Here’s a look back at the stories we published in March.

Dark Market for Explicit AI ‘Deepfakes’ Evolves on 4chan

This piece took a deep look at 4chan’s “Adult Requests” imageboard. While the subforum was initially dedicated to discussing and sharing pornography, in recent years it has since evolved to become one of the largest distributors of nonconsensual sexual images made with generative AI tools — offer referred to as “deepfakes.” The imageboard’s users almost exclusively target female subjects in their abuse, some of which plausibly appeared to be minors.

Alternative Platforms Aren’t Fringe Anymore

Our CEO, Hank Teran, wrote this op-ed to dispel suggestions from researchers and journalists that alternative social media platforms are a dying breed. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Our team continues to see niche and specialized social platforms influence the broader internet in profound ways and produce unique harms.

Conspiracy Theories About Bill Gates See Revival Following ‘Epstein Files’ Release

Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, has been the subject of far-fetched conspiracy theories for as long as we can remember. After the US Department of Justice released millions of “Epstein Files” in January, some of which included communications Gates and his top associates had with the child sex offender in the early 2010s, those conspiracy theories saw a resurgence among far-right communities.

Election Denialists’ Obsession with Georgia Fueled by Narratives From Gateway Pundit

Ahead of 2026 midterm elections, our team has been checking in on the state of election denialist chatter surrounding key states. In this piece, they focused on Georgia. We found that conspiracy theorists’ chatter about voting in the state was heavily shaped by a small number of actors — most notably The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump conspiracy blog.

Polymarket Taps Palantir for On-Chain Monitoring as Fraudulent Schemes Thrive Off-Chain on Telegram

Polymarket, a so-called “prediction market” that allows users to gamble on the outcomes of virtually any future event, has scrambled to introduce new policies and initiatives meant to address concerns about insider betting and platform integrity. Most of the company’s efforts focus on activity on the platform itself, but our researchers uncovered a host of suspicious activity being organized off-platform on Telegram.

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TLDR

• Amid regulatory pressure and public concern about alleged insider trading, Polymarket recently announced it would partner with Palantir and TWG AI, using the companies’ Vergence AI engine to monitor its sports contracts and prevent or report on suspicious activity.

• Polymarket contracts are executed in cryptocurrency (USDC) on the Polygon blockchain, which Vergence AI can monitor directly. However, the coordination of Polymarket trades occurs off-chain, in a complex ecosystem spread across alternative platforms such as Telegram, and remains unmonitored.

• Using Open Measures’ platform to monitor the off-chain coordination of Polymarket activity, our researchers discovered a network of automated Telegram bots, KYC account farming, and predatory copy-trading schemes.

What is Polymarket? An Abbreviated History

Polymarket is the world’s largest so-called “prediction market,” an industry term for online platforms that facilitate betting on the outcomes of future events surrounding virtually any topic, including sports, politics, business, and weather. As companies like Polymarket have grown in recent years to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of wagers, so has concern over its potential for abuse, manipulation, and insider betting.1

Polymarket has historically operated with minimal oversight and few safeguards. Since its founding in 2020, Polymarket has structured its business in ways seemingly intended to evade the scrutiny and oversight of US regulators. When the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the company for operating as an unlicensed futures broker in 2022, it offshored its operations to Panama and blocked access for users with US-based IP addresses.2 Transactions on the platform are conducted using USDC – a “stablecoin” cryptocurrency traded on the Polygon blockchain – rather than US dollars, and the company collects no KYC (“know your customer”) data for users outside the US. By contrast, its largest rival, Kalshi, has taken the opposite approach: working closely with regulators, collecting KYC data for its users, and conducting business in US dollars.3

In September, the CFTC approved Polymarket to reengage in US markets. One month earlier, Polymarket appointed Donald Trump Jr., the president’s adult son, to its advisory board and accepted an eight-figure investment from a venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner.4 (Trump Jr. is also an advisory board member at Polymarket’s largest direct competitor, Kalshi.)

Polymarket now operates legally in the US, but the company still faces mounting pressure from US lawmakers and many of its US-based users have remained waitlisted while the company navigates various state-level restrictions and legal challenges.5 Under increasing scrutiny, the company has scrambled to erect new policies and systems for monitoring and reporting unusual and suspicious activity on its platform.6

Common Polymarket Scams and Schemes

Open Measures examined discussion of Polymarket on active alternative platforms (Telegram, 4chan, Bluesky) and recorded in our platform’s datasets since March 2025 to identify suspicious activity being organized off-platform. Using a mix of tools available in the Open Measures’ platform, we discovered a sprawling ecosystem of questionable tools and schemes aimed at gaming alleged vulnerabilities in Polymarket’s safeguards.

Bots and Third-Party Software Vulnerabilities

Polymarket enables its users, who may not possess much knowledge about trading or investing, to identify the platform’s most successful traders and mimic their bets – a strategy known as “copy-trading.”

While Polymarket offers some native tools that help users identify successful traders to copy, including a real-time “Leaderboard” page, many of its users pay for access to third-party software that alerts them to noteworthy transactions on the platform and directs Telegram bots to execute identical trades on their behalf. Open Measures identified thousands of posts on alternative platforms advertising two such services: PolyGun and Polypok.

Polypok

On Bluesky, nearly 41% of posts we identified mentioning “polymarket” were made by a single automated account: the Polypok bot. A whale-tracking service, the bot exclusively created two kinds of posts hundreds of times each: “SMART MONEY ALERT” posts, categorizing specific accounts or wallets as “elite traders” and “S-tier whales (top 1% win rate)”, and “Polymarket Anomaly” posts, flagging statistically unusual trades, accompanied by z-scores and order flow percentages. (For example, a $25,000 bet on the Iranian regime falling by June 30 was given a z-score of 19.6σ, meaning a trade that was allegedly 19.6 standard deviations away from the mean size in that market).

While the use of labels appeared intended to add authority to the alerts, the method (if one exists) for generating each label was not disclosed. Similarly, the outrageously extreme probability scores associated with certain events make it a near certainty that the mathematics in the “anomalies” are fabricated.

PolyGun

PolyGun is a prominent Telegram trading bot and discussion community with nearly 206,000 users at the time of writing. Users who join an associated Telegram channel are connected to a private chat with the bot, which instructs them how to create a cryptocurrency wallet, open a Polymarket account, and arrange for the bot to execute automated copy-trading strategies on users’ behalf. US users can then avoid the KYC required for email-based accounts by connecting their wallet to the site and checking a box.

While PolyGun’s services are not illegal and many of its users seem to be ordinary retail traders, using the bot entails risks that are not readily apparent while onboarding.

Since various automated trading strategies are multiplied by the hundreds of thousands of users deploying them, a high-volume of trades concentrated on a specific event can have significant impacts on a given market (in some cases, moving or consciously manipulating its price). Additionally, trade latency creates structural disadvantages for retail traders, as one user openly discussed in PolyGun’s “Prediction Desk” channel on Jan. 29, 2026:

the bot copied the trade only after 30sec-1minute from the polymarket api, so when you try to copy the market already moved . . . if you accept slippage above 0.03 cents each direction it’s already in a loss.

Similarly, bot operators’ can see user trades as they come in but before they resolve, making it possible for them to use that information to take advantaged positions against users (known as “front-running”).

Despite PolyGun’s “non-custodial” architecture – meaning users “own” their own wallets and can export their private keys – it still stores users’ private keys in its servers, meaning its users’ safety is dependent on the integrity of the app’s architecture (which users can’t easily assess). If a trading bot’s architecture has vulnerabilities, it can fall victim to server-side attacks wherein users’ wallets are drained (as users of Polycule, another trading bot, experienced firsthand in January 2026, when hackers drained the bot’s treasury of $240,000).7

KYC and Account Farming

“Account farming” is the mass creation or purchase of verified accounts using illegitimate identity documents, effectively producing anonymous access points users can buy to avoid platforms’ KYC restrictions. Selling fraudulent accounts is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1028, with precedent;8 using such accounts to trade on a CFTC-regulated platform also implicates anti-fraud provisions under Rule 180.1, as well as violating terms of service. Since Polymarket’s ability to operate legally in the US depends on KYC, this secondary market allows users to undermine the framework.

Of the 10 Telegram accounts included in our datasets that mentioned Polymarket most often since November 2025, we found that eight had shared thousands of near-identical posts advertising KYC and account farming services related to Polymarket. Seven of the eight accounts shared posts written in Russian; the other used an English-language template.

One template (left, above), translated from Russian read:

VERIFIED ACCOUNTS FOR YOUR BUSINESS 🏦 Banks / cards / payment systems 💱 Crypto exchanges / P2P / exchangers 🎰 Bookmakers / casinos 🔒 SOF / AML / KYC / DeepFake / proxies 🧼 Crypto cleaning / withdrawal / unblocking 🌍 Any geography. Using your data or ours.

“SOF” (“source of funds”) refers to the sale of forged documents, “AML” refers to services that help users pass “anti-money laundering” screenings, “KYC” refers to the sale of verified accounts on financial platforms, and “DeepFake” refers to related, custom AI-generated images. The post also listed financial institutions these services were available for, including Polymarket.

The eight accounts shared thousands of similar posts, often in so-called “over the counter” Telegram channels: bootleg peer-to-peer marketplaces ostensibly meant to facilitate large cryptocurrency trades without platform brokerage fees that often feature advertisements for questionable and illegal services.9

Though the template each account used for its posts was unique, all eight shared their posts to the same channels, plausibly indicating their activities were coordinated.

Scams Based on Fake ‘Insider’ Information

Telegram hosts many public, semi-public, and private Polymarket trading groups where users discuss trade ideas and share information. Some of these groups, such as “Insiders Polymarket,” markets itself as a group of Fortune 500 insiders with access to private information and “leaks” that could be used to make profitable trades on Polymarket.

As one example of this scheme, the group’s moderators ran a series of promotional messages teasing a “leaked email”, eventually revealed to be related to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s alleged plans to resign. As the document is fake (and Omar did not retire), it appears to be a scheme to manipulate users into inflating the price of a small political event contract by betting “Yes” in one direction (so that the group operators can bet “No” against them, making greater profits).

Private Trading Groups

On 4chan, users primarily discussed and commented on ideas for trades and exploits with one another in /pol/ and /biz/. One anonymous /pol/ user alluded to recruiting other disciplined traders, rather than gamblers, into a private Telegram trading group (“TG”) to manipulate less sophisticated traders (“frontrun normiedom”) in a post made on Jan. 13, 2026:

so are you guys betting on polymarket too?

anyone wanna form a TG for this? we can alert eachother if news is there and frontrun normiedom

i’m holding a bunch of money on polymarket in cash just so I can buy in the moment some conclusive news appears regarding iran strikes

pls no gambletards tho

Others, were more critical of Polymarket’s existence at all, including an anonymous /pol/ user who posted on Feb. 4, 2026:

Suffice to say, Polymarket is a rigged, corrupt, broken system that is not legitimate and should be investigated and banned . . . literal blatant corruption in a betting market and there’s no recourse. People’s money stolen because the more powerful users can control the outcomes of these bets

Conclusion

Palantir’s partnership with Polymarket appears to be a step toward on-chain transparency, but off-chain coordination remains a structural problem. While various Telegram communities promise retail traders easy and automated profits, many of these services are designed in ways that allow operators to hold users’ private keys and front-run their positions.

As Open Measures indexes millions of posts from alternative platforms including Telegram, we will continue to monitor off-chain activity surrounding prediction markets – and we encourage other financial and cybercrime researchers to do the same.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state- backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.

TLDR

• Partisan “election integrity” activists have sustained their focus on Georgia since President Donald Trump narrowly lost the state in the 2020 presidential election, working to undermine public faith in voting processes, state officials, and legal systems.

• As the United States prepares for its 2026 midterm elections, Open Measures examined Georgia-centric election denialist discourse on four platforms that have historically harbored proponents of similar narratives.

• Our researchers found that a small number of hyper-partisan news blogs and activist groups played a significant role in shaping the discussion of Georgia-centric election denialism.

• Many of the most-active accounts sowing doubts about the legitimacy of Georgia elections were also found to have promoted extreme conspiracy theories like QAnon.

Background

After President Donald Trump narrowly lost Georgia to former President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Trump and his political allies falsely claimed that reported vote totals were illegitimate due to widespread fraud and pressured Georgia officials to overturn the results.1 Though every audit, recount, lawsuit, and law enforcement investigation into those accusations has thoroughly dispelled them, the Trump Administration and its activist supporters have remained fixated on far-fetched conspiracy theories alleging corruption in Georgia’s elections.2

Since the 2020 election, self-described “election integrity” activists in Georgia have sought to undermine public confidence in the state’s elections by challenging voter registrations and lobbying for changes to election laws they believe would advantage Republican candidates, reflecting national efforts to do the same.3 Aligned with these efforts, some have sought to advance their cause by working for the second Trump Administration, which seized thousands of ballots from election offices in Fulton County in January 2026, pursuant to claims a local denialist group published only weeks earlier.4

False accusations about election integrity have also created unprecedented risks to election workers across the US,5 with Georgian poll workers, public officials, and their respective offices receiving violent threats.6 Others have been targeted by partisan media figures in defamatory smear campaigns, resulting in online threats and harassment.7

Ahead of 2026 midterm elections, Open Measures examined the state of Georgia-centric election denialism on four platforms where election denialist movements have historically disseminated propaganda and organized in the last year: Gab, Gettr, Telegram, and Truth Social.

