Arbiter
The transparency layer for the social internet.
SimPPL · 501(c)(3) nonprofit
5,660,000,000
people access social media every day.[1]
We have no idea what is trustworthy and what isn't.
- • Trust in media has fallen to 28%, the lowest in Gallup's 50-year history[3]
- • 58% of people worldwide struggle to tell real news from fake[4]
- • The social internet produces more content than any person or institution can assess
[3] Gallup, 2025 [4] Reuters Institute, 2025
Trust in media: 50-year decline
We tried to fix fake news. Every approach has failed at scale.
6× faster
False stories reach people six times faster than true ones. Humans drive the spread, not bots.[5]
Fact-checking can't keep up
6× engagement
Misinformation on Facebook received six times more interactions than factual news during the 2020 election.[6]
Platforms reward engagement, not accuracy
2,900
U.S. newsrooms have shut down. The reporters who remain cannot gather cross-platform evidence fast enough to matter.[7]
Journalism is under-resourced
Instead of telling people what to trust, show them who is manipulating them.
My grandfather got scammed by a coordinated social media campaign.
- • Dozens of accounts across YouTube, Twitter, and WhatsApp all promoted the same company. If everyone is saying it, it must be real. He invested.
- • OnPassive never launched a product. The SEC confirmed it defrauded 800,000 people of $108 million.[8]
- • The campaign spanned 5 platforms simultaneously, but no single platform showed the full picture, and no existing tool could trace the coordination.
Arbiter could have surfaced the coordinated network before the public was influenced.
Coordinated promotion across platforms
@ONPASSIVE
#ONPASSIVE #ArtificialIntelligence #TheFutureOfInternet
@dvdesanto
Coordinated campaigns are reshaping elections.
Romania 2024
Election annulled
25,000 coordinated TikTok accounts. 179 million impressions. The Constitutional Court cancelled the election.[9]
Slovakia 2023
Deepfake audio
AI-cloned voice of an opposition leader spread during the media silence period. Russia's SVR referenced it within two hours.[10]
Germany 2025
Three Russian operations
Cloned media websites. Fabricated ballot videos. A single endorsement on X increased a party's visibility 8x overnight.[11]
Protect free speech, but don't enable free reach.
Without transparency
2,847 reposts · 12.4K likes
Looks like a real post from a real person. You have no reason to doubt it.
With Arbiter's transparency layer
COORDINATION CONTEXT
107 accounts posted copies of this claim in the last 4 hours
Spread across 6 languages on X, Telegram, and Facebook
83% of sharing accounts were created in the last 30 days
No source documents found matching the claim
You decide what to believe. We show you what you're looking at.
Our Solution
Arbiter makes the hidden structure of online campaigns visible, before the public is influenced.
- • A journalist types one question
- • Our AI agents collect posts from nine platforms, trace networks promoting claims across platforms, languages, and countries
- • Every claim in the investigation links back to the original post
- • Instead of asking you to believe them, journalists can now show you who is behind your feed
9
platforms
X, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Bluesky, Meta, Telegram, Instagram, 4chan
200M+
posts analyzed monthly
8
countries with journalist users
Impact
Journalists using Arbiter have uncovered coordinated operations reaching hundreds of millions.
Investigation
Bondi Beach attack
6,000 posts across YouTube and Twitter. Information distortion accounted for 34% of all engagement.
406.7M interactions
Investigation
Online scams & crypto trading
6,345 posts across Twitter, YouTube, and Bluesky. Gambling promotions normalized undisclosed claims.
229.7M interactions
Platform Enforcement
Meta threat takedown
Contributed to Meta's Q1 2024 adversarial threat report. Coordinated networks in Bangladesh removed.
Platform Enforcement
YouTube content removal
Detected AI-generated campaign with 100% positive sentiment. YouTube removed the content after our report.
Partnerships & Capacity Building
We work with newsrooms, agencies, and civil society across 8 countries.
Newsroom Partners
- • Rappler (Philippines)
- • Tempo Media (Indonesia)
- • Jagran New Media (India)
- • NY Public Radio / Gothamist (US)
- • VTDigger (US)
- • Yale Daily News (US)
Capacity Building
- • Kenya · 10+ journalists trained with Africa Uncensored
- • Mongolia · 2-month training for 18 CSOs with NEST Center
- • Germany · DW Akademie partnership since 2022
- • JournalismAI · Supporting newsrooms with AI tools
International Organizations
- • UNDP · AI Trust and Safety program
- • UN Peacekeeping Operations
- • Fast Forward · Tech Nonprofit Accelerator
- • YouTube · 1.2M API calls/day granted
Team
Built by researchers who worked inside the platforms.
Swapneel Mehta
Co-founder & President
- • PhD NYU, Postdoc MIT and Boston University
- • Built AI systems at Twitter, Adobe, with Meta
- • Published at NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI
- • Presented to heads of state through the UN
Dhara Mungra
Co-founder & Engineering Lead
- • NYU, Bombora (senior data scientist)
- • Research with Anthropic
- • Center for AI and Digital Policy
- • Leads engineering, operations, and partnerships
4
ML engineers
$350K
raised to date
Google · Mozilla · Ford Foundation · Omidyar Network · Wikimedia · UNDP · Fast Forward
The Ask
$850,000
- • Every journalist we onboard creates investigation templates that others reuse
- • The harms are the same everywhere, so the investigations should be replicable
What the funding supports
Scale to 1B+ posts/month
12+ platforms. More languages. More countries.
100 journalists, 5+ countries
Partnerships with press associations and journalism schools.
Open-source investigation tools
Peer-reviewed methods. Public datasets.
Other ways to support us
- Champion our cause
Introduce us to funders, journalists, and partners in this space - Invite us to present
We presented at MIT, Harvard, tech companies, to heads of state, and UN agencies. Let us share our work with your team! - Connect us with journalists
Newsrooms, press associations, and investigative teams who need cross-platform tools
The scams cause real harm. With Arbiter, we can finally fight back.
Scammer recruiting "founders" for commissions that never came
Forwarded posts promoting fake AI products in Hindi
Phone selling scam targeting seniors for bank credentials
Solar panel investment scam with fake donation claims
My grandfather aggregating scams for me to fight.
My grandfather deserved to know who was flooding his feed. Millions of people do.
We built Arbiter to help you understand what is shaping public conversation before it shapes your views.
Become the arbiters of your own truth.
team@simppl.org · simppl.org