Research database

Automated Moderation Is Here to Stay (2-part series)

Revisits EFF's 2020 position and concludes automated moderation is now permanent across platforms; issues recommendations on transparency and appeals.

Roska Bridge: pro-Russian IMS exploits decentralised platforms

Uncovered a Russian IMS using the Brid.gy service to auto-cross-post from hundreds of Mastodon accounts to Bluesky, laundering sanctioned RT/Sputnik/Pravda content via decentralised platforms' weak moderation.

Anonymous third-party paid political advertising in the Cyprus 2026 parliamentary elections

MedDMO researchers tracked ads naming Cyprus’s 753 registered candidates across Meta, Google and TikTok ad libraries/APIs and identified five anonymous third-party advertising operations totalling more than 450 political ads, including one spreading fabricated polling data days before the vote. Enforcement was weak and reactive: Meta removed less than 1% of flagged ads while still live and TikTok logged only one removal in 220 days, but after researchers escalated directly to the platforms and the European Commission, Meta removed 687 ads within 30 hours and TikTok removed 631 ads within five days.

The Owner Amplifier: Musk spreading violent anti-migrant narratives on X

Musk amplified anti-migrant narratives; CCDH found 3,930 replies containing calls for violence.

Ex-post analysis of the rapid response system during Malta’s 2026 general elections

Over a 21-day window around Malta’s snap 30 May 2026 general election, MedDMO’s Maltese team reported 296 URLs to Meta and Google, the majority unlabelled political advertising in breach of EU ad-transparency rules and the platforms’ own terms. Platforms mostly acted within one to two days, but enforcement was inconsistent: on Google, removed unlabelled ads were sometimes almost immediately republished by the same advertisers, and on Meta a coordinated inauthentic network of pages/profiles was taken down, partially reinstated on election day, then removed again.

Online Domestic Extremism in Canada Data Briefing (Dec 2025-Feb 2026)

Recurring data briefing tracking violent-extremist activity across major platforms in Canada; consistently finds Telegram the leading platform for such activity.

Noise without effect: anti-Pashinyan disinformation ahead of Armenian elections

Monitoring ahead of Armenian elections found foreign manipulation targeting PM Pashinyan; French TikTok users searching his name saw mostly hostile, partly AI-generated content from Kremlin-, diaspora- and Azerbaijan-linked accounts.

Safety Off: threats and abuse surged after Meta's policy changes

Analysis of ~8M Facebook comments on Members of Congress found violent threats quadrupled after Meta's Jan 2025 rollback.

Analysis of the Fraud Ecosystem of Online Advertising on Meta Platforms

The ÖIAT analyzed Meta's Ad Library over three months and found 634,000+ fraudulent or problematic ads shown more than 1 billion times across the EU (123M in Austria). Illegal gambling (~450,000 ads), investment fraud (83,216) and dubious food supplements (27,171) dominated the sample.

Pornographic Advertising on Meta Platforms Reaches Millions of Users Across Europe

Online Risk Labs has identified 25 large clusters of advertising accounts that systematically run advertisements promoting pornography and other adult content across the European Union and Great Britain.

Impact of regulation of children’s digital lives – Phase II

Researchers recorded 108 child-safety/privacy design changes across 70 platforms between 2024 and 2026, but only 5 of the platforms contacted directly responded to information requests. The four largest platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok, Snapchat) have shifted away from protective ‘by default’ design changes toward optional end-user tools such as parental controls, reversing the trend identified in the Phase I report.

X Turns Jewish Grief into a Target, Again

130 hateful replies to British Jewish figures after the Golders Green attack, all apparently violating X rules, were left up.

Snapchat's DSA Ad Transparency

Snapchat's ad transparency tools fell far short of DSA requirements: the Ad Gallery was searchable only by advertiser name, the repository was unavailable 99.7% of the time observed, and commercial communications were not labelled on the web.

Scambook: How Meta helps Medicare scammers target seniors

Meta earned ~$14.3M from deceptive scam ads (including deepfakes) targeting seniors, violating its policies.

The Infinite Slop Machine

Documented a coordinated influence operation of at least 29 YouTube accounts publishing over 7,300 AI-generated geopolitical videos (March-December 2025), producing roughly two videos a day with AI narration and synthetic thumbnails to push pro-BRICS, anti-EU and anti-Western narratives.

Amplifying Antisemitism: How Recommender Algorithms Serve Harmful Content to Children

Using 10 simulated 15-year-old accounts (5,500+ videos), teens were exposed to antisemitic content within hours; TikTok pathways escalate from mainstream to neo-Nazi content while Rumble surfaced overt antisemitism from the outset.

Getting Age Assurance Right: A Risk-Based Framework for High-Risk Online Features

Identifies three policy failures jeopardizing children's online safety and proposes a risk-tiered framework for age-appropriate experiences rather than blunt, privacy-invasive age verification.