Methodology

To begin, our researchers submitted crawl requests to our platform for posts mentioning Georgia’s top election officials, “election integrity” activist organizations, and government entities. Next, we created a search string to identify election denialist posts made since President Donald Trump began his second term on Jan. 20, 2025, using the following query:

(”GA” OR “Georgia” OR “Kemp” OR “Raffensperger”) AND (”voting” OR vote* OR electi* OR poll* OR ballot* OR referendum* OR “polling station” OR registrat* OR “turnout” OR cast* OR absentee* OR “voter roll” OR “voter rolls” OR database* OR “voting machine” OR “voting machines” OR record* OR mail* OR tabulator* OR “smartmatic” OR “dominion voting” OR “qvf” OR “qvfs”) AND (fraud* OR scandal* OR corrupt* OR fake* OR hack* OR noncitizen* OR illegal* OR criminal* OR crime* OR fault* OR error* OR invalid* OR problem* OR conspirac* OR cabal* OR collu* OR cheat*) NOT (“smm panel” OR “promotion boost”)

Analysis

Our search query identified more than 19,000 posts made across the four platforms we examined. With our platform’s recently updated Timeline tool, we visualized how many of those posts were made each day during our analysis period.

Among these posts, discussion about voting in Georgia remained fairly constant throughout Trump’s second term but surged at several points in our analysis period. Upon closer examination, we found the largest spikes appeared to be driven by inflammatory articles on hyper-partisan news blogs and statements from public officials.

Our researchers saw increased activity following news developments related to Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, the dismissal of criminal charges against Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and instances where public officials claimed state electoral processes had suffered from administrative errors.

The largest uptick in daily posts our researchers observed, both in size and duration, corresponded to the Trump Administration’s raid of Fulton County’s electoral offices on Jan. 28, 2026. about 18% of all posts included in our analysis were shared since the raid occurred.

Partisan Blogs and Activist Groups Shape Election Denialism about Georgia

For each platform, we used our platform’s Activity feature to identify users whose posts matched our query most frequently during our analysis period, as well as which URLs were included most frequently in those posts. Similar to our previous reporting about election denialism in Michigan, we found that similar discourse about Georgia had been heavily shaped by a handful of hyper-partisan news blogs and right-wing activist groups.

On Truth Social, where we identified the greatest number of posts, at least 746 included links directing to The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump news blog notorious for promoting conspiracy theories about elections (nearly 9% of all Truth Social posts we identified).8 We observed similar trends on other platforms we analyzed, with more than 10% of all posts we identified containing a link to the Gateway Pundit.

On Gab, from which we identified our second-greatest number of posts, only Rumble – an alternative video platform popular with conspiracy theorist content creators – was more frequently linked-to than the Gateway Pundit. Rumble links appeared in at least 1,662 Gab posts, representing more than 28% of all posts from the platform that we identified.

Super-Spreaders of Georgia’s Election Denialism

To determine which accounts most frequently spread doubts about the integrity of Georgia’s elections, our researchers applied a search filter removing results with fewer than 10 re-shares. On each platform, they observed that the accounts posting the most election denialist content related to Georgia were also frequent proponents of other conspiracy theories, like QAnon.

On most platforms, the accounts that posted most frequently appeared to be random users. On Truth Social, however, similar accounts we identified included niche conspiracy theorist influencers, like QAnon promoter Cornelia DiNunzio, and pro-Trump media outlets Real America’s Voice and LindellTV.

To identify the loudest promoters of election denialism related to Georgia, our researchers adjusted the filter again to only show posts with 500 or more re-shares. We used our platform’s Discover feature to manually review the resulting 61 posts.

The most-reshared post identified by our search query was shared by a far-right Telegram channel on June 10, 2025. That post, re-shared nearly 8,600 times, listed world events supposedly “proving” various QAnon conspiracy theories true, including a claim that the 2020 election was “fake.” While the post included claims related to Georgia, it did not make specific claims about the state’s elections.

The second-most re-shared post came from President Trump’s Truth Social account on Nov. 26, 2025, made after a Georgia prosecutor filed to drop criminal charges filed against Trump two years earlier in relation to his efforts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election.9 In that post, which was re-shared more than 7,400 times, Trump claimed the state’s charges against him were retaliation for “telling the TRUTH” that the 2020 election had been “RIGGED AND STOLEN.”

The most re-shared Truth Social post we identified from an account other than Trump’s was made by pro-Trump social media personality Rogan O’Handley (aka “DC_Draino”) on Feb. 19, 2026. O’Handley’s post, which was shared nearly 1,600 times, asserted a “direct correlation” between the Trump Administration’s raid on Fulton County elections offices and top Democratic Party figures’ campaign messaging ahead of 2026 midterm elections.

Conclusion

Open Measures found that a relatively small number of actors had outsized influence shaping election denialist discourse related to Georgia’s elections on platforms where election denialist movements had historically been most active.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories about elections continue to drive threats against officials, animate efforts to restrict ballot access, and undermine public confidence in democracy. Increased awareness about the networks of influence driving election misinformation may help inform efforts to protect voting. As such, we will continue to monitor and report on these trends as they develop and encourage other researchers to do the same using Open Measures’ platform.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state- backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.

TLDR

• Conspiracy theorists have spent years fixated on Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. The most popular theories have centered on Gates’ philanthropic giving and, more recently, his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein.

• Open Measures saw discussion of Gates surge on platforms harboring far-right conspiracist communities in late January after the Department of Justice published millions of previously unseen documents pertaining to Epstein, including emails Epstein exchanged with Gates and his top confidantes.

• Researchers saw users in conspiracy theorist communities capitalize on renewed interest in Gates’ relationship with Epstein, weaving the new material into their existing theories and citing them as proof of long-debunked claims.

Background

Conspiracy theorist media personalities, far-right online communities, and hostile state actors have spread theories about Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, for years.1 Many of the most-circulated theories have taken aim at Gates’ philanthropic support for global health programs, claiming his advocacy is guided by sinister ulterior agendas like reducing the global population and amassing power for a cabal of authoritarian liberal elites seeking world domination.2

As Gates’ charitable foundation disbursed billions of dollars to entities that led the worldwide response to the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories about the motives driving his philanthropy saw widespread circulation on social media.3 At the same time, Gates faced increased scrutiny over his ties to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose reported suicide in 2019 inspired countless viral conspiracy theories about the global elites with whom he’d been known to associate.4

Members of Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have published several batches of previously private or classified documents related to Epstein in recent months, colloquially dubbed the “Epstein Files.” Among the millions of documents included in those releases were photos and email records revealing new details about Gates’ long-reported ties to Epstein.5

Documents published by the DOJ on Jan. 30 included records of emails Epstein exchanged with Gates and several of his top confidantes, who he hoped to convince to create a donor-advised fund for his charitable foundation. As Gates’ initial interest in the idea faded and his communication with Epstein stopped, emails suggest that Epstein attempted to insert himself into Gates’ marital issues. As Epstein’s pitches to Gates began to fizzle, Epstein drafted two emails in which he claimed he facilitated sexual encounters for Gates and helped him hide a sexually transmitted disease from his then-wife, Melinda Gates.6 (Gates has strongly denied those claims, and none of Epstein’s known victims have accused Gates of wrongdoing.7)

Social media influencers and online communities who previously promoted conspiracy theories and false claims about Gates capitalized on new details revealed in the Epstein Files, attempting to link old conspiracy theories about Gates’ support for COVID-19 pandemic response to newer narratives about Epstein.8

Methodology

Our researchers sought to better understand how new revelations about Gates’ and Epstein’s relationship impacted the spread of existing conspiracy theories about Gates. They began their analysis by searching our platform for posts that mentioned Gates by name since Dec. 12, 2025 – when lawmakers shared previously unseen materials from Epstein’s estate9 – across 11 distinct platforms where conspiracist right-wing communities have historically gathered. They identified more than 26,000 posts that mentioned Gates in the analysis period, including:

• More than 10,500 posts on the microblogging platforms Gab, Gettr, MeWe, Minds, and Truth Social

• More than 10,400 post on the video-based platforms Bitchute, LBRY, and Rumble

• More than 5,300 posts on the forum boards 4chan, 8kun, and Scored

From there, our researchers created search strings to narrow the results for further analysis. To identify posts that mentioned both Gates and Epstein, they used the following search string:

“Bill Gates” AND Epstein*

To identify posts that mentioned both Gates and at least one keyword related to previously documented conspiracy theories about his philanthropy (including those related to COVID-19), they used this search string:

“Bill Gates” AND (“nwo” OR “new world order” OR “covid” OR “covid-19” OR “coronavirus” OR “pandemic” OR “plandemic” OR “scamdemic” OR “vaccine” OR “vaccines” OR “vaccination” OR “vax” OR “vaxx” OR “vaxxed” OR “the jab” OR “the jabs” OR “china virus” OR “wuhan flu” OR “lab leak” OR “microchip” OR “nanochip” OR “5g” OR “depopulation” OR “population control” OR “global population” OR “great reset” OR “agenda 2030” OR “agenda 21” OR “illuminati” OR “globalist” OR “globalists” OR “globalism” OR “bioweapon” OR “mrna” OR “spike protein”)

Analysis

Open Measures researchers used the recently enhanced Timeline tool to visualize their search results – quantifying the posts made each day that matched their search strings, clustering them by platform type, and graphing them over our analysis period. Viewed this way, we saw major spikes across the platforms we analyzed in late January and early February, coinciding with the DOJ’s “Epstein Files” release on Jan. 30.

When researchers narrowed their search query to only return posts where Gates and Epstein were mentioned together, they saw more than half of the posts that mentioned Gates since Jan. 30 also mentioned Epstein. The number of daily posts mentioning both Gates and Epstein were curiously minimal prior to that surge – even after lawmakers published photos of Gates obtained from Epstein’s estate in December 2025. Prior to the document dump, less than 12% of posts that named Gates also mentioned Epstein.

Comparatively, we found that more than 40% of the posts that mentioned Gates prior to Jan. 30 also included at least one of the terms included in our search string related to conspiracy theories surrounding his philanthropy. The daily volume of those posts also spiked after the January “Epstein Files” release, but generally appeared at more consistent rates throughout the analysis period.

Researchers combined the two prior search strings to chart posts that mentioned Gates and Epstein together and also included a keyword related to conspiracy theories about Gates. Some of the spikes we observed appeared to be driven by posts attempting to link the two subjects together. The highest saturation of these posts were seen on video-based and microblogging platforms, where more than 18% and 16% of posts made since Jan. 30 mentioned Epstein in relation to longstanding conspiracy theories about Gates.

A review of those posts found that most of the users who shared them promoted debunked claims that materials in the Epstein Files proved Epstein had prior knowledge of the pandemic.

Conclusion

Our findings illustrate how conspiracy theorist communities fold new information and developing events into their existing narratives about their targets. Gates’ relationship to Epstein had no provable impact on Gates’ philanthropic work or his support for global disease response efforts, yet communities that have promoted conspiracy theories about the latter eagerly used newly revealed information from the Epstein Files to rehash and expand on prior claims.

This research underscores the importance of long-term monitoring for individuals who have been targeted by harmful activity online. Open Measures builds tools that help researchers track and analyze activity across dozens of alternative platforms, which often play outsized roles in the proliferation of digital safety risks.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state- backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.

Where We Are Now

Two days after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol Building in 2021, the social media platform Twitter (now called X) announced its team’s decision to indefinitely suspend Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Other major tech companies followed with similar actions following the violent insurrection.

These decisions were unprecedented in the US, even if consistent with respective site policies, eliciting outrage among Trump’s supporters and stirring unease among others concerned about big tech companies’ abilities to shape global affairs. But even before mainstream platforms banned Trump, their efforts to limit and remove harmful material on their sites had become the basis of dubious narratives among right-wing communities, who alleged that social platforms were systemically censoring conservative political beliefs.

As buy-in for these claims increased, a niche industry of alternative platforms marketing themselves to aggrieved communities as “free speech” havens began to proliferate. I refer to emerging social media platforms as “alternative platforms” (rather than “alt-tech” or “alt-platforms”) intentionally, here and throughout, to avoid misleading political connotations. “Alt-tech” is a more recent phenomenon, but alternative platforms have existed since the very beginning of social media and have hosted many different online communities.

