Rob Waugh

The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, has remained unsolved for 17 years. Not anymore. Read my 18-month investigation to find out who Satoshi really is. nytimes.com/2026/04/08/bus…

A look at Clickout, which has bought hundreds of websites to harvest their reputations and pack them with casino links; in 2024, it had £40M in revenue (@robwaugh74 / Press Gazette) pressgazette.co.uk/news/the-seo-p… #a260327p10" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mediagazer.com/260327/p10#a26…

Voice messages should die. I hate everyone who sends them. When someone sends me a voice note, I don't look at it for days. It's the most selfish form of communication. You're offloading your typing time onto my listening time. You get convenience and I get locked into your pace. Can neither skim thru nor reference them later.

I'm a die-hard gamer (still a helpless slave to Diablo IV even in my advancing years) so it's tragic to see sites with so much heritage turned into AI slop fountains

@Dom_Sacco @pressgazette It’s everywhere! Regrettably

This recent AI writer news is of course not exclusive to games journalism This recent piece by @RobWaugh74 for @pressgazette is interesting PR bodies launch campaign against fake experts after Press Gazette investigation pressgazette.co.uk/news/pr-bodies…

How many fake experts have slimed their way into the British media? Press Gazette's latest finds that one in ten expert-led articles includes out-and-out fake experts - including 'Jessie' on the right here, whose creators spilled the beans on WHY they made her with AI pressgazette.co.uk/news/faces-of-…

The "Faces of Fakery" report is a terrifying look at how broken media's vetting process has become. I just finished the @pressgazette investigation into AI-generated experts, and it’s honestly depressing. For those who haven't seen it, they found hundreds of articles in major UK outlets (The Times, Daily Mail, etc.) quoting "experts" that simply don’t exist. Using AI-generated headshots, fake LinkedIn profiles, and "experience" manufactured by rogue PR firms just to land SEO backlinks. Everyone talked about AI replacing journalists, but this is arguably worse: AI is polluting the record, and we are letting it happen because outlets are too understaffed or rushed to do a basic 30-second background check on a source. If we don’t fix our filters, it's not only about journalists losing their jobs, it's about losing our grip on reality. Incredible work by @DomPonsford and @RobWaugh74 on this.

An investigation finds 50+ apparently fake experts who offered commentary to the UK press in recent years, getting featured 1,000+ times in various articles (@robwaugh74 / Press Gazette) pressgazette.co.uk/news/named-50-… #a260113p2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mediagazer.com/260113/p2#a260…

@EddieHenryJames Ha ha brilliant!

I do remember working at a certain publication where the alarm got raised because a cleaning hacks article had accidentally given instructions that created chlorine gas 🤷

@tash_wynarczyk A lot of truth in that yep!

this is wild. problem has literally been created by the clickbait world created by reach etc x.com/RobWaugh74/sta…

@AliJaneMoore Yeh I agree. There's a lot of the pest control MyJobQuote ones where it was blatantly obvious the story was utter horseshit and someone along the chain of command at the publisher must surely have realised that?

This is what happens when publishers abandon journalism for clickbait. And I doubt that they did not realise what they were promoting was utter rubbish - I see it every day on their twitter feeds and it stinks. pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/dig…

Research from @pressgazette and NeoMam Studios has uncovered over 600 instances of dubious experts gaining coverage at some of the biggest UK national publications. Quoted experts do not appear to be real and some have AI-generated profile pictures: pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/dig…

Press Gazette has uncovered more than 600 stories featuring fake experts in the British media, including titles like the BBC and the Guardian - AI-generated images, AI-generated quotes, experts who do not exist spouting false and sometimes dangerous advice pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/dig…

I will believe it when I see it!

Royal cleaner stories removed by The Times and The Sun after authenticity questions. Similar stories remain on the websites for the Daily Mirror and the MailOnline. pressgazette.co.uk/news/royal-cle… by @RobWaugh74 for @pressgazette

@DanKaszeta 10 years on! Hilarious @DanKaszeta

I don't claim that the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, or the mounting evidence supporting it, "prove" my ideas about a lost civilization. But the timing of the proposed cataclysm intrigues me and seems relevant as part of a much wider argument. dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…

Google AI summaries and AI mode are going to do to a lot of publishers what the Death Star did to Alderaan

@desireathow @pressgazette I have seen a couple since, and some are so similar I wonder if there's a template for auto-generating them @desireathow

@pressgazette @RobWaugh74 It would be worth to come up with a list of red flags (for PRs and the general audience) to identify fake websites. I would read this feature! Sadly, AI has made it easier for dubious agents to spawn these.