Online Fraud in Czechia: No Improvement in Sight

Online fraud remains a multi-billion-crown problem in Czechia, and the problem continues to grow. Fraudsters systematically exploit the lack of transparency in the online advertising market, while major platforms continue to lag behind in addressing this issue.

Overloading the Moldovan Elections

A September 2025 visit by Western media figures, facilitated by the Russian Orthodox Church, produced content alleging religious persecution in Moldova that was then amplified by Russian FIMI operations to discourage support for the pro-EU government ahead of parliamentary elections.

Clickbait Cures: Unmasking the Deceptive Health Ad Infrastructure on Meta and Google

Collected 350,549 Facebook ads and 2,073 Google ads (2023-2026) promoting unregulated nutraceuticals with false medical claims, reaching an estimated 878 million accounts across the EU on Facebook; 20% of the 390 products studied had been flagged by EU or national health authorities as illegal or dangerous, yet coordinated advertiser networks kept promoting them.

X-rated: X recommends explicit content to 13-year-olds

Test 13-year-old accounts: 8 in 10 searches returned explicit content and 30% of For You posts were explicit.

Persistent Infrastructure and Cross-Border Influence Operations Targeting European Elections on X

Identified 550+ coordinated inauthentic accounts on X that amplified divisive content during the October 2025 Dutch elections (at least 225 traced to Nigeria, plus Ghana and Asia), and found the same infrastructure redeployed for the April 2026 Hungarian elections to boost pro-Orbán and pro-Russian content via the recommendation algorithm.

Harassment as Infrastructure: How Telegram's design enables TFGBV

Analysis of 2.8M messages across 16 groups/channels found organized networks of ~25,000 users across Italy and Spain spreading and monetizing non-consensual intimate images (NCII), including CSAM.

Online Hate & Harassment Targeting Public Figures and Influencers on Instagram in Jordan

Analyzes the scale and nature of hate and harassment directed at public figures and influencers on Instagram in Jordan.

How fossil fuel companies and their financiers avoid criticism on X

Major fossil fuel companies use X ad-targeting to hide their advertising from the users most likely to challenge them (pro-climate audiences).

Artificial Elections 2.0: Generative AI in the 2026 French Elections

AI-generated content in the municipal elections remained largely unlabelled and increasingly normalized, expanding to cartoonish imagery and most prominent on the right/far right.

Information Laundering in Slovakia: An Analysis of Russian Influence Operation Networks

Mapped roughly 253 disinformation outlets and over 1,800 pro-Kremlin Facebook pages in Slovakia that translate and relaunder sanctioned Russian content through local-language intermediaries, and identifies Slovakia as the EU’s weakest enforcer of sanctions against these operations.

Rising repression meets global resistance: Internet shutdowns in 2025

Documented 313 shutdowns, a new record, with continued targeted blocking of social media platforms.

DISRUPT White Paper: A Whole-of-Society Approach to Defending Democracy Against Influence Operations

Introduces the DISRUPT toolkit: a three-phase (Prepare, Disrupt, Mitigate) whole-of-society framework for countering influence operations, built on 100+ disrupted cases and input from 50+ European organisations, arguing the gap in Europe’s defences is operational timing, not capability.

Weaponising social media: smears of Indigenous leaders in Guatemala

Deregulation of major platforms is helping drive online smear campaigns and criminalisation of Guatemalan land and democracy defenders.

EDRi files DSA complaint against YouTube for undermining user autonomy

EDRi filed a complaint with Belgium’s Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT), the country’s DSC, against Google/YouTube, alleging its opt-out flow for the profiling-based recommender system is a deceptive ‘dark pattern’ violating DSA Articles 38, 27(3) and 25. Selecting the non-profiling alternative leaves users with a blank homepage and a deleted watch history, reached only via multiple buried settings screens, while switching back to the default is one click.

Five critical lessons from three years of DSA risk assessments

Reviewing three annual rounds of filings (2023-2025) from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube, ECNL found reports ‘despite often exceeding 100 pages... still lack the necessary detail’ to understand platforms’ decisions. It identified five recurring gaps: vague risk statements, less diligence on fundamental-rights risks than other systemic risks, unsubstantiated claims, missing detail on stakeholder-consultation feedback, and inconsistent treatment of linguistic/geographic diversity.

Breaking the Loop: Exploring User Agency in Escaping Algorithmic Rabbit Holes on Social Media

Early-stage findings from a Panoptykon/Piotr Sapieżyński (Northeastern University) study testing whether Facebook's 'Not interested' feedback tool lets users actually escape unwanted recommended content; results are mixed, with one pilot showing no lasting effect and a later 7-participant study showing a 38% average reduction with wide variance.

Uneven Moderation by Language: Differences in DSA Content Removals in 2025

Companion study finding that content reported in smaller or minority EU languages was removed far less often (23.3%) than content reported in major languages (40.2%), pointing to language-based gaps in how platforms moderate under the DSA.