Ideological Investment in a ‘Parallel Economy’

High-profile users and communities who saw their accounts banned or limited under evolving moderation policies at major platforms sought refuge in these alternatives, bringing their audiences with them. Right-wing investors and political leaders supported many alternative platforms throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s; some even theorized they could form the foundation of a new “parallel economy.” And Trump’s bans from major platforms drove ideological investment in alternative platforms to its peak.

In 2022, Trump debuted Truth Social: his own alternative platform that he claimed was meant to “stand up to Big Tech.” Later that year, billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk bought Twitter, renamed it X, dismantled trust and safety programs, and ordered site-wide policy changes – all in the name of saving “free speech.” Musk also reinstated accounts that were previously banned on the site, including Trump’s, and tweaked its algorithms to amplify posts expressing far-right views.

In the years that followed, other major platforms would reshape their own approaches – a shift that accelerated after Trump won the 2024 presidential election. Many have since deprioritized their prior efforts to address online harms and adjusted their political postures to please government officials. TikTok recently sold a majority stake of its US operations under pressure from the US government to an investor group that included right-wing billionaires like Larry Ellison, and has since been accused of censoring content that may displease the Trump Administration.

The clawback of content moderation efforts on mainstream social media sites has effectively undercut the “free speech” sales pitch that many alternative platforms used to grow their user bases, forcing their role in the wider online ecosystem to change.

Open Measures’ team has seen many analysts and reporters interpret those shifts as signs that alternative platforms are dwindling, or even becoming irrelevant – but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Alternative Platforms Aren’t Going Away

Suggestions that alternative platforms are losing their influence are unfounded – platforms like Bluesky and Fediverse have seen huge growth, while others like 4chan have proven their unique staying power on an always-changing internet.

Open Measures recorded more than 2.4 billion posts for the 2025 calendar year across the 35+ unique platforms we cover. Our datasets included:

• More than 1.7 billion posts on microblogging platforms like Bluesky, Fediverse sites, Gab, Gettr, and Truth Social, among others

• More than 459 million posts on channel messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp

• More than 222 million posts on forum boards like 4chan, 8kun, and Scored

• More than 82 million posts on video platforms like BitChute, LBRY, Rumble, and RuTube

Those figures carry additional weight when we consider the unique roles many alternative platforms have played in online harms and offline organizing. The posts on these platforms aren’t merely data points; they are a window into the ways digital chatter translates into material risk.

Impacts on Broader Online Trends

For all that has changed in recent years, Open Measures’ researchers have repeatedly seen alternative platforms continue to shape online discourse and drive harmful activities (often regardless of their relative size). Studying these platforms can often surface information that is virtually impossible to find elsewhere.

Many criminal networks and extremist groups use alternative platforms to organize members, plan attacks, and even evade international sanctions. Perpetrators of mass shootings and other violent attacks turn to anonymous forum boards for inspiration and encouragement. Threats against organizations and individuals spawn within fringe communities that fixate on them.

High-profile influencers on mainstream platforms crib content from niche sources to shape their own narratives. Global conflicts play out on messenger apps in areas where other platforms are inaccessible or unpopular. And today’s political leaders invest resources into alternative platforms as part of their public messaging strategies.

As social networking tools, alternative platforms often function as organizing hubs and “training grounds” – where users can coordinate as networks, develop group identities, and hone strategies for escalating harmful campaigns. In some environments, AI tools have accelerated these dynamics, in turn scaling their online harms.

Research has repeatedly shown that content from alternative platforms migrates onto larger ones, amplifying its reach and normalizing extremist ideas along the way. The January 6 Capitol attack, for instance, was organized across a constellation of alternative platforms before spilling into the physical world. That pattern has since been repeated in violent mobilizations around the world.

What Has Changed

The reordering of priorities at mainstream platforms has changed the roles that many alternative platforms play in the wider online ecosystem. While we’ve seen waves of users rejoin mainstream sites under loosened content moderation policies, we’ve also seen others refuse to do – alongside other, more recent and novel developments.

The political changes among mainstream platform leadership have instigated a new left-leaning diaspora, whose users have sought out online spaces aligned with values related to security, politics, and functionality. Bluesky’s open AT Protocol and the ActivityPub protocol used by federated networks allow users to carry their identity and social graph across platforms, reducing the centralized control that any single company can hold over public discourse.

Similarly, TikTok users’ concerned about the platform’s new ownership caused an influx of activity on UpScrolled, a platform advertising transparent content moderation and an algorithm that they claim isn’t engineered to keep users hooked.

These alternative platforms tell an arguably different story – where a move away from the mainstream is driven by a desire for more transparency, accountability, and user control. That said, this set of alternative platforms are not without their own range of online threats (crypto scams, astroturfing, proliferation of abuse material, among others) and are well-worth researchers’ time and attention.

Where We Go From Here

To keep up with the evolving social media ecosystem, we are constantly updating our platform with features and datasets to provide others with a more complete understanding of online activity – and to move beyond the false premise of a clean distinction between “mainstream” and “alternative” online spaces.

We’ve designed our platform with the intention of offering researchers a wider field of vision – both to clarify cross-pollination between platforms and to make mainstream investigations more robust. With our alternative platform datasets, researchers can surface influential posts from elsewhere that are less natively-searchable, while avoiding other financial and architectural restrictions.

Open Measures remains committed to tracking all these shifts in real time by paying attention to platforms that others can’t. As the complexity of online ecosystems increases, so does our conviction in the vision of a more transparent and understandable internet.

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Hello again from the Open Measures team. As we’re heading into March, here’s a look back on the research pieces we published in February.

Case Study: Protecting Elections and Preventing an Attack on Election Workers Using Open Measures

One of customers who works to protect the security and integrity of elections in Arizona shared that Open Measures allowed them to detect and prevent an attack against election workers. We detailed how that happened here:

US Anti-Abortion Activists Intensify Their Recruitment Efforts on TikTok

Our researchers dove into the world of anti-abortion content on TikTok, finding that movement activists have increased their efforts on the platform in recent years. Some of the content they found targeted abortion clinics, which have dealt with increased harassment and disruptions since the US Supreme Court repealed the right to abortion in 2022.

Bad Bunny Outshined Artists at Alternative Halftime Show, Even Among Pro-Trump Audiences

A conservative activist group allied with the Trump Administration staged an alternative event to air against this year’s Super Bowl halftime show headlined by Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny, who performed almost entirely in Spanish. Our analysis found that pro-Trump communities discussed Bad Bunny more than any of the artists featured in the counter-programmed show, suggesting audiences were more interested in what the event represented than the show it put on.

US Olympians’ Discomfort with American Politics Met with Online Hate and Harassment

Several Team USA athletes competing in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games used their platform to voice their disapproval and discomfort with American politics under the Trump Administration, sparking online hate and harassment from pro-Trump communities. Our researchers found that female athletes were targeted more aggressively and for longer periods than their male counterparts.

‘He Needs to Go Die’: MAGA Communities Fume at Senate Republicans Over SAVE Act Delays

Republicans in US Congress have sought to pass voting laws ahead of 2026 midterm elections that experts warn would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. Their flagship legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, has encountered significant roadblocks in the US Senate, angering pro-Trump communities. Researchers observed that users in those spaces have attacked top Republican Senators over the delays, calling on them to be removed from Congress.

Content warning: This article discusses online sexual abuse and contains explicit language. Reader discretion is advised.

TLDR

• Daily activity on a 4chan imageboard dedicated to exchanging sexually explicit and pornographic content has nearly tripled over the last year as its users have embraced AI-generated “deepfakes,” new analysis from Open Measures found.

• Users on the board frequently exchange tools, tips, and tricks on how to coerce AI software into producing sexually explicit deepfakes, circumventing the efforts of many AI companies to prevent such use cases of their software.

• The board also harbors an emerging micro-economy of users accepting commissions to discretely generate explicit deepfakes of private and public figures.

• Users on the board most often request “deepfake” images of female subjects, sometimes sharing photos of subjects who appear plausibly underage. It’s unclear if the site’s moderators made efforts to verify the age of individuals pictured on the board.

Context

Open Measures has seen usage of generative AI software to perpetuate online sexual abuse increase as the technology becomes more advanced and less cost-prohibitive.1 Today, AI deepfakes drive an underground economy,2 hosting tailor-made tools and for-hire services catering to those who seek sexually explicit “deepfakes”3 – images and videos of people which appear to be authentic but were digitally generated.

The overwhelming majority of those victimized by nonconsensual deepfakes are female,4 and in some cases include children,5 and the online communities that produce deepfakes often display extreme misogynist and male supremacist views. These ecosystems also operate with the same digital infrastructure employed in other forms of cybercrime, which means victims often face cybersecurity risks in addition to social harms.6

Policymakers have spent years attempting to counter the nonconsensual distribution of explicit content, including AI deepfakes, but their efforts have severely lagged on the issue.7 While many countries have proposed or passed legislation criminalizing such material,8 the enforcement of those laws has lacked urgency and encountered legal complications.9

4chan’s ‘Adult Requests’ Board is a Depot for Sexually Explicit ‘Deepfakes’

4chan, an imageboard platform where users are anonymous, created its “Adult Requests” board (also known by its URL suffix, “r”) in 2004. Though 4chan users have historically shared nonconsensual material, including hacked nude photos and face-swapped images, the Adult Requests board initially existed as a venue for users trading and discussing pornography – requesting names of specific adult actresses, finding videos that screenshots originated from, and so on.

But in recent years, Adult Requests users have become increasingly fixated on the production and trade of sexually explicit material made with generative AI software. The majority of threads found on the board today contain user-submitted photos – most often of female subjects – and requests for others to produce fake images depicting them nude or engaged in sexual acts. These requests are fulfilled by users who self-describe as “wizards” (a term that originated in online “incel” subcultures), who share the deepfakes they produce. This back-and-forth takes place in full public view; anyone who visits the board can see the images its users are swapping.

Requests for deepfake images on Adult Requests most often target female figures with some sort of public profile, including politicians, celebrities, actresses, athletes, and social media influencers. But many posts also solicited deepfakes of female subjects that users said they encountered in their personal lives: former romantic partners, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, and family members, among others.

It is unclear whether the board’s moderators make any attempts to verify the ages of individuals in photos its users submit as reference material when requesting explicit deepfake images. Many posts on Adult Requests have included pictures of people who appeared young, plausibly teenagers. (Due to privacy and legal concerns, Open Measures did not attempt to independently identify individuals pictured on the board or verify their age.)

The ‘Adult Requests’ Board Grew Last Year as AI ‘Deepfake’ Requests Dominated its Daily Activity

Open Measures decided to dive deeper into activity on Adult Requests after finding its users trading explicit AI-generated images of female athletes in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. The tools available in our platform allowed us to view historical datasets for the board, where posts are quickly deleted to make way for new ones, and to minimize our exposure to its explicit (and potentially illegal) content.

Editor’s Note: In the interest of protecting victims’ privacy and limiting exposure to potentially illegal content, Open Measures elected to censor explicit material and hyperlinks in screenshots of the imageboard included in this article.

Using our platform’s “Timeline” tool, Open Measures was able to determine that daily user activity on Adult Requests nearly tripled over the last year. In the first four weeks of our analysis period – from Mar. 1 to 29, 2025 – users on the board averaged 709 posts per day; in the final four weeks – from Feb. 1 to 28, 2026 – they averaged 2,017.

Based on all archived posts from our analysis period, we found that January 2026 was the most active month on Adult Requests, with a total of 70,000 unique posts. April 2025 – when 4chan went offline for 10 days after a reported hack – was the least active month we saw in the analysis period.

More than 10,000 posts Open Measures archived from Adult Requests for the year-long period we examined included specific mentions of “AI.” Thousands more discussed techniques for coaxing AI software into making sexually explicit images.

Board Users Regularly Traded Techniques for Making ‘Deepfakes’

On many 4chan boards, users perpetually re-share posts meant to preserve material their users find significant and continue conversations that would otherwise disappear as threads are deleted from the site. These re-posted threads – dubbed “bakes” among the site’s users – typically appear at the top of imageboards they’re made in, often making them one of the first posts any new visitor sees.

At the time of writing, the most-current “bake” on Adult Requests included hyperlinks to an assortment of guides, tools, and archives related to the production of sexually explicit deepfakes. The contents that bake contained have been shared in hundreds of posts since it first appeared in November 2025, often multiple times per day.

Adult Requests users also made more than 3,700 posts last year that discussed techniques for crafting adversarial prompts to bypass the built-in safety guardrails found in many generative AI tools that are meant to prevent them from creating explicit images. Some users asked for assistance; others who succeeded reported back to share which techniques had been most effective.

