Open Measures Research

A fast-growing hub for AI-generated nonconsensual imagery shut down after Open Measures research drove wider scrutiny of the abuse it facilitated

The Account Returned to Trump’s Platform This Year, Where It’s Outperforming the White House

Telegram has removed millions of illicit channels in recent years, but cybercriminals are adapting tactics to evade detection

Narratives targeted companies and organizations developing vaccines for the deadly disease

Narratives linking hantavirus to 2026 US midterm elections swirled in niche communities days before mainstream media personalities picked them up

Users on platforms where election conspiracy theories have spread are rallying behind partisan redistricting efforts ahead of 2026 midterms

A year-long analysis of the platforms, communities, and tools driving AI threats in 2026

Activity in 4chan's “Adult Requests” board suggests “deepfake” targeting of female celebrities may rise in tandem with their media coverage

Discussion of CBS News in pro-Trump communities has bottomed out online under the network’s new leadership

Iran’s claims, though refuted by US Central Command (CENTCOM), gained traction through AI “deepfakes” spread by Russian and Iranian-aligned outlets

Polymarket’s efforts to slow market manipulation appear to overlook alternative platforms, where account farms and fake insider groups thrive

A small number of hyper-partisan news blogs, activist groups, and online conspiracy theorists have shaped electoral discourse in Trump’s second term

Far-right communities weave new documents into their years-long fixation on the Microsoft co-founder’s philanthropy

Emerging social media sites remain a critical piece of the online ecosystem, even as their roles in it are changing

Activity on 4chan's 'Adult Requests' board has nearly tripled as its users victimized untold numbers of women and girls

After the DOJ disclosures, mass confusion ensued as online actors used fake images to spread misinformation about Zohran Mamdani, Epstein’s reported death

Pro-Trump communities on alternative platforms have attacked Republican leaders over lack of support for the voter ID bill

Attacks on female athletes were severe and more sustained, including misogynistic abuse and explicit AI ‘deepfakes’

TPUSA's 'All-American Halftime Show' was meant to protest the Super Bowl's first Spanish-language headliner

Amid declining interest in abortion on alt-platforms since Roe v. Wade’s repeal, anti-abortion activists have increasingly relied on TikTok to spread propaganda

Open Measures saw users revive longstanding ‘antifa’ and ‘radical left’ narratives to reframe two killings in Minnesota

A threat intelligence team used Open Measures to intercept a planned election integrity attack, reporting it to the appropriate authorities quickly enough to prevent it.

Links to Gateway Pundit articles appeared in one-fifth of posts alleging wrongdoing in Michigan elections

Users’ new talking points mirrored the Trump Administration’s own shift in messaging

Australian neo-Nazis have been quick to use the Bondi shooting to push Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric

Believers often targeted federal entities in their theories, even on Trump’s own platform

In videos showcasing Roblox cheat tools on RuTube, viewers are directed to download files that sneak malware onto their devices

Amid US-based 'Active Clubs' and teen 'Youth Clubs' expanding their online presence, Open Measures have identified a new Youth Club targeting young men in the UK

The company has since denied any claims that its products contain subpar ingredients

Suspicious activity disproportionately targeted fans of Dan Bongino

Though media outlets have suggested that Fuentes’ audience is expanding, our latest research casts doubt on those claims

Pro-Israel and anti-Muslim groups drove last-minute attacks targeting CAIR’s support of the mayor-elect

The pages appear linked to a Cyprus company and posted more than 200,000 times in the last year

The video-based platform’s most active users promoted bigotries and exhibited odd behaviors

Saraya Ansar al-Sunna and the Coastal Shield Brigade have made use of Telegram during their ongoing skirmishes in the region

Wild claims and conspiracy theories about ‘radical left’ violence are generating renewed interest, raising risks for previously targeted individuals and organizations

Platform users showed little interest in the drug before the White House endorsed speculative claims about its link to autism

American Eagle's "great genes" ad led to a media outrage cycle after conservatives on X amplified a minority of liberal posts that claimed the ad had racist undertones

After Cracker Barrel's logo redesign, alt-platform users attacked the company's female CEO, criticizing the company for trying to be "woke"

Proud Boys Telegram channels and extremist platform admins were early amplifiers of “Expose Charlie’s Murderers”

Tracking the prevalence of 'Pallywood' and 'Gazawood' conspiracy narratives across online platforms

Despite Elon Musk’s efforts toward a “free speech” rebrand, some alt-platform users support leaving X/Twitter or won’t return to the site.

4chan was compromised and went offline for 10 days but has since returned as of April 25, 2025, with similar levels of activity

After Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win in New York City, online identity-based attacks followed with Islamophobic and antisemitic themes

After the Trump Administration declined to release additional “Epstein files,” discussion of the subject has quieted on Truth Social

An Aug. 9 neo-Nazi rally in Melbourne and an Aug. 31 nationwide anti-immigration rally are keeping the Australian far-right busy

A glimpse into Omega Cloud, one of many ecosystems of Telegram channels and groups illegally selling stolen information

Introducing a smarter way to search

The French judiciary have faced increased violent rhetoric and death threats after the conviction of far-right leader Marine Le Pen

A deep dive into the VK page of Pravda Catalan, a Catalan-language news aggregator

The pro-Russian Pravda network maintains dozens of accounts on Russian social media site VK, sharing English-language news friendly to Russian interests