Uneven Moderation Across Platforms: Differences in DSA Content Removals in 2025

Of 13,187 posts and comments reported under the DSA across seven EU languages in 2025, 34.6% were removed overall, but action rates ranged from 71.3% on YouTube down to 12.5% on X, a roughly 5.7x disparity that evidences sharply uneven DSA enforcement between platforms.

Blacklight update: are TikTok and X tracking you across the internet?

The Markup expanded its Blacklight privacy inspector to detect TikTok and X tracking pixels on third-party websites, revealing how these platforms follow users across the web.

'Your report is important to us': unnecessary barriers to submit content reports

Analyzes how platform content-reporting mechanisms impose unnecessary barriers under the DSA.

Brief for the Hearing at the European Parliament on DSA Enforcement and the Protection of Minors

Prepared for an EPP/Renew-organised European Parliament hearing, this brief matches TikTok, Meta and YouTube's self-declared minor-safety mitigation measures against independent research and finds none of the platforms disclose data substantiating that their measures actually work.

Grok floods X with sexualized images of women and children

After a one-click edit feature launched, Grok generated an estimated 3M sexualized images (including ~23,000 of children) in 11 days.

Grok Unleashed: An Update

Follow-up found a drop in minimally-attired images by mid-January (suggesting new safeguards), but Grok.com retained the capability and synthetic media depicting minors was still found.

Dutch Parliamentary Elections 2025 Report

Election-integrity monitoring found coordinated manipulation, new disinformation tactics, a surge in AI-generated content, and clear failures in platform moderation.

Sexualized images on X: what we are doing to stop them and what we expect from the EU

Documented networks of X accounts openly promoting non-consensual 'nudify' tools; a reported post was deemed non-violating, and X refused a DSA Art. 40.12 data request, blocking research (context to the EU's DSA fine on X).

Grok Unleashed: Flood of Sexualized Images of Women and Minors

Analysis of 20k+ Grok images and 50k prompts found weak guardrails: 53% minimal attire, 81% women-presenting, ~2% appearing to be minors, 6% public figures, plus Nazi/ISIS propaganda.

Assessment of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference in the 2025 Czech Parliamentary Election

Found the 2025 Czech elections resilient: no evidence of coordinated, large-scale foreign interference capable of changing the outcome. Russian-linked actors focused on eroding trust via fraud narratives and content laundering (outlets like neČT24 and the Pravda network) across X, TikTok and Telegram rather than disrupting the vote itself.

TikTok unlawfully tracks your shopping habits – and your use of dating apps

A user discovered TikTok knew he had used the gay dating app Grindr and what he did there, data likely passed via AppsFlyer, an intermediary. TikTok also gave only an incomplete, hard-to-parse response to his GDPR access request across multiple attempts. noyb argues neither AppsFlyer nor Grindr had a valid legal basis under Article 6(1) or Article 9(1) GDPR to share this special-category data with TikTok.

Regulatory challenges & gaps in addressing systemic platform abuse

Election-integrity/FIMI monitoring across four countries reveals regulatory gaps in addressing systemic platform abuse.

War profiteers: online ads and the machinery of propaganda for war

Examines how governments deploy war propaganda through online advertising and argues platforms bear responsibility under international human rights law to prevent monetizing it.

Prompt, Upload, Repeat: Agentic AI Accounts Flood TikTok

Uncovered 354 'Agentic AI Accounts' responsible for the majority of AI slop on TikTok, together amassing 4.5B+ views and 43,000+ near-entirely AI-generated posts of misleading/harmful content.

Malicious semi-compliance as the platform approach to EU regulation

Argues big tech feigns compliance with the DSA while sidestepping its intent through 'malicious semi-compliance.'

Mapping algorithmic amplification: transparency challenges and lessons from Germany

Examines transparency challenges in studying algorithmic amplification, drawing lessons from the German context.

Hate for Sale: Instagram helps sellers of hateful merchandise

Instagram and e-commerce platforms amplify and monetize racist/antisemitic 'hate merch,' reaching a billion views.

What Kids and Parents Want: Policy Insights for Social Media Safety Features

Research with teens and parents identifies which safety features they actually want and use, arguing policy should center user-desired controls rather than blanket restrictions.

Truth be Dammed: Climate Disinformation on YouTube and TikTok

With Maldita.es: dis/misinformation videos about Spain's Valencia (DANA) floods were amplified on both platforms and remained online a year later; YouTube lacks a dedicated policy and TikTok fails to enforce its own.

From FYP to WW3

During the 2025 NATO Summit, the For You Pages of 12 Dutch accounts prioritized military content (40%) and war speculation (19%); both feed and search reflected a largely pro-NATO stance.

Antisemitic abuse on X after Manchester Synagogue attack

Antisemitic abuse and calls for violence flooded X following the attack, largely left unremoved.

