Max Rizzuto
Max Rizzuto is a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab based in Washington, DC. His work on extremism and disinformation has been cited by the Associated Press, Axios, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, and more.
He holds a bachelor’s in Science, Technology, and Society from Stevens Institute of Technology where he graduated with high honors. His senior thesis documented the early days of deepfake development communities with attention to the ethnography of early adopters and the progress of the codebase.
September 2020
How Manny from Diary of a Wimpy Kid galvanized political activism on TikTok
Manny Heffley became a political symbol for young TikTok users to support Black Lives Matter protests around police brutality.
July 2020
New York City’s open-source “cop watch”
How a group of civilian volunteers monitor police activity using open-source methods.
April 2020
The yellow poster behind the “no more lockdowns” protests
How the poster spread and mutated