About 3,000 posts on Adult Requests mentioned using low-rank adaptation (LoRA) techniques to make explicit deepfakes. LoRAs are shareable files that refine existing AI models for specific use cases – in this case, generating more-realistic images depicting particular physical traits, sexual acts, and female figures. Once downloaded, these models are typically deployed on local hardware, allowing their users to create images with them with minimal oversight.

A Micro-Industry of ‘Deepfake’ Makers Are Profiting Off Adult Requests Users

Our researchers observed that producers of explicit deepfakes frequently advertised their willingness to accept paid commissions from Adult Requests users, often including Discord and Telegram links where other users could contact them more discretely.

Nearly 2,500 of the posts we reviewed in our analysis period mentioned “Discord” or “Telegram,” and almost all mentions were in posts that discussed paid commissions. The solicitations went both ways, with with sellers offering services to interested buyers, and hopeful buyers also trying to contact “wizards” directly, as seen in this Jan. 13 post [sic]:

Looking for a friendly wiz, go with your instincts
I’ve got nudes of exs, pics of cousins that I can share on discord for more magic

A small number of posts we identified that sought assistance to produce custom deepfakes also expressed that their image requests were motivated by malicious intent. In one post made to the board on Jan. 7, a user attempted to contact someone who would help them “destroy” a man’s life with private information they had for him:

The fucker on the Internet is fucked up and I need help to destroy his life on the Internet

[...]

I uploaded all the photos and videos that this asshole sent me, and there is also his passport. I can give his nicknames in telegram and discord, along with his mobile number

Though self-aware posts were extreme outliers in the board’s broader discourse, a small number of users seemed ambivalent about recent activity on Adult Requests and considered whether much of the board’s recent content could be illegal. One such post from Feb. 26 read [sic]:

Let’s be real about /r/ for a second. It’s moderated (dubiously so, no doubt) but not very. In the old days there might have been a good reason to keep an eye on things from time to time but it was mostly just guys trying to identify porn actresses and such. These days, aside from this thing here, it’s likely 90% guys requesting people make revenge porn if their exes or school/ work friends. Or sisters. Jesus. But how do you actually moderate something that’s clearly illegal most everywhere? Generally you either don’t and let things expire and disappear on their own or you’re constantly moderating everything. So my thinking is that moderating Realistic Parody AI falls mostly under the former. That is to say, they mostly don’t. Anyhow, goodnight goobers.

What We’re Watching

Over the last year, 4chan’s “Adult Requests” board has grown significantly more active, and the bulk of that activity has consisted of requests for explicit deepfake images of female subjects. These findings highlight an extreme and urgent risk facing women, and potentially children, online today.

Our researchers will continue to monitor Adult Requests to better understand how generative AI tools are being exploited to inflict sexual abuse against victims and contribute to broader cybersecurity threats.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state- backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.

TLDR

• Since the DOJ published the “Epstein files” in January, social media posts sharing AI-generated images to advance false claims about their contents have achieved viral online spread.

• Fake images have been presented to attack a range of political figures and to rehash prior conspiracy theories, often accelerating the spread of false narratives they support and manipulating public sentiments on social media.

• In one example, false narratives supported by AI-generated images appeared to inspire offline protest activity.

Background

In January 2026, and compelled by US Congress, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released millions of documents related to the federal criminal investigations surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, a child sex offender whose reported suicide while awaiting trial in 2019 has animated countless viral conspiracy theories online.1

Online interest in the millions of files released in January, among them emails, flight logs, images, and videos implicating global elites (some of whom have since resigned or been arrested),2 3 has spanned the political spectrum. As social media users shared their outrage, speculation, and various conspiracy theories, individual and state actors capitalized on the uncertainty, creating “deepfake” AI images alleged to be real photos from DOJ disclosures to spread false narratives and misinformation.

Since the January release, media outlets reported that the DOJ withheld millions of additional documents, some of which allegedly contain claims that President Trump sexually abused a child, driving further interest online. Members of Congress are currently investigating the omitted materials.4

Methodology

Open Measures sought to better understand the role that fake images had in the spread of false claims about the contents of the Epstein files across the platforms we monitor. Our researchers reviewed recent news media coverage to identify two debunked narratives about the Epstein files whose spread across social media was reportedly aided by AI-generated images:

• Claims that Epstein maintained an intimate relationship with Mira Nair, the mother of the New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

• Claims that Epstein’s suicide in 2019 was faked, driven by AI-images depicting Epstein alive and living in Israel

Our researchers performed a broad initial search of Open Measures’ crawled platforms for posts mentioning “Epstein,” narrowed the results to only those created since members of Congress introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act in July 2025, and identified the four platforms with the most posts during that period for analysis: TikTok, Bluesky, Truth Social, and 4chan. For each narrative, they created search queries meant to surface related posts and manually reviewed the results to identify relevant content:

(“zohran mamdani” OR “mamdani” OR “mira” OR “nair” OR “mira nair”) AND “epstein”

(”Epstein” OR “Jeffrey Epstein”) AND (”alive” OR “living” OR “hiding” OR “fled” OR “escape*” OR “faked his death” OR “didn’t die” OR “isn’t dead” OR “never died” OR “survive*” OR “cover up” OR “coverup” OR “hoax”) AND (”Israel” OR “Tel Aviv”)

Analysis

Open Measures found that false narratives about the Epstein files’ contents spread across social media with the aid of fake images produced with generative AI software. In some cases, these narratives reportedly inspired offline activity and saw engagement from hostile state actors.5 The proliferation of false narratives associated with AI-generated images occurred during a period of heightened interest in the Epstein files, in late Jan. 2025 through Feb. 2026.

From June 20, 2025 to Feb. 27, 2026, our researchers identified approximately 92,000 posts mentioning “Epstein” on the four analyzed platforms; earlier activity spikes aligned with other events unconnected to AI images and further detailed below.

False Claims About Epstein’s Relationship to Mira Nair and Zohran Mamdani

Mira Nair, an Indian-American filmmaker and the mother of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, appears in the Epstein files in a 2009 email from publicist Peggy Siegal to Epstein. The email stated that Nair had attended a party, which news outlets have surmised was planned to celebrate the release of Nair’s film Amelia,6 at the townhouse of Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Nair’s name appears several more times in relation to independent film events, while Mamdani’s appears once in the headline of a news article included in a “roundup” email containing additional unrelated stories.7

Though none of the materials released by the DOJ suggest Nair or Mamdani had personal relationships with Epstein or engaged in any wrongdoing, their mentions in the documents gave online actors the minimal context necessary to craft viral false narratives with AI images.

The most-circulated fake images our researchers identified depicted Nair and Mamdani in personal settings with Epstein and Maxwell, in addition to a host of global elites like former President Bill Clinton and billionaire tech CEOs Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. NewsGuard reported the images were first shared by a fringe account on X and subsequently amplified by influential figures like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.8

Posts sharing fake images and misleading claims about Nair and Mamdani’s ties to Epstein drew millions of views across platforms, culminating in apparent protests against Mamdani outside Gracie Mansion,9 the official residence of New York City mayors, on Feb. 2.

With the “Timeline” feature, our researchers observed that the daily total of posts mentioning both Epstein and Mamdani spiked during the same time period on all four platforms analyzed. (Two prior spikes in November 2025, aligned with Mamdani’s election night victory speech and his White House meeting with Trump, respectively.)

Using the “Discover” feature to review their identified posts, our researchers found that the AI-generated images popularized on X and their associated false narratives had spread to the four platforms examined.

On TikTok, the fourth most-viewed video we identified contained one of these AI-generated images and presented it as authentic. The post amassed more than a million views and was re-shared more than 11,500 times. (The most-viewed posts we found were from news outlets reporting the images were inauthentic.)

On Truth Social, the three most re-shared posts discussing Epstein and Mamdani – one of which included an AI-generated image – originated from a single account styled after the “QAnon” conspiracy theory. In one post, the user asserted that there was “a very real possibility Zohran Mamdani is Jeffrey Epstein’s biological son.”

False Reports That Epstein is Alive and Living in Israel

Fake images posted to a Reddit community dedicated to sharing comical AI-generated content on Feb. 1, 2026, depicted a man who resembled Epstein crossing the street, flanked by apparent bodyguards and surrounded by signs seemingly written in Hebrew. The images in the post contained visible watermarks that indicated they had been created using Google AI software.

In the days that followed, users across social media platforms cropped the images to remove the watermark and used them to earnestly claim that Epstein was alive and hiding in Israel. Among these were several identical X posts shared on Feb. 5, that collectively garnered more than 10.5 million views.10 Though the images were quickly debunked by multiple outlets,11 12 the narrative still spread – even internationally, in Turkish and Arabic-language posts.13

Mirroring the false Nair/Mamdani narrative, our researchers saw earlier spikes in daily total posts referencing claims that Epstein was alive and living in Israel across all platforms they analyzed. These spikes were observed in:

• July 2025, after the Trump Administration announced it no longer planned to release the Epstein files

• September 2025, after an Epstein survivors’ rally took place outside the US Capitol

• November 2025, after a House subcommittee released a trove of emails obtained from Epstein’s estate that showed family members expressing doubts he died by suicide

The most recent spike, in early February 2026, appeared to follow the spread of AI-generated images.

Conclusion

As this research shows, existing fact-checks and AI detection tools remain vastly outpaced by the viral spread of false narratives. This gap remains a significant vector for informational threats from both individual and state actors (acting intentionally and unintentionally). For its complexity, the Epstein story has proven particularly fertile for online misinformation accounts, who were able to spread many malicious claims without providing any concrete evidence.

With the use of AI-generated images, accounts spreading online misinformation about Epstein have already achieved international reach, compounding confusion on a much-discussed case. As this story develops, Open Measures encourages other researchers to use our platform to track and report on misinformation trends in order to halt their spread.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state- backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.

TLDR

• Republican lawmakers have sought to pass federal election laws ahead of 2026 US midterm elections that critics say would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. One such bill, the SAVE America Act, passed the US House of Representatives earlier this month but faces roadblocks in the US Senate.

• Open Measures found that discussions of the SAVE America Act steadily increased across seven platforms with dominant pro-Trump communities in the US throughout January, then spiked after a federal judge blocked Trump from changing election laws via executive order.

• Researchers saw that pro-Trump communities have attributed blame for the SAVE America Act’s delays in the US Senate to Republican leaders, disparaging them as disloyal and calling for their removal from Congress.

Background

Republicans in US Congress have renewed legislative efforts to restrict voting access ahead of 2026 midterm elections, centering their latest push around a revamped version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (“SAVE Act”).1 The current iteration bill, known as the SAVE America Act, would require individuals to present documentary proof of US citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, compel states to provide voter registration data to the Department of Homeland Security, and allow for criminal charges against state election officials who fail to comply.2

Lawmakers supporting the SAVE Act claim its demands are necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting in US federal elections, an exceedingly rare occurrence that is already illegal.3 Its opponents, including many legal experts and civil rights advocates, have warned the bill would effectively disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, disproportionately affecting younger voters and people of color.4

Lawmakers narrowly passed the SAVE Act in the US House of Representatives on Feb. 11, but the bill faces roadblocks in the US Senate: It currently lacks the necessary legislative support it would need to defeat a filibuster from its opponents, who under current procedural rules could indefinitely delay and block a vote to pass the bill.5 President Donald Trump has encouraged Senate Republicans to find a way to overcome this hurdle before midterm elections, claiming Republicans will “never lose a race” if the SAVE Act’s proposed restrictions are enacted.6

A handful of Republican leaders in the Senate have so far stalled voting on the SAVE Act, drawing ire from Trump’s online supporters. Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised a vote on the SAVE Act but has shown reluctance to support proposed tactics for defeating a filibuster.7 Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who heads the Senate Rules Committee, has so far declined to schedule a vote on the bill.8

Methodology

Open Measures’ researchers searched for posts that mentioned the SAVE Act between Jan. 1 and Feb. 24, 2026, on seven platforms harboring dominant pro-Trump communities in the US: 4chan, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Scored, Telegram, and Truth Social. They used the following search string to identify posts for their analysis:

“save act” OR “save america act”

Our researchers then used features available through our platform to analyze trends and highlight notable actors in the information surfaced by their query.

Analysis

The search string above identified more than 17,000 posts that mentioned the SAVE Act across the seven platforms included for analysis. Using the Timeline feature, our researchers visualized the number of posts per day that matched their query on each platform, allowing them to observe interest in the bill over time.

Mentions of the SAVE Act gradually increased throughout January, as Republican lawmakers and media personalities geared up for their latest attempts to pass voter ID laws. The first major spike came in early February, after a federal judge blocked a 2025 executive order in which Trump sought to require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship before casting ballots, ruling that presidents didn’t have authority to dictate rules for elections.9 Another spike followed in mid-February, after House Republicans passed the SAVE Act.