Insights from WhatsApp, one of the world's largest social media platforms, are now on Open Measures

Analysis on the usage of alt-tech platforms by Australian politicians and factors that could impact future activity

Despite being deplatformed from most mainstream social media outlets, misogynist influencer Andrew Tate maintains accounts on alt-tech sites

Bluesky’s open architecture has made it especially susceptible to fake crypto accounts abusing platform features to grow their own audiences

Seawater consumption has been promoted as a panacea on Spanish-speaking Telegram, posing specific threats to Spanish speakers

Australian neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell’s arrest drove far-right activity on Telegram, often originating from The Noticer

President Trump’s re-litigation of the Panama Canal and the "Gulf of America" mirrors online activity from a few years ago

The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson sparked online discussion, including rare points of agreement across the political divide

The DoJ stated that Rybar, a Russian media organization, has links to disinformation campaigns – so our researchers did some cross-platform digging

Recent racially-motivated killings have raised concern about Canadian "Active Clubs" and other white nationalist groups

True the Vote's site VoteAlert allows crowd-sourced, AI-generated misinformation in its widely-shared election reports.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Open Measures tracked misogynistic and Islamophobic trends among misinformation in Michigan

"Yahoo Boys" groups still run sexploitation and financial fraud scams on major tech platforms despite attempts to limit their activity

Open Measures data includes millions of posts from Scored, an alt-tech platform spun off from the banned subreddit r/TheDonald.

Since chatter has increased significantly on Gettr since our April 2024 report, Open Measures researchers are revisiting Project 2025.

The Trump assassination attempt has led to widespread conspiracy theories on alt-tech platforms.

Active Clubs are decentralized white supremacist groups growing in popularity around the world, though particularly on Telegram.

'True the Vote' activity on alt-tech platforms has increased ahead of the 2024 election. Notably, it has targeted Spanish speakers.

Since the 2020 US election, alleged election fraud issues have been the interest of conservative election audit groups.

By using Boolean or Advanced search, users can target posts, profiles, and links more precisely with Open Measures' tooling.

Pro-Russian Telegram operatives wage relentless disinformation campaigns against UN peacekeepers in Mali, DRC, and CAR.

NYU researchers studied Kiwi Farms harassment and discovered a new use case for Open Measures tools in the process.

Though TMTG's stock price flagged post-IPO, Truth Social users remain supportive — and have started organizing against short sellers.

The Israel-Iran conflict has been discussed differently on Gab and Telegram among Farsi, Russian, Arabic and Hebrew-language users.

Gettr and Scored users have shown interest in conservative Project 2025, both voicing support and questioning its authenticity.

With Crawl Requests, researchers can direct our crawlers at the keywords, profiles, or Telegram channels they'd like to track.

The upcoming April 8, 2024 solar eclipse has been the subject of conspiracy theories—more so than the last eclipse in 2017.

Open Measures researchers investigated chatter about Alexei Navalny’s death using our Truth Social dataset.

With our new Media Application, multimedia research is now natively supported by Open Measures for Enterprise partners.

Open Measures now offers users access to data collected from Bluesky and select Fediverse sites, expanding our decentralized footprint.

SMAT is now Open Measures

Open Measures now crawls the Odnoklassniki (OK) social networking service, which supports VK. The data is available via our Public API.

Open Measures has released a Pro API, plus a new centralized dashboard for smooth and easy access to all your tools.

Open Measures has introduced a few key changes to our Public API in order to counter abuse of our platform.

Open Measures' custom built link analysis tool, Network Graph, is now available to the public as a limited beta release.

On various fringe platforms, anti-trans panic narratives have been gaining popularity since 2016, though they have a much older history.

Since Open Measures strives to be accessible and transparent, here is a look back at our major accomplishments in 2022.

Elon Musk's Twitter takeover has garnered positive reactions on fringe media, raising questions about social media safety.

Open Measures investigated VKontakte for information on potential war criminals in Bucha, known as the “Despicable 10.”

Open Measures is studying the online psychological warfare tactics of the Ukraine-Russia war, including the term “cargo 200”

To disrupt the Russian war machine, Open Measures is making its data available and offering bounties for Kremlin disinformation write-ups

White terror and anti-vax content on BitChute is a concerning online threat; Open Measures set out to do some research

Using author and boolean searching using Open Measures API allows users to further fine tune and target their searches

Revelations from Gettr reveal the platform's ties to billionaire Guo Wengui and details on an as-yet unclear cryptocurrency scheme

As Open Measures researchers unpack Gab's funding data, preliminary analysis shows many alt-right donors and investors

Open Measures appeared with Tohatoha to the Justice Committee at NZ Parliament as part of 2020 Election Inquiry

Open Measures has released our new Search Tool, which allows users to read full posts from our dataset in a convenient interface

A data-driven study of harmful content spread by extremist groups on fringe online platforms surrounding the Aotearoa New Zealand elections

Open Measures collected posts from Scored’s ".win" communities and found posts from users organizing the Jan. 6 coup attempt

Open Measures has now added Telegram data to its datasets, with more than 8.8 million posts crawled from 1000 channels

Making the most of Open Measures' streaming public data API (Telegram, Parler, 8kun, etc.)

Open Measures’ tools aid help open source journalism tell the full story on disinformation with data visualizations