Studio Studio Apps The Tell
The Tell: Spot Propaganda
Learn how propaganda is built
42 propaganda techniques, a daily drill, an archive of 29 historical artifacts and a lab where you build propaganda yourself. Free and offline, no account.
- Category
- Education
- Techniques
- 42 in 7 families, 3 tiers
- Archive
- 29 artifacts, 3 collections
- Account
- None
About The Tell
The Tell is a media-literacy app built on a research finding: you get better at resisting manipulation by practising how to build it than by reading a warning about it. A technique card gives you one move and the tell it leaves behind. Then a drill puts an artifact in front of you and asks which move it used. Last is the Lab, where you choose the techniques, assemble a piece of propaganda out of them, and see how the app scores what you made.
Everything ships inside the app: 42 technique cards in 7 families across 3 tiers, 12 countermeasure cards, 42 drill artifacts, and 29 Archive artifacts listed with their sources, licences and what happened next. All of it is open from first launch. You never sign in, and the build carries no analytics. Your progress is saved on the device.
What you get
It starts by manipulating you
The first screen is a working piece of propaganda, and it asks you to agree with it. Then it comes apart, and every element on it is labelled with the technique it just used on you. Tap a label to open that technique in the Guide.
42 techniques, each with a tell
Seven families across three tiers, from the loud and obvious up to the systemic and statistical. Each card gives you a definition, the observable tell you look for, why the technique works, and the countermeasure that catches it. You can filter by family, or by the cards that are not yet solid.
12 countermeasures
Each one is a process you run on a piece of media. Every technique card links to the countermeasure that catches it, and the 19 techniques with an Archive example also link to the artifacts that used them.
A daily drill that adapts to you
One artifact a day. Pick the technique from four options, keep your streak going, then carry on practising for as long as you want. Three right in a row moves you up a tier and two wrong moves you back down, so you never choose a difficulty yourself.
An archive with sources and consequences
29 artifacts across three collections: The Home Front 1939–1945, Manufactured Doubt 1928–2016, and Civil Defense 1951–1961. Each one lists its creator, year and country, its licence, a link to the original and what happened next, and the 24 that are propaganda rather than evidence about it also list the techniques they use. Two comparison modules set the same technique side by side, one across four governments and one across twenty-nine years.
The Lab: build it yourself
Pick one of three invented briefs (a water plant, a school board vote, a fictional candidate), choose the techniques you would use on it, then get the piece you assembled graded. Six techniques with atrocity histories are taught in the Guide but never offered to you as tools, and every composition carries a visible TRAINING EXAMPLE band.
Present mode for the classroom
Each Archive comparison module can run as a projector view: the artifact fills the screen at projector size, and the techniques it used stay hidden until you tap. You run it from one phone or iPad on a mirrored classroom screen. Students need no account and nothing they do is submitted anywhere.
Free, with optional support
Every technique, countermeasure and artifact is free, the Lab included, and there is no advertising. Five optional one-time support purchases help cover maintenance. None of them unlocks anything.
- Works offlineCore content and features remain available without a signal after any required download or purchase.
- No online accountNo sign-up, login, cloud account or account-based sync.
Common questions
Is The Tell free?
Yes. The whole app is free to download and use: all 42 technique cards, the countermeasures, every drill, the full Archive and the Lab. There is no subscription, paywall, paid tier or feature unlock, and no advertising.
What do the optional support purchases do?
They help cover maintenance and future Archive collections, and they unlock nothing. The U.S. storefront options are $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, $4.99 and $9.99; Apple may display localized prices in other storefronts. They are one-time consumable in-app purchases processed by Apple, not subscriptions and not charitable donations. The app works identically whether or not you buy one.
How do I request a refund for a support purchase?
Apple processes the purchases and controls refunds. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple Account, and choose the purchase. Stack Trace Studios cannot issue an App Store refund directly.
Does The Tell work without an internet connection?
Yes. All content ships inside the app, so the Guide, drills, Archive, Lab and Present mode work offline. A connection is needed only to load or process an optional support purchase through the App Store, and to open a source link you choose to tap on an Archive artifact.
Is the app partisan?
It is built on two rules. First, technique, never truth: the app explains how an artifact was constructed and never rules on whether a claim is true, so there are no fact-check verdicts and no live feed. Second, no contemporary targets: every drill artifact is invented, and the Archive holds historical material from five countries across its three collections. One of the twelve countermeasure cards, the Own-Side Drill, asks you to run the same checks on the last thing you shared approvingly, and the Lab's targets are invented towns, companies and candidates, never a real person, party or brand.
Can I use it in a classroom?
Yes. There are no accounts, no student data and nothing is submitted anywhere. Present mode runs an Archive comparison module as a projector view from one phone or iPad on a mirrored screen, with big type and a reveal on tap. The app is intended for high-school age and up; the Archive shows historical wartime propaganda with its context and documented consequences, and no atrocity photography.
How do I move my progress to a new phone?
Progress, streaks, mastery and tier position are stored on the device in the app's local storage. There is no export and no sync. An encrypted iPhone or iPad backup, or an iCloud device backup, may carry the app's data to a new device according to your Apple backup settings; deleting the app deletes its progress.
Where do the Archive images come from, and can I reuse them?
The bundled images come from institutions such as the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Imperial War Museum and Wikimedia Commons. All but one are public domain; the exception is a German poster under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence, and the app marks it as requiring attribution. Each artifact shows its creator, its licence and a link to the original. Material that is still in copyright, such as tobacco-industry advertisements and internal memos, is not reproduced: it appears as a short attributed quotation with a link to the original. Check the licence shown on the artifact before reusing an image. For a rights question or a correction, email the address below.
The Tell support · Privacy policy · Email support
The Tell: Spot Propaganda
42 propaganda techniques, a daily drill, an archive of 29 historical artifacts and a lab where you build propaganda yourself. Free and offline, no account.