Viral antisemitic posts about Charlie Kirk assassination amass 139m views on X

Antisemitic conspiracies about Kirk's killing reached ~140M views; no viral post carried a Community Note.

For politicians, TikTok's algorithm is a handy bogeyman

Critiques a French parliamentary report on TikTok, arguing European politicians invoke platform algorithms as a scapegoat while sidestepping harder evidentiary and regulatory work.

Service-to-Client Interoperability as a Consumer Protection Measure

Argues for mandating 'service-to-client' interoperability, letting independently-developed third-party clients, moderation tools and recommender systems plug into a platform's existing back-end interfaces, as a consumer-protection measure in the EU's forthcoming Digital Fairness Act.

A Home for Hate: How Antisemitism Thrives on X

Using AI tools, CCDH found X hosts and profits from antisemitic content violating its own policies.

Propagation of Pro-Russian Narratives on TikTok in Czechia

Hundreds of interconnected anonymous accounts with millions of views systematically spread pro-Kremlin propaganda and support anti-system parties on Czech TikTok.

Still marching on(line): How R-FBI Targets Moldova’s Elections

Detailed how the Russian operation Storm-1516 (linked to the sanctioned R-FBI) used fabricated news sites, AI-generated content and impersonated journalists to push 17 false narratives against President Sandu and the PAS party during Moldova’s 2025 elections, accumulating roughly 45 million views via authentic influencers and inauthentic accounts.

A Cross-Country Analysis of Electoral Advertising on Meta and Google during the EU 2024 Elections: Compliance, Transparency, and Targeting

Across 15 EU countries during the April-June 2024 EU Parliament election window, roughly 30,000 political ads were published and about €8.7 million spent on Meta and Google political advertising. Meta’s and Google’s own definitions of ‘political advertising’ were found not fully aligned with the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising Regulation (2024/900), with both platforms only partially meeting its transparency and targeting-disclosure requirements.

Interfering from Exile – Ilan Shor’s Demonstrations in Moldova

Exposed coordinated inauthentic behaviour promoting a Telegram bot tied to fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor ahead of Moldova’s 2025 election: a network of ~117 amplifying accounts republished his content to evade EU sanctions, while the bot offered $3,000/month to protest and harvested passport, geolocation and facial data from participants.

Belarusian Propaganda Watch (April–August 2025)

A monitoring report analysing five Belarusian state-propaganda cases (Independence Day, Slavianski Bazaar, the Zapad-2025 exercises, worker arrivals from Pakistan, and the disappearance of Coordination Council spokesperson Anzhelika Melnikova) across historical, cultural, military, migration and repressive dimensions.

Moldova: Country Election Risk Assessment (CERA)

A pre-election risk assessment rating Moldova’s exposure to FIMI and hybrid threats as "high and rising" ahead of the September 2025 parliamentary elections, outlining three scenarios (limited impact, heightened polarisation, or coordinated hybrid attacks) and urging urgent inter-agency coordination.

Polish Election Country Report 2025

A 28-organisation assessment of FIMI during Poland’s 2025 presidential elections, finding persistent foreign operations (Doppelganger, Operation Overload) and domestic amplification of anti-Ukrainian, anti-EU and anti-establishment narratives, whose impact was constrained by public resilience and active civil-society responses.

YouTube's Safety Features Lost in Translation

Across all 83 supported languages, safety panels were unevenly distributed: English had full coverage while many languages, including European ones, lacked basic safety features.

Lega Artis’ Rise to Prominence: Inadequate Mechanisms for Curbing Kremlin Propaganda in the Polish Infosphere

Traced how Lega Artis, a 2018 legal blog, became an information-laundering vehicle republishing EU-sanctioned Russian media in Polish, expanding its social reach while circumventing DSA obligations and apparently using AI automation to distribute anti-EU disinformation at implausible volumes.

X-ploitation: How X Became a Crossroads for Child Abuse and Influence Operations

Documented "Operation X-ploitation," a network of 150+ automated accounts distributing child sexual abuse material on X via hashtag flooding and bot engagement, exploiting the same weaknesses (minimal account-creation barriers, weak moderation) used by Russian influence campaigns like Doppelganger. X’s age-verification and suspensions did not fix the underlying design flaws.

The Kids Aren't Alright Online: How To Build a Safer, Better Internet

Argues kids' online-safety policy should make platforms safer and more privacy-protective for everyone, focusing on platform design features that facilitate harm rather than blanket restrictions.

AI Generated Algorithmic Virality (AI Slop)

Across three European countries, 25% of TikTok's top search results contained synthetic AI imagery (80%+ from 'Agentic AI Accounts'); only about half of AI content was properly labeled despite DSA commitments.

X fails to act on 97% of calls for violence against migrants or Muslims

A year after the riots, X left up 97% of reported violent anti-migrant/anti-Muslim content.