Researchers filtered the results of their search to show posts that had been re-shared 250 or more times on their respective platforms. Next, they used “Discover” to manually review those posts. Many of the most-shared posts in January originated from Scott Pressler, a Republican activist and social media personality who has spent years promoting conspiracy theories about elections and lobbying officials for tighter voting laws.10 Pressler’s posts on Truth Social promoting the SAVE Act accounted for nearly a quarter (23.4%) of all posts we found that received 250 or more re-shares in the analysis period.

After a federal judge shot down his executive order seeking to mandate voter ID, Trump made several posts on Truth Social calling on Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE Act before midterm elections. Our researchers have repeatedly observed that Trump’s posts on Truth Social spark increased interest in the topics they mention, with users across an array of platforms aggregating and opining on his messages.

On Feb. 13, as the bill began to stall in the Senate, Trump posted that he was working on a new executive order that would ensure voter ID requirements were in place for midterm elections, “whether approved by Congress or not!”11 Mentions of the SAVE Act across platforms dwindled after Trump posted that message.

Trump Supporters Attack Mitch McConnell

At the time of writing, the SAVE Act has passed the House but lacks the necessary support in the Senate to overcome a filibuster from its opponents. Trump and his hardline supporters have repeatedly encouraged Senate Republicans to repeal the filibuster, but legislative leaders have so far dismissed the idea. Some Trump allies have floated potential strategies for defeating an attempted filibuster as well, but Republican Senate leaders have similarly shown hesitancy to try the proposed tactics.12

Trump supporters online, frustrated by the roadblocks preventing a quick passage of the SAVE Act, have turned their ire toward top Senate Republicans, faulting them for not forcing a vote and for brushing off ideas for out-maneuvering its legislative opponents. Our researchers observed that users have most often blamed McConnell, who has refused to schedule a vote on the bill, and to a lesser extent Thune, the top Senate Republican, for the SAVE Act’s hangups.

Users on the platforms we analyzed attacked McConnell, accusing him of being corrupt and senile, and called for his removal from the Senate.

A Feb. 22 post on Telegram read:

Frankly, he needs to go die. There is no reason to block the SAVE Act whatsoever

A Feb. 20 post on Gettr read:

This is the man BLOCKING the SAVE ACT.. Mitch McConnell needs to be REMOVED for being mentally incompetent.

A Feb. 18 post on Telegram read:

Mitch McConnell is a no vote on the SAVE ACT. Over 90% of his constituents would vote yes. But his owners don’t want it. He barely walks. Has no clue where he is. Everything wrong with politics. Congress was not meant to be a crooked nursing home.

Researchers also observed posts suggesting that McConnell’s staffers were responsible for the blockage of the SAVE Act. A handful of users blamed Terry Carmack, who serves as McConnell’s chief of staff.

A Feb. 22 post on Scored read:

Terry Carmack is blocking the SAVE ACT… so, what’s his deal? He a deep state pedo, money launderer, a retarded commie, or what?

A Feb. 20 post on Gab read:

We all know his staff are the ones blocking the SAVE act. Glitch McConnell is just as senile as Biden.

Conclusion

Pro-Trump online communities have spent years promoting conspiracy theories that question the legitimacy of elections, including assertions that Democrats are padding vote counts with illegitimate ballots from non-citizens (who are not legally allowed to vote).13 The SAVE Act is an apparent attempt to validate and capitalize on these theories, seeking to restrict ballot access under the auspices of preventing non-citizens from voting.

Online efforts to bolster support for voter ID laws and pressure Republican lawmakers to pass them could result in the disenfranchisement of millions of eligible American voters. Inversely, failed attempts to pass or implement such laws could provide fresh fodder for narratives that attack the legitimacy of midterm election results, which have for years inspired violence and threats against government officials.14

With Open Measures’ platform, we will continue to monitor both communities that traffic election misinformation as well as any organized responses to it.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state- backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.

TLDR

• Athletes representing the United States in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games have faced partisan backlash for voicing concerns about US politics under the Trump Administration.

• Team USA Olympians who raised these concerns were met with hate and harassment on a variety of right-leaning alt-platforms, where discussions had often been enflamed by US political and media figures.

• Online harassment of female athletes was particularly harsh and more sustained, including misogynistic comments and nonconsensual, sexually explicit “deepfake” images made with AI.

Background

The 2026 Olympic Winter Games hosted athletes from 92 countries in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, from Feb. 6–22. Olympic events often see a range of political and social commentary occur on their sidelines, and at this year’s events, a sizable portion of those criticisms were levied against the United States.1

A number of athletes representing the US publicly expressed mixed emotions about loving their country while disapproving of the Trump Administration’s political agenda.2 These and similar comments elicited backlash from US political leaders and partisan media outlets, as well as online abuse and harassment against the athletes themselves.3

Methodology

Open Measures sought to identify and analyze online hate directed at Team USA athletes who voiced their concerns about US politics while competing there. To identify these Team USA athletes, our researchers reviewed recent news media reporting, which resulted in the following list:

• Hunter Hess, a freestyle skier who told reporters that he felt “mixed emotions” representing the US in light of “things going on back home” that he didn’t support. (President Donald Trump responded with a post on Truth Social calling Hess “a real Loser” and saying it was “too bad” that he was competing on behalf of the US.)

• Chris Lillis, a freestyle skier who said he was “heartbroken about what’s happening” when asked about protests against federal immigration enforcement agents.

• Amber Glenn, a figure skater who said LGBTQ+ communities were having a “hard time” under the Trump Administration.

• Rich Ruohonen, a curler who said the Trump Administration’s violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis “is wrong.”

• Svea Irving, a freestyle skier who said it was “a tough time in our country right now.”

• Maddie Mastro, a snowboarder who said she was “saddened with what’s happening at home.”

• Chloe Kim, a snowboarder who defended her fellow athletes for voicing their concerns about US political issues like immigration.

• Mikaela Shiffrin, an alpine skier who said it was “tough to reconcile” representing the US.

From this list, our researchers created a Boolean search string to identify posts that mentioned at least one of these athletes by name:

“Hunter Hess” OR “Chris Lillis” OR “Amber Glenn” OR “Rich Ruohonen” OR “Svea Irving” OR “Maddie Mastro” OR “Chloe Kim” OR “Mikaela Shiffrin”

Finally, we used this string to search 19 unique platforms with sizable US right-wing communities – including image boards like 4chan, forums like Scored, video platforms like Rumble, and microblogging sites like Truth Social – for matching posts made between Feb. 1 and 18, 2026.

Research

From our 19 crawled sources, our researchers identified 647 posts mentioning at least one of the eight athletes in our query above, the majority of which had been shared on Truth Social (26.3%), 4chan (15.8%), or Gab (15.2%).

Across those three platforms, the most-mentioned athletes were Hess (about 45%), Glenn (about 31%), and Kim (about 12%). Our researchers also noted that the number of posts discussing the five female Olympians appeared at a steadier pace over the analysis period than posts discussing the three male athletes.

4chan Users Trade Nude ‘Deepfake’ Images of Female Olympians

Using our platform’s “Discover” tool, our researchers manually reviewed the identified posts and found many were from 4chan threads where users discussed the nonconsensual use of generative AI tools to produce nude and sexually explicit “deepfake” images of female Olympians. In these threads, 4chan users often shared advice regarding tools and techniques they used to generate their images and shared their results with one another.

Our researchers found additional 4chan threads where users traded graphic sexual fantasies about female athletes, or attacked the same athletes for their romantic relationships with Black partners.

Partisan Outlets and Themes Found In Hateful Rhetoric Against Athletes

Using “Discover,” our researchers found that many of the identified posts included links to articles from partisan news media outlets that criticized the athletes’ political comments (alongside similar user commentary that denounced those athletes).

Of the athletes included in our query, Hess and Glenn were subjected to the highest volumes of hateful comments. In Hess’s case, President Trump’s Truth Social post disparaging his political remarks seemed to spur further outrage among online pro-Trump communities.

Glenn’s pansexual identity was a significant source of online outrage as well, with a small number of posts we identified expressing violent fantasies against her (e.g., a 4chan post of a user hoping Glenn “falls and splits her head on the ice” – though researchers did not identify any posts that signaled an immediate physical threat to any of the athletes in their search string).

Most posts voiced general hostility toward the athletes, with several accusing Hess of being a disgrace to his country and calling on Team USA to eject him from the 2026 Olympic Winter Games. For example, a Feb. 8 post on Truth Social read:

Make Hunter Hess INFAMOUS, the weasel is a traitor. Stay in Europe, you are no longer welcomed in America.

Others mocked athletes who failed to win their events. For example, a Feb. 12 post on 4chan read:

Elieen Gu and Chloe Kim failed to win gold
That’s what you get for talking shit.
MAGA!

A handful of posts called for a boycott of any company that sponsored Olympians voicing concerns related to the Trump Administration. For example, a Feb. 9 post on Gab read:

If any of these commie f****ts wins a medal and comes back to the USA and some company hooks them up with an endorsement... I WILL BOYCOTT THE F*** OUT OF EVERYTHING THEY SELL

Conclusion

Online abuse targeting competitive athletes has intensified in recent years, threatening their safety, wellbeing, and performance.4 Political and media blowback can complicate these dynamics, marking athletes as possible targets for broader political grievances and thus getting the attention of more malicious online communities.5

The issue is significant enough that several professional sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, have responded by investing in new programs to detect and mitigate online threats.6 Despite these efforts, athletes continue to report feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the hate and harassment they face on social media.7

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TLDR

Conservative media and political figures encouraged Super Bowl viewers to boycott this year’s halftime show featuring Bad Bunny and tune in to an event produced by a right-wing activist group instead. An early analysis from Open Measures suggests the event drew more interest as a protest against Bad Bunny’s performance than as a source of musical entertainment.

Context

Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny performed at Super Bowl LX on Sunday, delivering a 13-minute halftime show that paid homage to the US territory’s vibrant history and culture. His performance was almost entirely in Spanish – a first for the event – and reportedly broke records as the most-viewed halftime show in Super Bowl history.

After organizers announced Bad Bunny would perform at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sept. 28, conservative political and media figures decried the decision as an affront to American culture and amplified calls to boycott the performance. The next day, Jack Posobiec, one of the most visible figures at the right-wing activist organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA), suggested on X that the organization might arrange a “counter-Superbowl halftime show,” and that Creed might even perform. On Oct. 9, TPUSA officially announced it would host an “All-American Halftime Show” to air against the Super Bowl.

On Feb. 2, six days before the Super Bowl, TPUSA announced Kid Rock and various country music artists as the performers at their counter-event, later endorsed by Trump Administration officials including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

Pro-Trump Communities Discussed Bad Bunny More Than TPUSA Event Artists

Users on four text-based platforms with dominant pro-Trump communities – Gab, Gettr, Scored, and Truth Social – mentioned Bad Bunny in more posts last weekend than posts mentioning any of the four artists who headlined TPUSA’s “All-American Halftime Show.”

On the four platforms we examined, users’ discussions of artists at the TPUSA event appeared to be relatively low. Overall, our researchers identified fewer than 200 total posts mentioning any of the artists on Feb. 8, the date both halftime shows occurred. On the Monday after the event, for every two posts on those platforms that mentioned a performer at TPUSA’s event, three posts mentioned Bad Bunny.

Users Showed Interest in TPUSA’s Event Rather Than The Event’s Artists

Users on the platforms we searched posted about TPUSA in relation to the Super Bowl more than they posted about any of the artists the organization booked to perform, suggesting that pro-Trump audiences were more interested in the event itself than the performances it featured.

An analysis of the most-shared URLs in the posts we identified painted a similar picture. Across the four platforms, many of the most-shared URLs directed to articles on hyperpartisan news sites lauding TPUSA for drawing millions of viewers to their event, framing it as a successful rebuke of the NFL for allowing Bad Bunny to perform.

Though top TPUSA personalities posted frequently to promote the event itself, the majority of them failed to mention the artists TPUSA booked to perform. Jack Posobiec, one of the most visible figures at TPUSA, created 25 Truth Social posts over the weekend promoting the event itself. By contrast, he mentioned Kid Rock in only two posts, one suggesting the performance would boost men’s testosterone levels and another that it would inspire viewers to procreate.

What We’re Watching

TPUSA leaders drew millions of viewers to their alternate halftime show and have already committed to repeating the event during next year’s Super Bowl. Open Measures’ analysis suggests that interest in the event was primarily driven in its protest message against a Spanish-language performance, rather than interest in any of the musical acts it featured.

Our researchers will continue to watch discussions of Bad Bunny’s halftime performance for its potential to excite extremist actors, elicit increased hostility toward Latino populations, and inspire online organizing against sponsors of the event.

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TLDR

• Anti-abortion activists in the US expanded their activities targeting abortion clinics after the US Supreme Court repealed the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Since then, medical providers and reproductive rights advocates have faced reported increases in threats and harassment.

• Open Measures found that anti-abortion activists and organizations have increased their messaging efforts on TikTok in recent years, frequently featuring material from demonstrations outside of abortion clinics. We also found anti-abortion accounts using popular topical hashtags to insert themselves into broader discussions about reproductive care on the platform.

