Open Measures: September & October 2024 Roundup
In September & October 2024, Open Measures overviewed its Scored dataset, researched both election misinformation in Michigan and Yahoo Boys networks, and was featured in SOCMINT investigations.
In case you missed what we’ve been up to, here’s our September & October 2024 roundup.
Open Measures Datasets: What is Scored?
Open Measures' datasets now include 64 million posts and comments from Scored, an alt-tech platform spun-off from the banned subreddit r/TheDonald. The most popular community is c/TheDonald (also called patriots[.]win) which is the current day iteration of r/TheDonald, a now-banned pro-Trump subreddit. Researchers interested in the American political right may find Scored an insightful resource.
On Oct 2, Open Measures’ datasets were featured in research conducted by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington (CIP), which used an “object-oriented framework” to organize and analyze rumor activity in the lead-up to the election:
On Oct 9, The New Arab (TNA) drew on approximately 4.4 million posts from Open Measures’ Telegram dataset in their 10-month analysis on Israeli settlers, which focused on the settlers’ efforts to work around international sanctions by using online crowdfunding strategies to raise funds for military equipment.
Misinformation in Michigan Ahead of 2024 Election
Michigan is a critical swing state for the 2024 presidential election. As such, it has recently been a hotbed for election misinformation. Election processes and female government officials are frequent targets of abusive and misogynistic language on alt-tech platforms. Michigan’s Arab and Muslim populations are also being targeted by Islamophobic conspiracies, alleging government infiltration and election fraud.
Yahoo Boys Scams Openly Discussed on Major Social Platforms
Yahoo Boys is an umbrella term to describe social engineering schemes originating from West Africa. Yahoo-related groups are easy to find and join on social media and often contain messages that discuss scams openly and explicitly, as well as scripts for other scammers to copy-paste to other platforms. In addition to financial fraud schemes, Yahoo groups have recently been running romance and "sexploitation" scams targeting minors.
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.