App Stores & Meta's Porn: An Uncomfortable Affair

In Spring 2025 Meta approved 12,034+ pornographic ads, shown 12.8M times across all 27 EU countries, apparently violating store and Meta policies; the same images were auto-moderated when posted as normal Instagram posts.

Extreme Weather: false claims spread unchecked

Social media companies let false claims about the LA Fires and Hurricane Helene spread unchecked.

Platforms' policies on climate change misinformation (V2)

Updated tracking of how major platforms handle climate disinformation under the DSA, documenting policy rollbacks and weakening.

Civil society files joint DSA complaint against X for targeting people with ads using their sensitive personal data

On 14 July 2025, nine organisations — EDRi, AI Forensics, Centre for Democracy & Technology Europe, Entropy, GFF, Global Witness, Panoptykon Foundation, Bits of Freedom and VoxPublic — filed a joint DSA complaint against X with the Digital Services Coordinators of France, Germany and the Netherlands, citing Article 26(3). Using X’s own public Ad Repository, the groups documented advertisers targeting or excluding users via protected categories: Shein targeting far-left political interests, TotalEnergies excluding users interested in ‘ecologist’ content, McDonald’s excluding trade-union members and antidepressant users, and Brussels Signal targeting far-right party sympathisers.

Fuelling Hate: One year after the UK riots, X still lets abuse spread

X is still failing to remove rule-violating anti-Muslim/anti-migrant calls for violence a year after the riots.

Content Moderation in the Global South: Four Low-Resource Languages

Synthesizes four case studies showing platforms overwhelmingly invest in English-language moderation, leaving low-resource-language speakers under-protected and subject to both over- and under-enforcement.

Operation Overload: an AI-fuelled escalation ('Overload 2')

The operation escalated using AI-generated content; Telegram is the central hub (673 channels) while ~11,000 X accounts amplify it. TikTok demoted accounts only after 3M+ views.

Moderating Quechua Content on Social Media

Quechua-language users face significantly worse experiences (mis-moderation, reduced reach, lack of language support) than Spanish-language posters.

Banned But Not Gone: YouTube profits from Andrew Tate's misogyny

YouTube still hosts and monetizes Andrew Tate's misogynistic content despite banning his account.

When Personal Becomes Profitable: Sensitive Targeting on X

X let advertisers target users by sensitive personal data (political beliefs, sexual orientation); 30+ major brands were found doing so, raising GDPR and DSA concerns as VLOPs are barred from such targeting.

TikTok's Research API: Problems without Explanations

Missing metadata for official TikTok videos, ads, and prominent accounts makes the research API unreliable for data-donation studies and algorithmic auditing.

TikTok's Polish Elections Labels: Only Sometimes, And Only For Some

Systematic failures applying election-information labels during Poland's 2025 presidential election; 20M+ Polish diaspora users were excluded from labels while fraud allegations and AI disinformation spread unlabeled.

X posts claiming European leaders took cocaine reach 135M views

50 posts with baseless drug claims about Starmer/Macron/Merz got 135M views, with no Community Notes.

Moderating Tamil Content on Social Media

Content policies are unevenly defined and enforced for Tamil speakers; automated moderation and Trust & Safety resourcing lag far behind English.

Far-right posts still pushed on TikTok ahead of Romanian election re-run

Ahead of the second-round re-run, TikTok's algorithm continued to push disproportionately more far-right content to new users.

TikTok algorithm recommends twice as much hard-right content ahead of Polish election

New accounts were served roughly twice as much hard-right content as other political content ahead of Poland's presidential election.

Report on the 45th Canadian General Election

Monitoring of Canada's April 2025 federal election found election-themed scam ads widespread on Meta and X, CCP-aligned narratives circulating on Chinese-language platforms, and TikTok's feed favouring US content despite majority-Canadian creators; the report calls for stronger researcher data access.

From Sri Lanka to Canada: The Global Evolution of ‘Chameleon Ads’ on Meta’s Platforms

Writing independently, Sanjana Hattotuwa connected Social Media Lab’s Canadian ‘Chameleon ads’ investigation to earlier Sri Lankan waves of Facebook and Instagram crypto-scam advertising that impersonated journalists, ministers, the prime minister, the president and news outlets. He argues that the Canadian cases reflect tactics already developed in the Global South and highlights how disappearing Ad Library records obstruct comparative research.

The Hidden Game: How Scammers Use ‘Chameleon Ads’ to Bypass Meta’s Moderation

Social Media Lab identified and named ‘Chameleon ads’: Meta advertisers first obtain approval for harmless creative, then swap images, text or links for deepfake political endorsements and cryptocurrency scams, sometimes pausing and reverting the ad before review. The investigation also documented how non-political scam ads can disappear from Meta’s Ad Library without a durable public record.

