team: simppl.org/team
SRC · simppl.org/team
ARBITER · SIMPPL
Try it now.
Write to team@simppl.org; we follow up within the week.
A pilot is one case study scoped to your issue. The evidence and sources are yours. The platform is live at arbiter.simppl.org.
SIMPPL · U.S. 501(C)(3) · BOOTSTRAPPED SINCE 2021
ARBITER · SIMPPL