The Tell: Spot Propaganda
Media literacy, a drill a day
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
You get better at spotting propaganda after you have built some. The Tell teaches 42 named techniques and the tell that gives each one away, then drills you on finding them in invented artifacts. In the Lab you take a brief of your own, pick the techniques you would use, and get graded on what you reached for.
IT STARTS BY MANIPULATING YOU
The first screen is propaganda aimed at you: a red poster, a countdown, a crowd that already agrees. Tap through and the next screen names the four techniques the poster used on you.
WHAT'S INSIDE
- 42 technique cards in 7 families across 3 tiers, from loud and obvious to systemic
- 12 countermeasure cards: the process tools that catch each technique, linked from each card
- A daily drill: one invented artifact, four candidate techniques, a streak counter, and unlimited drills after it
- Adaptive difficulty: three correct in a row moves you up a tier, two wrong in a row moves you down. You never pick a level
- An archive of 29 sourced historical artifacts in three collections, each with its context, licence, a link to the original and what happened next, and technique tags on the 24 that are propaganda rather than evidence about it
- A red-team lab: take a brief, pick from 24 techniques, and get graded on what you reached for
- Present mode: the archive's comparison modules in big type, reveal on tap, for a mirrored classroom screen
EVERY CARD HAS A TELL
Each card names the observable thing you look for. On Cherry-Picked Data it reads: "Move the start date one year earlier. If the trend reverses, the trend was the selection."
THE DRILL
Every drill artifact is invented: outlets, towns, candidates. No real person, party or brand is the target. Answer and you get the technique, its tell, the countermeasure that catches it and, when you were wrong, the tell for the one you picked. One drill redraws a truncated chart axis from zero beside the original.
THE ARCHIVE
The Home Front, 1939–1945: twelve posters from the US, Britain, Germany, the USSR and Japan. A comparison module sets the same "careless talk" poster from four governments side by side, each one with what its government did to people who talked.
Manufactured Doubt, 1928–2016: the tobacco industry's physician endorsements, the "Doubt is our product" memo, the 1998 oil-industry climate plan, the Surgeon General's report, the 2006 RICO verdict and a 2016 study of sugar-industry funding. Documents still in copyright appear as short attributed quotations, never as reproductions.
Civil Defense, 1951–1961: Duck and Cover and the films and pamphlets that drilled American families for a nuclear attack.
THE LAB
Three briefs, each aimed at an invented target. Pick the techniques you would use, tap "Take it apart", and read back the tell for every one you chose along with a verdict on the set. Six techniques with atrocity histories are taught in the Field Guide and never offered as Lab tools. Every Lab composition carries a visible TRAINING EXAMPLE band.
WHAT IT DOES NOT DO
The app explains how an artifact was built and stops there. You get no verdict on whether a claim is true, and there is no feed and no live content.
FOR CLASSROOMS
Nothing a student does leaves the device, and there are no accounts to create. Present mode runs an archive comparison from one phone or iPad on a mirrored screen. The material suits high school and up.
FREE, WITH OPTIONAL SUPPORT
All the content is free, none of it is gated, and there is no advertising. Five optional one-time tips sit behind the heart button in the Field Guide, for anyone who wants to help cover maintenance and future Archive collections. A tip records a supporter tier on your device and shows a thank-you, and nothing in the app unlocks or changes.
PRIVACY
No account, no sign-in, no analytics and no third-party SDKs. Your progress stays on your device. The app works offline and reaches the network only for App Store purchases and the source links you choose to open.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Maintenance update. The app works the same as in 1.0.
The developer, OMAR DANIEL GRAZIANO, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- OMAR DANIEL GRAZIANO
- Size
- 10.1 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
13+
- 13+
- Infrequent
Realistic Violence
Mature or Suggestive Themes
Horror/Fear Themes
Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug Use or References
Guns or Other Weapons
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Generous Tip $4.99
- Large Tip $2.99
- Medium Tip $1.99
- Patron Tip $9.99
- Small Tip $0.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Stack Trace Studios