Civil society files DSA complaint against Meta for toxic, profiling-fueled feeds

On 15 April 2025 EDRi, Bits of Freedom, GFF and Convocation Research + Design jointly filed a complaint with Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán (Meta’s lead DSA regulator), alleging Meta’s deceptive interface design keeps Facebook and Instagram users on profiling-based feeds and silently resets any non-profiling choice, breaching DSA Articles 38, 27(3) and 25. On 5 May 2026, a year on, Coimisiún na Meán confirmed it had opened a formal investigation into Meta over these dark-pattern allegations.

Meta's Failing Ad Moderation: Health Scams Targeting EU Users

Identified 46,000+ ads promoting unapproved drugs and deceptive health claims, reaching EU users 292M+ times, violating Meta's own standards and potentially several DSA provisions.

The Dormant Danger: How Meta Ignores Large-Scale Inauthentic Behavior Networks of Malicious Advertisers

Mapped seven dormant networks totalling about 3.8 million Facebook pages reused for political propaganda and scams, and found Meta consistently removes individual ads while leaving the underlying inauthentic-behaviour networks intact, a systemic DSA compliance gap.

'Pravda' Network: Worldwide Expansion and LLM/Wikipedia Pollution

With DFRLab, showed the Russian 'Pravda' network expanded globally and polluted LLMs and Wikipedia; X's Community Notes failed to address its spread.

Building the Digital Platform Commission: How To Design a Regulator

Makes the case for a dedicated federal digital regulator and details how to design it to enhance competition, protect consumers, and oversee dominant platforms.

More Transparency and Less Spin: Analyzing Meta's policy changes

Meta's 2025 policy rollback could stop 97% of enforcement in key areas including hate speech.

Generative AI and the German Far Right: Narratives, Tactics and Digital Strategies

Documents how German far-right actors use generative AI to produce and spread propaganda across social platforms, with new narrative and digital-strategy tactics.

Recommending Hate: How TikTok's Search Algorithms Reproduce Societal Bias

After entering racist/misogynistic slurs, ~two-thirds of examined videos perpetuated harmful stereotypes; across four languages, search and recommendation algorithms connected users to content targeting marginalized groups.

X and TikTok algorithms push pro-AfD content to non-partisan German users

On TikTok, 78% of algorithmically recommended political content (from unfollowed accounts) was pro-AfD; on X, 64%, far exceeding the party's ~20% polling.

Emboldened: Internet shutdowns in 2024

Documented 296 shutdowns, the highest since 2016, including social-media-specific blocking during conflicts and elections.

Influence by Design: How Meta Accepted Russian Propaganda Payments Despite Sanctions

With Reset.tech and AI Forensics, revealed Meta ran 8,000+ pro-Russian ads tied to the sanctioned Social Design Agency, earning ~$338,000 between Aug 2023-Oct 2024 despite sanctions.

TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN & Co surrender Europeans’ data to authoritarian China

Six complaints filed in five European countries allege TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN, Temu, WeChat and Xiaomi unlawfully transfer EU users’ personal data to China, which lacks an EU adequacy decision. Four of the six openly admit transfers to China in their privacy policies; two only reference undisclosed ‘third countries.’ None adequately answered users’ Article 15 access requests.

Behind the Curtain: Unveiling Pro-Kremlin Ecosystems in Europe

Maps pro-Kremlin information ecosystems operating across European social media and web infrastructure, detailing coordinated influence and foreign interference tactics.

Statement on Meta's Announcement to Gut Moderation and Fact-checking

Argues Meta's end of third-party fact-checking and relocation of moderation teams will increase harm and disinformation; assesses the Commission's limited DSA options.

Pay-to-Play: Meta's Community (double) Standards on Pornographic Ads

3,000+ pornographic ads (including AI-generated media and celebrity deepfakes) were approved and generated 8M+ EU impressions, content that would be removed if posted by regular users.

The 2025 RDR Index: Big Tech Edition

Seventh edition (first full evaluation since 2022): no company scored over 50%; TikTok debuted strongly while X showed RDR's largest-ever single-company decline after cutting its human rights team and transparency reporting.

A Policy Primer for Free Expression and Content Moderation

Lays out a vision for free expression and content moderation given shifts in the media, technological, political and legal landscape, reframing how policymakers should think about platform moderation.

Toxic platforms, broken planet: Online abuse of environmental defenders

Of 204 land/environmental defenders surveyed, 92% had experienced online abuse or harassment tied to their work, with real-world safety and silencing effects.

Climate of confusion: Bot-like accounts sharing climate disinformation

22 of 45 previously identified bot-like X accounts amplified climate denial/conspiracies, tying climate opposition to broader anti-migrant, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Ukraine political identity.

Moderating Kiswahili Content on Social Media

Kiswahili moderation suffers from limited language investment, sparse local context, and weak automated-system performance, harming users across East/Central Africa.

YouTube's Anorexia Algorithm

YouTube recommends eating-disorder and self-harm videos to accounts modelled on young girls (UK and EU editions followed Feb 2025).

Meta's Role in Romania's 2024 Presidential Election

With Reset Tech and EU DisinfoLab, examined Meta's advertising and its influence on public opinion during Romania's pivotal 2024 presidential vote.