• Comparatively, conversation about abortion declined after the 2024 presidential election across text-based and video-based alternative platforms with significant conservative communities.

Background

In 2022, the US Supreme Court effectively repealed the constitutional right to abortion.1 The decision emboldened anti-abortion extremists, driving a surge in violent and disruptive incidents targeting reproductive health providers and entities associated with abortion care.2

In January 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen people who had been charged with breaking into abortion clinics or obstructing access to facilities under President Joe Biden’s administration. The Trump Administration subsequently dropped several investigations into threats against abortion clinics and circulated a memo instructing federal prosecutors not to pursue potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (“FACE Act”) related to abortion, describing past investigations as “weaponization” of law enforcement.3

Anti-abortion activists have since intensified their calls to protest abortion clinics, calling on movement supporters to organize mass protests at certain reproductive health clinics across the country.4 In light of these increased threats against abortion providers, Open Measures sought to better understand the social media strategies anti-abortion movements are using to organize and recruit on social media in 2026.

Methodology

After a cursory overview, our researchers found that while some prominent accounts on right-leaning alt-platforms are contributing to broader online discourse about abortion,5 many anti-abortion activist groups have been slow to establish themselves on these platforms. Instead, these groups appear to focus the bulk of their efforts on mainstream platforms (like TikTok).6

To contextualize these trends, our researchers took the two-pronged approach of examining anti-abortion discourse on TikTok and contextualizing those findings against a broader analysis of similar discourse on alt-platforms. To gather relevant content, our researchers created crawl requests for more than 60 anti-abortion accounts and 19 anti-abortion hashtags commonly used on TikTok. We also submitted crawl requests for dozens of abortion-related terms across all platforms we monitor.

From these crawled sources, our researchers analyzed posts made since June 24, 2022 – the day the US Supreme Court reversed its long-held position on the right to abortion.

Anti-Abortion Discourse Trends on TikTok

In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, the monthly volume of TikTok posts with at least one of our 19 anti-abortion hashtags increased to above-average levels, a trend that has sustained.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 abortion decision and as of print, TikTok users included one of the 19 anti-abortion hashtags included in our search string across more than 7,500 posts we identified – more than half of which were shared after November 2024.

With our platform’s Activity tool, researchers identified 15 accounts responsible for the greatest number of posts that included these hashtags since June 2022. The account that used these hashtags most often during our analysis period belonged to a feminist influencer, Amanda Tietz (@pottymouthpollyanna), whose posts expressed pro-choice beliefs.

The other 14 accounts that used anti-abortion hashtags the most belonged to conservative influencers and activist groups. The top five among those were:

• Lauren Elise (@lauren.elise.official), a conservative influencer who has participated in anti-abortion protests in Washington, DC

• Live Action (@liveactionorg), an anti-abortion activist group that seeks to outlaw abortion and defund abortion providers

• And Then There Were None (@attwnministry), an anti-abortion organization that targets its messaging at abortion clinic staffers

• Lydia Taylor Davis (@lydiataylordavis_), spokesperson and social media coordinator at the anti-abortion activist group Students for Life

• Abolitionists Rising (@abolitionistsrising), an anti-abortion organization that engages in street activism and uses graphic imagery in their materials

Several of these anti-abortion accounts tagged their content with broader abortion-related hashtags, likely as an attempt to reach broader audiences. We did a second search across the same analysis period for six of these broader hashtags, which yielded significantly more results than the 19 explicitly ideological hashtags. As in our initial analysis, the broader results also showed a surge of activity in the months ahead of the 2024 US presidential election with higher levels of activity sustained thereafter.

Our researchers also identified the 15 accounts that uploaded the greatest number of posts with at least one of six abortion-related hashtags that had a broader, less-ideological focus. Of these accounts, four were anti-abortion influencers or activist organizations; the others were a mix of pro-choice accounts and news organizations.

Together, these findings show that the general conversation about abortion on TikTok spiked ahead of the election and has remained elevated since. More pointedly, the findings also show that anti-abortion activists have increased their efforts to spread their beliefs on TikTok in recent years.

Turning Protests at Abortion Clinics into TikTok Content

In the course of our analysis, we did not encounter TikTok videos from anti-abortion activists that explicitly encouraged or threatened violence against abortion providers. However, our researchers did observe a large number of videos promoting (or actually attending) protests against clinics and making inflammatory claims about nearby patients seeking care, facility staff members, and volunteer clinic escorts.

Many of the videos we identified featured one or more of the following:

• Encouragement to participate in anti-abortion activism against abortion clinics with protest strategies like picketing. In one case, an anti-abortion group announced its intention to “barricade” the doors of an abortion clinic.

• Footage of protests and other activist activities targeting abortion clinics, often framed as victories for the movement. Some accounts discussed past experiences of protesting that had allegedly dissuaded others from seeking or obtaining abortions, framing these as successful “rescue” attempts.

• Videos highlighting arguments or altercations between anti-abortion activists and their opponents at events. Some accounts shared videos featuring on-camera personalities who appeared to be attending protest events for the explicit purpose of producing confrontational content.

• Content depicting apparent abortion clinic staffers and volunteer clinic escorts and levying extreme claims against them. For example, one video, depicting a staffer moving medical containers outside of a clinic, had overlaid text suggesting the containers were full of mutilated infants.

TikTok videos valorizing protests and hostile behaviors toward abortion clinics and staffers could serve to inspire others toward similar actions, inviting further online outrage cycles and eliciting greater threats and harassment against providers.

While researching protest content, our researchers also encountered a competing niche ecosystem of accounts run by pro-choice activists and clinic escorts, who have used TikTok to document anti-abortion protesters at clinics.

Talk of Abortion on Alt-Platforms Quieted in Recent Years

Our researchers were surprised to see that users of alt-platforms seemed to have posted about abortion in volumes that had gradually decreased since the Supreme Court repealed the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Viewed over time, the monthly number of posts that included any mention of the word “abortion” on six text-based alternative platforms with large conservative communities declined after the 2024 presidential election.

The same trend was seen on video-based alternative platforms: Users on Bitchute, LBRY, and Rumble shared less content related to abortion after the 2024 presidential election.

Conclusion

Open Measures’ analysis found that anti-abortion activists have become more invested in spreading their ideology on TikTok in recent years, in the apparent hope of reaching younger audiences and recruiting them into anti-abortion activism. Some accounts and organizations used TikTok to promote protests and targeted actions against abortion providers.

Abortion clinics and providers have faced increased threats and harassment since the US Supreme Court repealed the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. As anti-abortion activists vow to increase their activities against healthcare providers and embolden others to do the same, Open Measures will continue to track and report on these trends in the interest of keeping providers offering legal reproductive health services safe and informed.

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TLDR

• In threat intelligence, organizations typically monitor known threat actors on an ongoing basis, a process that can be inefficient, time-consuming, and dangerous.

• We examine how a threat intelligence team accelerated and improved their workflow with Open Measures – and enabled them to prevent a planned attack against an upcoming election.

The Problem

One of Open Measures’ customers has a threat intelligence program consisting of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a threat intelligence analyst at a Secretary of State’s office. As part of their duties, the team is responsible for monitoring threats, calls to violence, and mis/disinformation campaigns. As explained by the CISO:

We need to be aware of these conversations and arm our communications team with the information for them to decide what to respond to and what not to respond to. That allows us to give the best service and make sure our voters are not being disenfranchised.

The team originally had to monitor many social media platforms separately during research, performing many searches in separate tabs and storing the results in folders to analyze manually later. This approach had limitations: information loss when posts or media were deleted, bottlenecks from research methods too time-consuming or complex to delegate, and emotional and mental health risks from direct exposure to volumes of extremist content.

The Solution

Spread thin, the team surveyed the market for better platforms to use. Amid legacy intel platforms whose user interfaces left a lot to be desired, Open Measures stood out as a better solution: the team could use the platform’s front end to “view multiple fringe platforms” and “search lots of sources” quickly and efficiently without the added complexity of using an API.

The team’s new workflow uncovered content related to specific keywords, surfacing accounts known and unknown to the analyst. To visualize trends, the team used Timeline to identify activity spikes across many platforms at once all in one window, drawing on Open Measures’ wide-ranging datasets.

The Results

With Open Measures, the team was able to detect a developing, time-sensitive attack from a group of known actors that planned to undermine the integrity of an election “immediately before it [would’ve] actually occurred in real life” – and prevented it from happening. Importantly, their success was a result of using Open Measures to extend and amplify their own capabilities and domain expertise, improving their workflow to benefit all team members:

Coverage and Efficiency (Analyst, CISO): With Open Measures, the analyst could pull conversations from multiple platforms into one view, without information loss. The CISO was also grateful that the platform could empower the team’s analyst:

We’re a very small team, and our threat intelligence analyst is responsible for many different things at any given time. The Analyst’s time is incredibly valuable, and by using Open Measures, their time was not wasted on manual searching.

Psychological Wellbeing (Analyst): Rather than looking at violent or harmful content directly, the analyst was “very grateful” for Open Measures’ ability to surface only relevant posts and blur sensitive videos and images to limit their exposure to “vicarious trauma” during research.

Reduced Organizational Risk (CISO, Analyst): While prior research processes were too complex to delegate to others, Open Measures was simple enough for the CISO to take on research tasks as needed. The CISO noted the usefulness of AI Search, which made research simple enough for a non-analyst to use: “You can go from just a concept to an optimized search query with no specialized training in minutes.” By consolidating processes, saving time, and reducing personal risk, the analyst and the CISO could collaborate more smoothly, improving threat response time enough to prevent an attack that would’ve undermined the integrity of an election.

Conclusion

Open Measures’ platform can provide both wide-ranging coverage intuitively enough for less-technical team members, streamlining operations and freeing up time. In a threat response context, these improvements can be significant enough to shift teams from detection into prevention. Thoughtful features – such as the ability to blur harmful content – can also boost organizational resilience, protecting analysts’ mental health and preventing burnout or churn.

For more details on how Open Measures can help your team unlock better outcomes that were previously out of reach, reach out or schedule a demo here.

For more details on how this team achieved their results, reach out to us at Open Measures or schedule a demo here.

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Here’s a look back at what we got up to in January.

Product Release: Saved Queries, Labels, and Timeline

Earlier this week, we announced some major updates to the Open Measures platform. Users now have access to two new features that improve workflow: Saved Queries and Labels. While we were at it, we increased the functionality of our existing Timeline tool.

You can read more about these updates here:

Flash Report: MAGA Influencers Redirect Focus to ‘Antifa’ Narratives After Killings in Minnesota

Pro-Trump media figures on online communities sought to reinvigorate narratives equating anti-ICE organizing with “antifa” and left-wing domestic terrorism after federal agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this month. The newest narratives take aim at Signal chat groups used by community organizers in the city, which they claim reveal criminal activity and implicate a host of Minnesota political figures.

Election Denialists Still Targeting Michigan in 2025 With Most Narratives Driven by One Conspiracy Site

With 2026 US midterm elections on the horizon, our researchers looked at how users on a handful of platforms popular with election deniers and self-described “election integrity” activists have talked about voting in Michigan over the last year. They found that a sizable portion of conversation was driven by a single hyper-partisan news blog: The Gateway Pundit.

Read it here:

Truth Social’s Discussion of Venezuela Shifts From Drugs To Oil After US Strikes

Researchers found that users on Truth Social, a social media platform owned by President Donald Trump, largely mirrored official White House messaging as it shifted after a US military raid resulted in the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro.

Read it here:

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TLDR

Open Measures researchers found that users on seven alt-platforms that cater to right-wing communities promoted longstanding narratives about left-wing extremism after federal officers shot and killed two observers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this month.

Background

US Border Patrol officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, in the streets of Minneapolis on Jan. 24 after he filmed an agent violently shoving two women. Weeks earlier, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, as she was following orders to move her vehicle.

Bystanders captured both incidents in videos that users subsequently spread on social media. Trump Administration officials initially described Pretti as a “would-be assassin” and claimed Good had attempted an act of “domestic terrorism,” descriptions that have since been debunked as false through video analysis. The killings, and federal officials’ characterizations of both incidents, elicited widespread condemnation and bipartisan scrutiny of federal immigration enforcement operations. Public polling conducted after Good’s death showed public support for ICE rapidly plummeting.

In the days after Pretti’s death, pro-Trump social media personalities attempted to redirect public outrage by calling attention to group chats community organizers in Minneapolis have used to track ICE activity in the city. MAGA-affiliated media figures claimed the chat groups threatened the safety of federal officers and implicated Minnesota public officials, demanding federal law enforcement investigate them for potential criminal activity.

The Trump Administration heeded these calls, as on a Jan. 26 podcast, FBI Director Kash Patel told right-wing activist Benny Johnson that he’d started an investigation of the group chats after seeing them in viral posts on X.

