[1] Watchdog was founded on 23 April 2019, two days after the Easter bombings occurred, by local startup mogul Bhanuka Harischandra, together with Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Nisal Periyapperuma, Ragulan Ketheeswaran and Safra Anver.
[1] Watchdog debunked misinformation that spread in the aftermath of the bombings, including a false claim that the water supply of the Hunipitiya region in Colombo had been poisoned by Muslims.
[1][3] In April of that year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Wijeratne and Periyapperuma, by then the only two remaining members, took a sabbatical from operating Watchdog.
[1] In January 2022, when the economic crisis was starting to have an effect, Watchdog relaunched as an open-source intelligence (OSINT) collective.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) provided Watchdog with $340,000 in funding, allowing it to hire full-time staffers.