Rainbow-burning: how social media companies increase risks for LGBTQ+ people in Africa

Documented 214 threatening anti-LGBTQ+ posts across the platforms in five African countries; only 51 were removed when reported, blaming under-resourced moderation for African languages and engagement-driven algorithms.

Verified Disinformation: How X Profits From the Rise of a Pro-Kremlin Network

Documented a network of about 530 inauthentic X accounts that doubled over five months and used paid verification to amplify Kremlin-aligned propaganda in six languages, posting roughly 16,000 times between June and October 2024 to EU audiences, with X monetising the Doppelganger-linked operation.

TikTok pushes far-right candidate content in Romanian presidential election

Investigation into TikTok's algorithm around the first round won by ultranationalist Calin Georgescu; contributed to scrutiny that led the European Commission to open a DSA probe into TikTok.

Doppelganger media impersonation: leveraging domain name dispute resolution

Explores using domain-name dispute resolution as a countermeasure against the Doppelganger media-impersonation operation.

Real Time Threats: CSEA Prevention on Livestreaming Platforms

Finds real-time/ephemeral video creates distinct detection and enforcement challenges for child sexual exploitation prevention that existing moderation tooling is poorly equipped to handle.

Artificial Elections: Generative AI in 2024 French Elections

Found 51 instances of synthetic imagery, primarily used by right-wing parties to dramatize sensationalist narratives during the 2024 elections; none were labeled as AI-generated.

Joint civil society statement on transparency of risk assessments under the Digital Services Act

The statement, co-signed by ECNL within the DSA Civil Society Coordination Group, sets out what a transparent risk assessment must disclose: detailed methodology, descriptions of algorithmic and advertising systems, risks tied to specific platform functionalities, mitigation measures, which teams/stakeholders were involved, and how audit recommendations fed back into mitigation.

So We Meet Again, Botiful: Latent Fake Ad Network Persists on Meta Two Years Since Doppelganger

Research note showing Meta continues to overlook large-scale networks of automated dormant fake pages reused for political and scam advertising, including Kremlin-affiliated Doppelganger campaigns targeting the EU and Moldova.

Musk's Political Posts

Musk's own political posts drew more views than all US campaign ads in X's disclosure dataset.

Independent Audit of Facebook's DSA Risk Assessment

Independent audit examining Facebook's systemic-risk assessment under the EU Digital Services Act (period 29 Aug 2023-30 June 2024).

TikTok (still) fails to detect disinformation ahead of Irish general election

Six months after the EU-election test, TikTok again approved election-disinformation ads (English and Irish) ahead of Ireland's snap general election.

Facebook's AI Failure

AI-generated images of fake Americans making political endorsements got millions of interactions before the US election.

Rated Not Helpful: How X's Community Notes system falls short

Community Notes failed to counter false/misleading US election claims, with proposed notes rarely shown.

TikTok and Facebook fail to detect harmful disinformation ads (US election)

Weeks before the US presidential election, TikTok approved 50% of disinformation ads and Facebook accepted one; YouTube approved 50% initially but blocked publication pending ID verification.

Online Safety and the Regulation of Gaming Platforms and Services

Examines extremism and safety risks on gaming platforms and services and the regulatory gaps in addressing them.

How Meta Brings in Millions Off Political Violence

A joint CalMatters/Markup investigation estimated Meta earns millions in ad revenue in the wake of violent news events, profiting from engagement surges around political violence.

Hated More: Online Violence Targeting Women of Color Candidates in the 2024 US Election

With University of Pittsburgh: women of color candidates experienced disproportionately high volumes of online abuse, hate, and mis/disinformation compared with other candidates.

Profiting from Propaganda: How Meta Benefits from Pro-Kremlin Election Meddling Ads in Moldova

Co-published with WatchDog.md: a pro-Kremlin campaign paid Meta about EUR 300,000 over 18 months, nearly a quarter of Moldova's political ad spend since August 2020, running 150+ inauthentic pages with disinformation and deepfakes ahead of Moldova's elections while Meta failed to dismantle the network.

On a second attempt, TikTok and YouTube pass test to detect US election disinformation ads

In a follow-up test both platforms caught and rejected the resubmitted disinformation ads, showing improvement over the earlier failure.

Moderating Maghrebi Arabic Content on Social Media

Maghrebi Arabic is frequently mis-moderated, with both wrongful takedowns and failure to catch harmful content, driven by under-investment and ill-suited automated systems.

US Election Platform Preparedness: Comparative Analysis

Assessed platforms across six areas ahead of the 2024 US election; the most alarming common finding was a pervasive lack of transparency about policies, safety efforts and resourcing.

Operation Overload: a growing disinformation threat targeting the US election

With Reset Tech, confirmed the operation is Russia-based and had shifted focus to the US election, targeting Kamala Harris.