Claims Anti-ICE Activity in Minneapolis Linked to ‘Antifa’ Spread After Killings of Good and Pretti

As scrutiny of federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis intensified, partisan media reinvigorated dubious narratives associating anti-ICE organizing with the “radical left” or “domestic terrorism.” Several social media figures known for promoting sensationalist claims about “antifa” claimed the organizers in Minneapolis were conspiring to harm federal agents and urged Trump to crack down on their supposed efforts.

Open Measures researchers found that the number of posts discussing “Minneapolis” or “Minnesota” in relation to “antifa,” “radicalism,” or “terrorism” spiked on seven alternative platforms that predominantly harbor right-wing communities (after an ICE officer killed Good and again after officers killed Pretti). While many of these platforms saw posts that invoked these narratives the week before Good was killed, there were far fewer of them per day than there were after Good’s death.

Importantly, these spikes were nearly simultaneous with statements from Trump Administration officials promoting baseless claims about Good and Pretti – that they had sought to murder federal officers and their deaths had been necessary to prevent acts of domestic terrorism. Many users on the platforms we examined shared or repeated those statements, with Trump’s threats to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests driving many discussions.

MAGA Audiences Shift Conversation to Anti-ICE Chat Groups on Signal

About an hour after federal officers killed Pretti on Jan. 24, right-wing commentator Cam Higby posted on X that he had “infiltrated” Signal chat groups used by Minneapolis residents to [sic] “HUNT AGENTS AND IMPEDE THEM.” Higby, who promoted claims conflating anti-ICE community organizing with violent left-wing extremism during a White House roundtable on “antifa,” shared lists of usernames from the chat groups and called them “insurrectionists.”

Higby’s posts on X about the chat groups received thousands of shares and were aggregated by several right-wing media outlets. After Higby’s posts, users on all seven platforms mentioned above showed significantly more interest in Signal chat groups than they had in weeks prior.

Across all seven platforms, our researchers also observed users attempting to identify specific users of the publicized chat groups, trading links to join similar groups and encouraging the Trump Administration to act against them. (Open Measures is not publishing screenshots of those posts to protect the identities of people targeted in those posts.)

Of posts that received 25 or more shares on their respective platforms, many speculated that specific political figures in Minnesota may have been participating in the Signal group chats Higby shared.

What We’re Watching

Individuals and groups targeted in conspiracy theories and hyperbolic claims about “antifa” and left-wing violent extremism have been subjugated to deadly violence, death threats, online doxing, and offline harassment. In the interest of protecting private citizens, Open Measures will continue to monitor online conversations about the Signal chat groups used by anti-ICE organizers in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the US.

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TLDR

• Open Measures is introducing two workflow enhancements: Saved Queries and Labels. As a bonus, we’ve also added new Timeline functionality.

• Saved Queries lets researchers preserve complex search queries for future use.

• Labels allows users to tag content (posts and replies), actors (users), and contexts (channels or groups) using custom categories.

• Both can be saved on-platform, saving analysts time and streamlining complicated research collaborations.

• Each of the above are rolled out to Pro and Enterprise users. Get in touch to get access to these new features.

save queries directly on-platform, making each one reusable and Labels add custom tags to content (posts and replies), actors (users), and contexts (channels or groups)

Background

The Open Measures team is excited to introduce Labels for organizing and tracking what matters, Saved Queries for faster and more consistent analysis, and expanded Timeline functionality to make comparing trends easier without losing detail.

Used together, these features make complex research projects significantly easier without requiring researchers to change their existing workflows. Below, we’ll walk through the uses of each one.

Labels: Organize and Track What Matters

With Labels, users can now add custom tags to content (posts and replies), actors (users), and contexts (channels or groups) with just a few clicks.

We designed Labels to help analysts organize long-running investigations, track multiple ideas at once, and reduce the mental overhead of complex research projects.

Key Capabilities

Labels transform scattered observations into structured datasets, making it possible to track patterns, measure prevalence, and generate reports based on researcher-defined criteria:

• Privacy: Labels can be kept private or shared with a team.

• Filtering: Labels can also be used as filters, allowing teams to surface content they’ve already classified.

• Custom taxonomies: Create labels to organize specific research frameworks (e.g., “State Media,” “Coordinated Activity,” “Health Misinformation”)

Labels intend to help analysts isolate their own patterns from large datasets without creating extra work and without having to adapt to any default insights that other platforms sometimes impose. To help analysts get started, however, we’ve saved a few labels to the research dashboard that are available globally to help with research on common topics.

As we refine this feature, we see potential for better classification of common topics, users, and channels to help teams organize at scale without losing precision.

Saved Queries: Return to Work Instantly

Long-term projects often require research teams to reuse complex queries (long concatenations of keywords, phrases, date ranges, sources, and filters).

Now, analysts can save queries directly on-platform, making each one reusable to enable faster query iteration and cross-team collaboration. With Saved Queries, analysts can remain aligned for more consistent analysis and much less duplicated effort.

Key Capabilities

We built Saved Queries with ongoing research projects in mind, particularly those involving disinformation tracking and threat monitoring:

• Privacy settings: Queries can be saved privately or shared with your team.

• Query iterations: Save multiple versions of complex searches as your research approach evolves.

• Quicker pivots: Maintain and revisit multiple investigative threads at once without misalignment or wasted effort.

Timeline Updates: Customize & Stack

To round out this latest collection of platform improvements, we’ve also upgraded our Timeline to support plotting several queries at once on the same chart. Instead of toggling between searches, analysts can now see how conversations evolve in relation to one another at a glance.

We’ve also added stacked and unstacked line and bar chart views, giving researchers the ability to visualize broad trends against local peaks while preserving detail and context.

Use Cases: Built for Modern OSINT Workflows

Together, Labels, Saved Queries, and an improved Timeline simplify many complex research processes.

Below are likely use cases and how our own researchers might approach them ourselves:

Tracking State-Backed Information Operations

Use Case: A research team investigating coordinated amplification networks around geopolitical events, monitoring dozens of accounts across multiple platforms while distinguishing between state media, unofficial amplifiers, and organic actors.

• Saved Queries: Create and save queries for each set of actors and for specific time periods—staying organized while responding quickly as events unfold.

• Labels: Apply “State Media,” “Verified Amplifier,” “Suspected Bot,” and “Organic User” labels to accounts as they’re identified to create a custom classification system – and filter by these labels to record the names of key actors.

• Timeline: Plot query volume for each actor on one chart to see amplification spikes in sequence to determine whether different actors are moving in sync.

Impact: Consistent definitions maintained across analysts, reduced data entry, elimination of duplicated work, accelerated creation of new datasets and visualizations.

Brand Safety and Monitoring

Use Case: A corporation tracking the unauthorized use of its brand across alt-platforms, needing to distinguish between legitimate discussion, trademark infringement, and coordinated defamation campaigns.

• Saved Queries: Brand safety teams save queries for official brand terms, common misspellings, and associated products, streamlining daily monitoring.

• Labels: Flag content as “Legitimate Use,” “Trademark Violation,” “Counterfeit Product,” or “Coordinated Attack” to organize workflows and prioritize responses from legal and communications teams.

• Timeline: Overlay brand mention volume against product launch dates or PR incidents to correlate spikes with real-world events and assess campaign effectiveness.

Impact: The company responds faster to brand threats, maintains audit trails for legal proceedings, and generates monthly reports quantifying different types of brand-related activity.

Election Integrity Research

Use Case: An academic research group studying voter suppression tactics across multiple elections and platforms, requiring systematic classification of thousands of posts by suppression technique.

• Saved Queries: Create saved queries for each jurisdiction, time period, and suppression tactic type, allowing different team members to work on separate aspects without losing access to full research scope.

• Labels: Label content by suppression technique (”False Voter Requirements,” “Intimidation Tactics,” “Date Confusion”) and targeted demographic to generate a structured dataset for quantitative analysis.

• Timeline: Stack multiple suppression tactics on one chart to see which techniques peak closest to election day and whether they appear coordinated across platforms.

Impact: The team produces peer-reviewed research with reproducible methodology and shares datasets with other researchers to provide effective, evidence-based recommendations for election security policy.

Get Started

Labels, Saved Queries, and expanded Timeline functionality provide analysts additional support for the realities of OSINT work: large datasets, high-stakes decisions, and fast-moving investigations. Used together, these features reduce noise, improve collaboration, and make it easier to see big-picture trends and detailed analysis at once.

Saved Queries, Labels, and new Timeline views are now available to all Pro and Enterprise Open Measures users. All are also included in existing API functionality for programmatic access.

For teams wanting to develop shared taxonomies or integrate labels into automated workflows, schedule a demo to discuss options and best practices for your use case.

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Organizations use Open Measures’ tooling every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops.

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TLDR

• Since President Donald Trump lost Michigan (a crucial “swing state”) in the 2020 presidential election, partisan activists across the United States have worked to shake faith in the state’s election officials, voting processes, and legal systems.

• As the United States prepares for 2026 midterm elections, Open Measures researchers reviewed discourse related to Michigan elections over the last year on four platforms that have historically harbored election denialist movements – Gab, Gettr, Telegram, and Truth Social.

• The on-platform conversations about Michigan elections our researchers found were heavily driven by hyperpartisan news blogs known for promoting conspiracy theories about voting. Specifically, more than 20% of identified posts contained links to The Gateway Pundit.

• While the most-reshared posts we identified came from accounts with larger national audiences, we also identified a handful of smaller accounts gaining traction by posting inflammatory and conspiratorial claims about Michigan elections.

Background

As a key “swing state,” Michigan voters often play a critical role in determining the winner of presidential elections.1 As a result, and since the 2020 presidential election, partisan activists have targeted the state with efforts to undermine public trust in its election officials, ballot-counting processes, and voting infrastructure.2

Amid these efforts – some of which were extreme enough to evoke criminal charges – Michigan state officials proposed legislation in 2024 to impose financial penalties against individuals promoting false claims with intent to “impede or prevent” others from voting. The bill died in committee,3 and election denialists have since continued to dispute the legitimacy of the state’s elections.

These denialists have since found allies among Michigan lawmakers, such as Rep. Rachelle Smit. Formerly the clerk of Martin Township, Rep. Smit is an outspoken 2020 election denier who was appointed by Michigan House Republicans in 2025 to lead a committee focused on election administration.4 That year, Michigan Republicans also sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting federal oversight of the state’s midterm elections in November.5

Methodology

Open Measures researchers reviewed conversations about Michigan elections across four platforms that have historically hosted communities of election conspiracy theorists: Gab, Gettr, Telegram and Truth Social. Using our platform, they searched for relevant posts made since Trump began his second term as president on Jan. 20, 2025, and assessed the results for relevant trends ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

For inclusion in this analysis, posts had to include at least one keyword related to voting, one related to the state or its top election officials, and another related to accusations of wrongdoing. Our researchers used the following search string in this analysis:

("MI" OR "michigan" OR "Benson" OR "Whitmer") AND ("voting" OR vote* OR electi* OR poll* OR ballot* OR referendum* OR "polling station" OR registrat* OR "turnout" OR cast* OR absentee* OR "voter roll" OR "voter rolls" OR database* OR "voting machine" OR "voting machines" OR record* OR mail* OR tabulator* OR "smartmatic" OR "dominion voting" OR "qvf" OR "qvfs") AND (fraud* OR scandal* OR corrupt* OR fake* OR hack* OR noncitizen* OR illegal* OR criminal* OR crime* OR fault* OR error* OR invalid* OR problem* OR conspirac* OR cabal* OR collu* OR cheat*)

Analysis

We identified nearly 13,800 total posts matching our search query across Gab, Gettr, Telegram, and Truth Social. As depicted below in a chart created with our Timeline tool, posting activity was relatively steady throughout our analysis period, with periodic spikes primarily driven by activity on Truth Social.

The highest overall activity spike was in early April 2025, around the time Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appeared alongside President Trump as he signed election-related executive orders. Among them were orders for the Justice Department to investigate two former administration officials who had criticized Trump for commenting that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged against him.6

The platform with the greatest number of posts matching our query was Truth Social (making up approximately half of all posts we identified). Further, the amount of posts identified from Truth Social was nearly double the amount identified from Gab, the platform with the second highest number of relevant posts.

The Gateway Pundit Leads Election Denialist Coverage of Michigan

On all four platforms we examined, election-denialist conversations frequently promoted articles published by The Gateway Pundit, a hyperpartisan news blog that filed for bankruptcy in 2024 following defamation lawsuits over conspiracy theories it promoted about the 2020 elections. The volume of links shared to Gateway Pundit articles in posts we surfaced eclipsed links shared to any other news outlet.

