Won't Fix Episode 15: With Alexios Mantzarlis, Co-Founder of Indicator

Alexios Mantzarlis has spent his career on the unglamorous side of the internet. He founded the Italian fact-checking site Pagella Politica, then led the International Fact-Checking Network, then spent several years at Google building an adversarial red team focused on content risks from generative AI. In 2024 he became the founding director of Cornell Tech's Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative, a role he left in June 2026 to go full-time on Indicator, the independent publication he co-founded with Craig Silverman to investigate digital deception. He now runs it from Rome. If there's a through-line, it's that the cheapest new technology always finds the oldest scams first. In the past year alone, Alexios has written about a North Korean hiring scam; an AI-generated podcast network pumping out 11,000 episodes a day; an AI bot that became the single largest contributor to Community Notes on X; Grokipedia citing a neo-Nazi forum as a source; face-swap apps in the Apple and Google stores; "cheater buster" websites selling fabricated infidelity reports; TikTok content farms; AI avatars impersonating real journalists; lookalike ticket sites and thousands of ads for nonconsensual nude generators that Meta has kept running despite a year of documentation. We talked about his latest investigation: roughly 8,000 Reels featuring AI-generated women posing as fired Costco, Aldi, and Home Depot employees, leaking "insider secrets." The videos funneled to survey sites promising a $750 gift card that didn't exist. Alexios and Benjamin Shultz traced the whole thing back to a single affiliate account and to a scam pipeline where AI generates the video, the captions, and the landing pages. Chapter Timestamps:00:00 Introduction 2:20 Alexios’s path from platform trust and safety to independent reporting4:36 Why public investigations can drive platform action8:09 Fact-checking and Community Notes 11:33 The AI-generated retailer gift-card scam14:57 AI used throughout the fraud pipeline17:36 Recommendation feeds and reduced source context amplify scam reach22:34 Affiliate IDs reveal the scam’s business model and coordination27:20 Responsibility across the infrastructure chain30:50 Journalism and trust and safety staffing33:30 Transparency, EU ad data, and pro-speech accountability35:47 AI bots in Community Notes and monetization-driven misinformation41:29 Sources, sustainability, and Indicator’s next investigative tools47:51 Closing warning against dismantling trust and safetyResources & Links:Rob Leathern (https://www.linkedin.com/in/leathern/)Alexios on Indicator (https://indicator.media/authors/alexios-mantzarlis)Alexios Mantzarlis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mantzarlis/)Some of Alexios's pieces:AI-generated Costco employees — https://indicator.media/p/ai-generated-costco-employees-got-over-100-million-views-on-facebook-and-instagramMeta ran at least 11,000 ads for AI nudifiers this year (Sep 3, 2026) — https://indicator.media/p/meta-ran-at-least-11-000-ads-for-ai-nudifiers-this-year-many-from-easily-detectable-repeat-offendersHow to red team an AI tool for safety — https://indicator.media/p/how-to-red-team-an-ai-tool-for-safetyLatvia's "man drought" and passport-bro content — https://indicator.media/p/how-tabloid-claims-about-latvia-s-man-drought-fueled-a-misleading-social-media-frenzy-and-polluted-gWhat I learned running an adversarial test on an AI text detector — https://indicator.media/p/what-i-learned-running-an-adversarial-test-on-an-ai-text-detectorThis AI-generated podcast network publishes 11,000 episodes a day — https://indicator.media/p/this-ai-generated-podcast-network-publishes-11-000-episodes-a-day-it-s-also-ripping-off-media-outletAn AI bot is now the top contributor to Community Notes on X — https://indicator.media/p/an-ai-bot-is-now-the-top-contributor-to-community-notes-on-x