The Repost #6: October 2025

This month, we unmask the TikTok influencer network covertly touting an app dedicated to exposing deception. We also look at the wild claims unleashed by the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the US.

In other news, a new Google tool tempts students to cheat, experts reject Trump's Tylenol claims and a right-wing commentator falls out of "Faivre" with France's First Couple.

Social media is seemingly awash with what experts have dubbed "covert influencer marketing", a type of advertising that enlists users to promote a product without disclosing their ties to the brand.

By some estimates, more than 9 in 10 sponsored influencer posts on YouTube, Pinterest and Twitter (now X) lack disclosures, with many users unable to spot them as marketing.

On TikTok, The Repost has found more than 20 creator accounts not so quietly promoting an app that promises to scour dating sites using data matching and facial recognition technology to catch out unfaithful partners.

Together the TikTokers have amassed more than 43 million views by posting juicy stories of how they used the app to expose their own cheating partners, friends and family members.

Their stories aren't without holes, though some are only obvious after watching multiple videos — for example, the same "cheater" who appears as different characters, or the creator who busts her two fiancées in the same week.

It's unlikely these influencers are mere fans of the app. The company that owns it operates an affiliate program that pays $60 for every 100,000 views on social media posts and a commission for new app subscribers.

Many of the accounts also follow each other and use the same hashtags to promote their content.

Comments below many of the posts — offering congratulations, condolences and advice such as "just ghost him and move on" and "I'm so proud of you" — show that users often believe the stories are genuine.

The creators suggest as much by describing themselves in terms such as "just a girl's girl catching cheaters" or "catching cheaters for fun".

TikTok's branded content policy, which applies to paid posts, commissions, gifts and brand ambassadorships, requires that creators use the platform's "commercial content disclosure" feature when promoting third-party products or services. When activated, this feature appends a "paid partnership" or "sponsored" label to the video or post.

None of the videos, captions or hashtags reviewed by The Repost contained explicit disclosures or made any reference to advertising or partnerships. And while most of the accounts included an oblique reference to the app in their username, others did not.

Similarly, some accounts included a link to the app website in their bio without offering any further explanation.

The Repost reported a list of accounts to TikTok but did not receive a response before publication.

Australian advertising standards require that influencers make any promotional relationships "clear, obvious and upfront to the audience", says the nation's peak advertising body, the Australian Association of National Advertisers.

In a guidance note to the standards, the AANA says advertising "should not be disguised" as user-generated content, and that including "less clear labels such as #sp, Spon, gifted, Affiliate, Collab, thanks to… or merely mentioning the brand name may not be sufficient to clearly distinguish [a] post as advertising".

US guidelines say it is not enough for a disclosure to appear on a user's profile page, where it is likely to be missed. "If making an endorsement in a video," they add, "the disclosure should be in the video and not just in the description".

Kane Koh, a marketing expert at RMIT, said there was a "significant risk" that users would not recognise the cheater posts as advertisements, noting that even explicit disclosures get missed as users "scroll through hundreds, sometimes thousands, of posts a day".

He described the content as "predatory", because it tried to "leverage nondisclosure and emotional appeals to create interest" around the app.

More generally, failing to flag sponsorships is an "unethical marketing practice" that disadvantages brands that play by the rules, Dr Koh said, because when posts are flagged, consumers often become more sceptical.

Lucas Whittaker, a deepfake marketing researcher at Swinburne University, agreed that the influencers were likely part of a covert marketing network, adding that the tactics they used, such as mutual amplification and "hashtag clustering", were common to such campaigns.

He said advertising that was tailored to match "the form and function" of the platform — such as quick, shocking videos for TikTok — should be disclosed "if it isn't immediately obvious that the audience is being exposed to a persuasive episode".

And while people should theoretically become more attuned to this type of content over time, Dr Whittaker said, clear disclosures would help them to develop the "persuasion knowledge" needed to quickly recognise future marketing efforts.

Social media marketing increasingly shapes consumer choices. A recent Australian survey found 46 per cent of respondents had purchased a product after it was recommended by an influencer, though the factors most likely to affect their decisions were the authenticity of the creator's content and transparency around brand partnerships.

Covert marketing is also not a risk-free strategy, with some brands and influencers facing potentially hefty payouts over allegedly undisclosed endorsements.