By manually counting posts, our researchers found that The Gateway Pundit had published at least 36 articles concerning Michigan elections during our analysis period. More than half were authored by Patty McMurray, the co-owner of 100 Percent Fed Up, a right-wing news blog identified by NewsGuard in 2020 as a top promoter of election misinformation.7

Rep. Rachelle Smit, the Republican-appointed leader of the Michigan House Election Integrity Committee, has given interviews to Gateway Pundit and promoted stories published on the blog.8

As shown above, 11 of the 15 most-shared links included in Truth Social posts our query identified directed to Gateway Pundit articles. Among these were stories rehashing allegations of 2020 election fraud, portraying top election officials as corrupt, and praising Rep. Smit for her work championing the blog’s claims.

Our researchers found similar trends on Gab, Gettr, and Telegram. Gateway Pundit articles appeared in 2,774 posts across those four platforms – about 20% of all posts we identified in our analysis.

Super Spreaders of Michigan Election Claims

To determine which Truth Social accounts were most influential at spreading these claims, our researchers filtered out posts that had fewer than 10 reshares and generated a bar graph of the results. Totals in the graph below measure how many unique posts each account shared that received 10 more reshares from other users.

The user who shared the most unique posts shared 10 or more times was Patrick Colbeck (28), a former Republican member of the Michigan Senate and prominent election conspiracy theorist.9 Other influential users during the same period included QAnon conspiracy theorist Cornelia DiNunzio and The Gateway Pundit.

Posts with 500+ Shares

Of all posts we identified across Gab, Telegram, and Truth Social, at least 27 received 500 or more reshares. (As our datasets do not include reshare counts for posts on Gettr, these numbers are not included in the total above.)

Ten of these posts were from Truth Social, shared by the following users:

• Republican activist Scott Pressler (two posts)

• Social media personality Rogan “DC_Draino” O’Handley (three posts)

• Former Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington (one post)

• The Gateway Pundit (three posts)

• A seemingly random user (one post)

The other 17 were shared on Telegram, among extremist channels promoting anti-government conspiracy theories (e.g., QAnon affiliated accounts) and between groups dedicated to “election integrity” efforts in states outside Michigan.

The most reshared post in our analysis was shared by O’Handley’s Truth Social account on March 12, 2025, after Michigan Gov. Whitmer met with Trump. The post claimed Trump had invited Whitmer to the White House to “taunt his prey on the world stage.”

Conclusion

As of writing, narratives casting doubt on the integrity of Michigan’s elections continue to spread on the platforms we examined. Narrative trends were often influenced by claims made on a small number of hyperpartisan news blogs like The Gateway Pundit.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories about elections continue to drive threats against officials, animate efforts to restrict ballot access, and undermine public confidence in democracy. Increased awareness about the networks of influence driving election misinformation may help inform efforts to protect voting. As such, we will continue to monitor and report on these trends as they develop and encourage other researchers to do the same using Open Measures’ platform.

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Organizations use Open Measures’ tooling every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops.

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TLDR

• On Truth Social, a microblogging platform owned by President Donald Trump, user discussions about Venezuela’s alleged role in drug trafficking have decreased.

• This shift mirrors the Trump Administration’s own shift in messaging, particularly since the US military raided Venezuela’s capital and captured President Nicolás Maduro.

• Since then, Truth Social users’ discussion of Venezuela has shifted focus to the country’s trillion-dollar oil reserves.

Background

On Jan. 3, the United States military carried out a raid against Venezuela’s capital, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and transporting him to New York City to face criminal charges related to narcotics trafficking and firearms.

The operation followed months of US military escalation against Venezuela, including 35 known strikes against alleged drug smuggling vessels in South American waters beginning as early as Sept. 2, 2025.1 Throughout the conflict, Trump Administration officials claimed these efforts aimed to stop drug traffickers moving fentanyl into the United States.

Shortly after the US captured Maduro, Trump announced that US officials would temporarily “run” Venezuela in Maduro’s absence. Further, he said the US would provide military support to American oil companies moving into Venezuela2 in the aftermath to capitalize on seized oil reserves worth trillions of dollars. Trump Administration officials have since suggested they are considering additional military operations in Columbia, Cuba, Mexico, Greenland, and Iran.

First Drugs, Then Oil

Since September 2025, after the first reports of US military strikes against alleged drug smuggling operations in the Caribbean Sea, Truth Social users have frequently mentioned keywords associated with narcotics trafficking in posts discussing Venezuela or Maduro. From September through early December 2025, comparatively few Venezuela or Maduro-focused posts mentioned oil.

That changed in December 2025, after the Trump Administration seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast and ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers traveling in and out of its ports.

Before these US military operations took place, the most-shared Truth Social post mentioning oil that our researchers identified seemed to cast doubt on the “official” reasoning for the operations.

The December 10 post read:

I’m not exactly sure what is going on in Venezuela that has Trump’s attention, but I think it has to do with more than just drug cartels. Venezuela, and South America in general, has been a historical CIA hotspot. My guess is, that Venezuela has some sort of Obama/Deep State assets, similar to Iran and Ukraine. Hence why Trump is after it, and hence why the Dems are freaking out about “unlawful orders”, Hegseth, “war crimes”, drug boats, etc.Is it about cartels, drugs, election fraud, oil, precious metals, something else? I’m not sure, but the enemy always tells us what they value most, based upon what they squeal about the loudest.

After the US military captured Maduro and claimed it would take control Venezuela on Jan. 3, mentions of keywords related to drug trafficking initially spiked on Truth Social – but as the administration’s messaging on attacking Venezuela shifted, so did Truth Social users’.

Within a few days, users were mentioning oil in relation to Venezuela and Maduro more often than drug operations (the original justification for military escalations against Venezuela).

Links to Conspiracy Theories

Researchers also noted that as discussion of Venezuela’s oil reserves picked up, so did the number of posts implicating Venezuela in conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Posts claiming Venezuela had a role in alleged 2020 election conspiracies were infrequent on the platform prior to Maduro’s capture.

What We’re Watching

Open Measures will continue to monitor trend shifts related to discourse surrounding US military operations in Venezuela and other countries. In addition to the narratives identified in this article, our researchers have also observed hostile rhetoric on Truth Social aimed at critics of the Trump Administration’s military actions and the judge overseeing Maduro’s criminal case in New York.

As seen in prior research, the discourse on Truth Social largely echoes the Trump Administration’s own – often contradictory – messaging. As these international conflicts escalate and online narratives become more disparate, our researchers will continue using Open Measures’ platform to clarify narratives, monitor threats, and report on changing trends across dozens of alt-platforms.

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Organizations use Open Measures’ tooling every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops.

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Happy Holidays from Open Measures. As we close out the year and take a quick break to celebrate the season with friends and family, we’re reflecting on all of our team’s big accomplishments in 2025. We published loads of new research, helped news media with big stories, and introduced new features on our platform.

In addition to everything else, this year we also passed 2,000 subscribers on this newsletter. Thanks for being here. Don’t hesitate to forward our newsletters to others.

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Here’s a look back on some of the things we’re celebrating from the year.

Our Researchers Went Deep on a Wide Range of Subjects

Open Measures published 30 research articles this year, covering a wide range of topics from fresh angles. We investigated cybercrime networks, foreign influence operations, threats against public officials, narratives surrounding elections, outrage against corporate brands, and political extremist movements, among other subjects.

Here are five articles our researchers were especially proud of:

News Organizations Turned to Us for Expert Analysis

National media outlets cited Open Measures and members of our research team in their coverage of major events this year, linking to our reports and quoting our researchers across dozens of news articles and media programs. There were a few big stories we helped inform conversation about:

• Charlie Kirk assassination: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Real News Network

• Nick Fuentes and the “groyper” movement: The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, The Jim Acosta Show, INDiCATOR

• ‘Antifa’ domestic terror designation: The New York Times, NBC News, The New Republic, Bloomberg News, “Background Briefing,” “Half the Answer”

We Continued to Improve and Expand Our Platform

Our software engineers and developers pushed updates to Open Measures’ research platform that expanded its scope and offered new ways of navigating our datasets. This year, we introduced:

• AI Search: a built-in tool that helps users generate targeted search strings

• WhatsApp Coverage: expansion to include WhatsApp channels in our datasets

• Our ‘Discover’ Tool: a unique interface for exploring unique posts across platforms

• Media Functions: enhancements to how we catalog multimedia content that allow users to search the content of images, reverse-image search, and more

Keep your eyes peeled: We’ve got a lot of cool stuff in the works for 2026.

That’s it! We’ll see you in 2026.

TLDR

• On Dec. 14, 2025, a mass shooting took place at a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.

• In reaction, voices on the Australian far-right reframed the attack to forward their own talking points on anti-immigration.

• As in previous news cycles, Australian neo-Nazis continue to be active in trying to shape public opinion about the Bondi shooting as well as other events in the country.

Background

On the evening of Dec. 14, 2025, two gunmen opened fire on a community event celebrating the start of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney.1 The mass shooting, which left 15 dead and many others injured, is among the worst mass shootings in Australian history. According to early reports, the suspected father–son team allegedly behind the shooting may have been motivated by radical Islamic ideology or inspired by the Islamic State.2 3

Notably, the tragedy at Bondi comes amid concerns about the rise of antisemitism in Australia,4 a concern highlighted in a press conference about the shooting on Dec. 15, 2025, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke. In the statement, Burke praised bystander Ahmed el Ahmed for tackling one of the shooters and wrestling his gun away, thus saving lives (Ahmed was later shot but one of the gunmen and is in recovery as of print).5 He also indicated that one of the shooters (the son) was an Australian-born citizen.

Regardless, Australian neo-Nazis have continued to frame the attack as alleged evidence for their own Islamophobic and anti-immigration talking points.

Far-Right Responses to the Bondi Mass Shooting

Australian Neo-Nazis

On Dec. 15, 2025, Thomas Sewell, the leader of the Nationalist Socialist Network in Australia, made a statement on Telegram:

[T]he Terrorist attack in Bondi, Sydney last night is the natural consequence of multiculturalism. . . . . We have been calling for mass deportations for years, and I have personally been protesting against these hostile groups being allowed to exist in our country for over a decade. . . . Hail White Australia.

Other far-right Telegram channels, both in Australia and abroad, shared Sewell’s statement, including the channel for American neo-Nazi and Blood Tribe founder Christopher Alan Pohlhaus,6 Irish neo-Nazi Justin Barrett, and Australian neo-Nazi Stephen Wells.

On their respective Telegram channels, both Sewell and Tim Lutze, an Australian neo-Nazi whose boxing gym has been a training ground for neo-Nazis in Melbourne,7 also shared a two-minute video that appears to show footage of the 2005 Cronulla riots in Sydney, a series of race riots between white Australians and Australians of Middle Eastern descent.8

Though neither Sewell nor Lutze shared any additional commentary, the video itself depicts a building on fire, white Australians chasing others with darker skin, chanting racially charged slogans, and clashing with police.

Far-Right News Outlets

On Telegram, Sewell and other Australian users shared news articles from the Noticer, an Australian far-right news outlet. From Dec. 14, 2025, through Dec. 17, 2025, the Noticer articles shared most often that mentioned the Bondi shooting were titled “Aussies demand end to mass immigration after Bondi terrorist attack: ‘Remigration now’”9 and another titled “White Australia leader warns Bondi terror attack is ‘natural consequence of multiculturalism,’” covering Sewell’s statement.10

On the “About Us” page of The Noticer’s official website, the organization claims to have “no wealthy backers or links to political parties.” Elsewhere, the site includes the tagline, “We notice what other news sites don’t.”

Open Measures has previously examined The Noticer’s influence on political conversation in Australia, namely around the Jan. 2025 arrests of several Australian neo-Nazis, including Sewell.

March for Australia

Additionally, the organizers behind the Aug. 2025 anti-immigration March for Australia – who have expressed their support for white nationalist opinions in the past, as evidenced by an investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)11 – have used the tragedy at Bondi to energize their base for another March for Australia event to take place on Australia Day (Jan. 26, 2026).

On Dec. 16, 2025, the organization’s Telegram account sent the message below to its followers:

The Bondi shooting that happened on the 14th of December is a direct impact of the multicultural society that has been pushed onto Australians.

Why We’re Tracking

The Australian far-right has had an active year in 2025, organizing protests, retreats, and provocations around the country. Now, its leaders have taken the devastating tragedy at Bondi Beach and weaponized it to demonize immigrant communities without expressing concern or remorse for the Jewish community the shooting impacted.

Given the upcoming Jan. 2026 March for Australia, which will begin its own press cycle, their narratives are likely to spread throughout 2026. Interestingly, none of the Australian white nationalist groups Open Measures monitors made statements about the attack. Instead, all statements came from far-right personalities using their personal platforms.

In the interest of slowing the spread of far-right violence and extremism in Australia, Open Measures will continue to report on the activity of these groups and individuals as they develop.

Identify disinformation and extremism with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures’ tooling every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops.

Schedule a Demo