Hyderabad: April closed with a stark reminder that the battle for truth is inseparable from the battle for safety, dignity and democratic freedoms.
Across the world, developments last month showed how the information ecosystem is becoming more hostile, more opaque and more difficult to navigate. From the abuse of journalists and weakening press freedoms to surveillance tools built from advertising data, from threats to digital archives to authorities dismissing real evidence as AI, the month offered multiple warnings for journalists, fact-checkers and OSINT researchers.
What connects these seemingly different stories is one common theme: access to truth is under pressure. Whether through intimidation, censorship, surveillance or strategic denial, the systems that help societies verify reality are being tested.
Journalists face a more hostile digital world
Three recent reports by the United Nations, UNESCO and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) show how the information ecosystem is becoming more dangerous, especially for those who speak, report and investigate in public.
A United Nations-backed report on online violence says harassment is no longer limited to comment sections or isolated trolling. It now appears through coordinated intimidation, reputational attacks, doxxing, threats and technology-driven abuse aimed at silencing voices before they can shape public discourse.
India falls lower on World Press Freedom Index
UNESCO has also warned that women journalists are facing a sharper edge of this crisis, with generative AI making impersonation, sexualised deepfakes and large-scale abuse easier to create and harder to stop.
At the same time, RSF has placed India at 157th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, six places lower than last year.
Taken together, these reports show that attacks on media freedom are no longer only physical or institutional, but also digital, algorithmic and deeply gendered.
The Wayback Machine and the fight over public memory
Another major development in April came from the world of digital preservation.
Several major news organisations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg, are restricting the Wayback Machine, the archival service run by the Internet Archive, from saving snapshots of their webpages.
Publishers are increasingly concerned that archived copies of their reporting could be accessed by AI companies and used for model training without permission.
The decision also points to a growing tension between copyright protection and the public value of web archiving. For journalists, researchers and fact-checkers, archived webpages are often essential for verifying deleted claims, tracing changes to political statements, examining edits to official notices, and preserving records that may later disappear behind paywalls or be taken offline.
If more publishers shut the archive out, one of the internet's most important accountability tools could become weaker at a time when misinformation spreads faster than ever. The debate is no longer only about ownership of content, but also about who gets to preserve the public record in the AI era.
Ad-tech data turned into surveillance
Another significant development in April came from The Citizen Lab, which published an investigation into Webloc, an ad-based geolocation surveillance tool now sold by Penlink.
The report says the system uses location data gathered from mobile apps and digital advertising networks to monitor the movements of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
According to the findings, Webloc has been used by a range of government agencies, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US military, police departments in multiple American cities, Hungarian domestic intelligence, and the national police in El Salvador.
The researchers also said governments in Europe and the United Kingdom remain highly opaque about whether they use similar ad-based surveillance systems.
For OSINT researchers and privacy advocates, the report is another reminder that commercial data ecosystems can become powerful surveillance tools. Information originally collected for advertising can be repurposed to map routines, relationships, travel patterns and sensitive personal behaviour, often without meaningful public oversight or consent.
Calling real evidence "AI" to avoid accountability: A case in Noida
Another troubling trend in April was the growing use of 'AI-generated' claims as a shield against accountability.
In a story reported by us at NewsMeter, police in Noida dismissed a viral video showing women being beaten during worker protests by saying it appeared to be AI-generated or morphed. A closer verification using geolocation, visual comparisons and expert analysis found the footage was likely real and filmed in Sector 6, Noida.
The case shows how the rise of synthetic media can create a new form of plausible deniability. Instead of investigating evidence, authorities can now question authentic footage by casually branding it fake, edited or AI-made.
For journalists and OSINT investigators, this means verification is no longer only about exposing fabricated content but also defending genuine evidence from being dismissed when it is inconvenient.
April's developments make one thing clear: the future of OSINT is no longer just about finding information. It is about protecting evidence, preserving memory, resisting surveillance and defending reality itself.
That's all for April's OSINT Pulse.
See you next month!
Dheeshma Puzhakkal
(OSINT Pulse is a monthly report by Dheeshma Puzhakkal, Editor of NewsMeter's Fact Check team. The column tracks emerging developments in OSINT and AI, with a focus on what matters to Indian readers and OSINT professionals. For comments, insights, or leads, write to dheeshma.p@newsmeter.in. NewsMeter has no financial relationship with any of the companies or tools mentioned in this series.)