The Repost has unearthed several other covert campaigns in recent months. In one example, TikTokers each started their videos by declaring they "could kiss this girl on the lips" for introducing them to an AI-powered journalling app.

The Repost contacted the app companies about their endorsements but did not receive a response.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk last month triggered a flood of misleading claims, conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods.

In the immediate aftermath, innocent people were misidentified as the killer, including by X's AI chatbot, Grok, which added to the confusion by sharing "enhanced" images of suspects and posting contradictory information, including a claim that footage of the killing was a joke.

Established TikTok content farms were quick to begin churning out clickbait on the subject, and it seems nothing was off limits, as social media users shared fabricated images of celebrities mourning Kirk's death with a man falsely claimed to be his father.

There was misinformation about the killer's political affiliations, too, not helped by confusion over the references to various internet memes inscribed on the shooter's bullet casings.

Some conspiracists claimed the murder was staged, others that it was anticipated. However, AI "slop" books about the event were not published before it happened — nor was the condolence letter that Israel's chief rabbi sent Kirk's family.

Internationally, the tragedy was more grist for the propaganda mill. As reported by NewsGuard, Iran blamed the shooting on Israel; Russia blamed Ukraine.

It's a reminder to be aware of common disinformation tactics, many of which have been helpfully summarised in a new easy-to-use handbook released by the Ukrainian Centre for Countering Disinformation.

• Experts around the world have rebuked US President Donald Trump's claims linking autism with the use of paracetamol, or Tylenol, during pregnancy. Medical regulators in Australia, the UK and the EU, along with the WHO, say there is no established link between the drug and the condition. Autism, a frequent target of misinformation, is not caused by any one factor. Mr Trump also wrongly asserted that Amish people did not take Tylenol so there was virtually "no autism" in these communities. As found by AFP Fact Check, neither claim stands up to scrutiny.
  
  
• Google has quietly paused a new "homework help" feature criticised by academics for undermining academic integrity. The AI-powered tool scans online quizzes and suggests correct answers, even during tests. According to The Washington Post, the feature began appearing in Google’s Chrome browser "on the kinds of course websites used by the majority of American college students and many high-schoolers".
  
  
• Australia’s recent anti-immigration rallies sparked an uptick in false claims and conspiracy theories that were amplified by the global far right. Social media posts from influential accounts vastly inflated the number of rally attendees by using AI-generated footage or simply multiplying the numbers (by at least 15, in the case of conspiracist Alex Jones). A key claim promoted by rally organisers also didn’t stack up. As AAP FactCheck found, Australia did not welcome more migrants from India in five years than from Italy and Greece in a century.
  
  
• Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc, has pledged it "will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content" across its services, including YouTube. In a letter to the chairman of the US House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary, the company also confirmed YouTube was allowing back onto the platform channels it had banned for repeatedly spreading misinformation about elections and COVID-19.
  
  
• French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, will tackle head on a long-running conspiracy that the first lady was born male, filing a defamation lawsuit against right-wing US commentator Candace Owens for spreading unsubstantiated claims. In bad news for Ms Owens, the surgeon who died before he could spill the beans, a Mr "François Faivre", never existed, according to AFP Fact Check.
  
  
• The Australian government has announced plans to ban AI "nudifiers", or apps that allow users to generate sexually explicit deepfakes from photos of clothed victims. The move forms part of Australia's new duty of care approach to online safety, which requires that tech companies proactively prevent harms caused by their services. In June, the eSafety Commissioner revealed that the number of under-18s reporting image-based abuse had more than doubled in the past 18 months.
  
  As the Indicator has reported, Meta platforms have run tens of thousands of ads for nudifier services, despite policies to the contrary. And although the company has stepped up its enforcement efforts, ads continue to appear on its platforms. Meanwhile, the apps can be accessed via Google's and Apple's app stores.
  
  
• West Australians are being scammed into buying tickets for non-existent "lantern festivals". The state government has warned that scammers are using familiar tactics to sell bogus tickets, such as claiming some events were "sold out" or promising to release details about the event locations later. As officials noted, it is illegal to release open-flame lanterns in Australia. It's not the first time Australians have been targeted with lantern-festival scams from abroad, so expect to see future attempts.

This newsletter is produced by the RMIT Information Integrity Hub, an initiative to combat harmful misinformation by empowering people to be critical media consumers and producers.