Astroscreen raises £770k in seed funding led by Speedinvest to detect social media disinformation
The seed round was led by Speedinvest to support the development of disinformation detection technology.
Astroscreen develops technology to identify carriers of disinformation, fake accounts, and botnets on social media networks. The start-up focuses on protecting commercial brands and political processes from coordinated manipulation campaigns.
London-based Astroscreen has secured £770k in seed funding to advance its disinformation detection technology on social media platforms. The investment round was led by Speedinvest, with participation from UCL Technology Fund, Luminous Ventures, AISeed, and the London Co-investment Fund.
The company targets the growing threat of coordinated disinformation attacks, which employ automated bots and human-run sock-puppets to amplify misleading content. These campaigns increasingly target commercial brands as well as political processes, creating severe reputational and financial risks.
Astroscreen employs a hybrid approach combining machine learning and human intelligence to detect contextual anomalies specific to particular topics. This method allows the firm to identify sophisticated inauthentic behaviour that standard platform spam filters typically miss.
From the founder
"While I was building my previous start-up I saw at first-hand how biased, polarising news articles were shared and artificially amplified by vast numbers of fake accounts. This gave the stories high levels of exposure and authenticity they wouldn’t have had on their own."
Ali Tehrani
CEO at Astroscreen
Investors
Categories
About the company
Astroscreen
Astroscreen builds technology to detect disinformation carriers and botnets on social networks.