ICYMI: November Roundup
Automated accounts on VK, smear campaigns against NYC's next mayor, an extremist internet personality's popularity, and impersonation scams on Rumble
Happy holidays, newsletter subscribers. Wherever the season may take you this month, we hope your time is full of rest, love, and joy. This has been an exciting year at Open Measures, and we’re grateful to have you along for the ride.
We’re not done publishing for the year just yet. But before we finish out 2025, here’s a look back at four research articles we published in November.
Network of VK Pages Blitzes Platform with Posts Promoting AI Essay-Writing Services
Our researchers identified a network of 32 VK pages that posted more than 200,000 times about an AI essay-writing service, promoting it across a globally popular social media and messaging service as educators raise alarm over the challenges generative AI is posing to academic integrity. This article also examines how the pages shifted tactics to allow for a massive scale-up.
Ahead of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory, Opponents Smeared a Muslim Advocacy Group Supporting Him
In the final days before New York City elected Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor, our researchers saw Mamdani’s opponents rehash longstanding conspiracy theories and smears against a Muslim advocacy group that supported his campaign: the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The sorts of claims the narratives rehashed have historically inspired threats against CAIR and violence against Muslims living in the US.
Claims of Nick Fuentes’ Growing Popularity Are Unsupported by Data
Since the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, mainstream political figures and media outlets have shown renewed interest in Nick Fuentes — a white nationalist social media personality with a potent cult following online. Some characterizations of Fuentes have implied that his audience is growing, but our researchers found little data that supports those portrayals.
Impersonation Scams Target Audiences of Rumble Creators
While researching the most active accounts on Rumble, our researchers noticed suspicious comments on the platform that appeared to be impersonating or claiming false associations with the site’s most popular content creators, likely in hopes of luring their audiences into scams. In this follow-up article, we looked closer at that activity and the staggering scale of the apparent schemes.
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