Show Notes
In this episode of Show & Tell, hosts Craig Silverman and Alexios Mantzarlis sit down with Wall Street Journal reporters Caitlin Ostroff and Neil Mehta, who found that Polymarket paid creators to place fake bets on a faked version of its platform.
By reviewing more than 1,100 videos, they noticed that the screenshares themselves were from a faked version of the website. They discovered that the website was provided by Polymarket itself to paid creators. Along with uncovering that creators were paid to promote fake payouts, the reporters discovered that a firm called Virality ran a clipping campaign to promote the content to a US audience.
What You'll Learn: 📍Scoping a video corpus: Why the WSJ reporters decided to narrow down the videos they’d review to a subset of creators and focus on TikTok 📍Debunking a trade: How to use Polymarket’s public market data to see whether a bet actually materialized or not 📍You can’t automate everything: Only multiple human reviews of the videos led the reporters to find the discrepancies that exposed the fake sites – an AI assistant saw nothing wrong with the content
About Caitlin Ostroff and Neil Mehta: Caitlin Ostroff is a reporter who blends shoe-leather reporting with programming and data analysis. She is the co-author of “The Grifter’s Club.” Neil Mehta is a news associate at the Wall Street Journal who previously worked at New York Public Radio.
Links Referenced in Episode: 📍"They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real" (WSJ) https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymarket-social-media-bets-prediction-market-441cdeb5 📍Polymarket Gamma Markets API: https://docs.polymarket.com/developers/gamma-markets-api/gamma-structure 📍Kalshi API: https://docs.kalshi.com/welcome 📍Dune Analytics: https://dune.com 📍Caitlin's post-publication stress bake — peach pie crumb bars: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/peach-pie-crumb-bars/ 📍You can follow Caitlin at ceostroff.bsky.social and Neil at neilmhta.bsky.social
ABOUT SHOW & TELL: Show & Tell from Indicator takes you inside digital investigations as leading journalists, OSINT investigators, threat analysts, and researchers walk through real cases they've cracked. Each episode features a recognized figure in the OSINT, digital investigations, or trust & safety community. They don't just tell us what they did — they show us.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode
Follow on our other platforms for more content: 📍 Newsletter: indicator.media 📍 Bluesky: @indicator.media 📍 Instagram: @indicatordomedia 📍 LinkedIn: indicatormedia
More from Show & Tell from Indicator
In this episode of Show & Tell, we spoke to Shayan Sardarizadeh about his approach to debunking viral fakes for BBC Verify. "I want to check everything for AI," he told us. "I don't care where it comes from. If it comes from a national TV, if it comes from a politician posting it on their official TikTok, I don't trust anything." What You'll Learn: 📍Choosing where to look, and what to ignore when it comes to viral fakes 📍Why AI detectors are now an essential element of verification and why Shayan prefers the SynthID-based ones 📍How detectors can still fail, with a worked example from a viral image of Donald Trump 📍How reverse search is an essential complement to AI detectors and a mandatory starting point for any verification task Links mentioned in the episode 📍Shayan's thread on the viral Trump image: https://x.com/Shayan86/status/2100642920437108946 📍"AI generators are now required to offer detection tools. We tested them (and they need work)" (Indicator): https://indicator.media/p/ai-generators-are-now-required-to-offer-detection-tools-we-tested-them-and-they-need-work 📍You can follow Shayan on X at @Shayan86 and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayan-sardarizadeh-0121555a/ About Shayan Sardarizadeh: Shayan is a senior journalist at BBC Verify covering disinformation, conspiracy theories and AI. About Show & Tell: Show & Tell from Indicator takes you inside digital investigations as leading journalists, OSINT investigators, threat analysts, and researchers walk through real cases they've cracked. Each episode features a recognized figure in the OSINT, digital investigations, or trust & safety community. They don't just tell us what they did — they show us. Hosted by Indicator co-founders Alexios Mantzarlis and Craig Silverman.
In this episode of Show & Tell, we speak to Renée DiResta about Grokipedia and the contestability of AI-mediated information sources. Grokipedia is worth studying not just as “a culture war artifact,” she said, but because even if Musk’s AI encyclopedia fades away, “something like it will exist at some point, and we may as well get in and figure out how to audit it now.”
In this episode of Show & Tell, researcher Hal Triedman showed us how easy it can be to poison an AI research agent.
In this episode of Show & Tell, Craig and Alexios talk with Omer Benjakob, the disinformation and cyber reporter for Haaretz.
In this episode of Show & Tell, hosts Craig Silverman and Alexios Mantzarlis talk with Barbara Marcolini, a visual investigative journalist with Amnesty International.