TikTok and Anti-Migrant & Anti-Refugee Content

Of 104 analyzed videos, only 3.8% were removed; comments calling for harm to migrants persisted for months, and TikTok's search recommended deliberate misspellings that evaded moderation.

TikTok and White Supremacist Content

White supremacist content remained readily available; of 108 sampled videos, 70 were uploaded within the prior three months, and a network of neo-Nazi accounts amassed millions of views.

Grok AI: A deepfake disinformation disaster for democracy

X's Grok accepted all 60 tested prompts to generate misleading US election images.

Social media's role in the UK riots (OSA amendments)

Policy paper arguing platforms (especially X and Telegram) fueled the riots via online hate/lies; proposes new regulatory powers.

X ran ads on five accounts pushing lies and hate during UK riots

X placed major brands' ads beside disinformation accounts that amassed 260M views after Southport.

Abusing Women in Politics: How Instagram is failing women

Instagram failed to act on 93% of reported abusive comments (including death/rape threats) targeting US women politicians.

Twitter’s AI plans hit with 9 more GDPR complaints

X began using the personal data of over 60 million EU/EEA users to train its ‘Grok’ AI model from May 2024 without proactively notifying users or obtaining consent; most users learned of it only via a viral post more than two months later. X relies on a ‘legitimate interest’ legal basis rather than opt-in consent.

Musk misleading election claims viewed 1.2bn times on X

Musk's false/misleading US election claims got ~1.2 billion views, none carrying a Community Note.

Musk's X helps Tommy Robinson rack up 434 million views during UK riots

X amplified Tommy Robinson's disinformation to 434M+ views during the UK riots with virtually no fact-checks.

Public Data Access Programs: A First Look

First systematic evaluation of 19 platforms' researcher data-access programs; access varies widely and data quality is poor.

Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Unjust Content Moderation (2-part series)

Documents how platforms, especially Meta (reportedly ~94% compliance with Israeli Cyber Unit takedown requests), disproportionately removed pro-Palestinian content while failing to curb anti-Palestinian hate.

Doppelganger Revamped: Network of Verified Accounts Spreads Multilingual Propaganda on X

Research note documenting about 250 inauthentic X accounts, nearly half of them verified, activated in coordinated clusters from June 2024 to spread Kremlin-aligned content in five languages and hijack trending hashtags such as Euro 2024, raising monetisation and verification concerns.

Trump's assassination attempt conspiracies

Conspiracies about the assassination attempt got 215M+ views on X; 95% of posts had no fact-check.

TikTok's 'Others Searched For' Feature

The search-suggestion feature showed clickbait-style suggestions and redirected users to competing political parties (particularly AfD), potentially distorting political perception among young users.

Yet more evidence of Russia's boundless impunity to spread misinformation in the EU

Further documentation of the Doppelganger influence operation's continued reach across social platforms in the EU.

Light on Safety: How TikTok Lite Sacrifices User Protections

With Mozilla: TikTok Lite (widely used in Global Majority countries) lacks content filtering, screen-management tools and harmful-content warnings, leaving 1B+ users exposed despite these being technically feasible.

The TikTok effect: how the app shaped political discourse in Finnish European elections

Faktabaari/CheckFirst CrossOver report uncovering worrying trends in TikTok's possible impact on the 2024 European elections in Finland.

Political bias on X's AI chatbot (Grok) risks influencing the UK vote

Grok generated politically biased suggested tweets, in 'Fun' mode encouraging a #VoteReformUK vote and in 'Regular' mode implicitly discouraging voting for the incumbent government.

'No ifs, many bots': Partisan bot-like accounts amplify divisive content on X

45 apparent bot accounts generated 4+ billion views (~610,000 posts), amplifying racist/sexualised abuse, conspiracies and climate disinformation; most supported Reform UK.

Bot-like posts seen more than 150 million times ahead of UK election

10 apparent bot accounts posted 60,000+ tweets seen ~150 million times in the weeks before the UK vote, many containing extreme hate speech, disinformation and pro-Putin content.

Platforms' AI policy updates in 2024: labelling as the silver bullet?

Reviews platforms' 2024 updates to AI-content policies, arguing reliance on 'labelling' AI content is an insufficient response.

Meta's elections dashboard: A very disappointing sign

Technical critique of Meta's EU election-monitoring dashboard: keyword lists mis-copied across countries, Instagram lacking location filters, and Facebook filters cutting ~50% of relevant material, calling it a 'PR distraction.'

Operation Overload: pro-Russian actors flood newsrooms with fake content

Exposed the 'Matryoshka'/Operation Overload campaign flooding 800+ media/fact-checking organisations with content urging them to 'verify' fabricated anti-Ukraine material, diverting fact-checker resources.

TikTok and YouTube pass new test to detect foreign election disinformation ads in UK

Ahead of the UK general election, both platforms rejected a set of prohibited foreign-interference/disinformation ads, a rare pass that contrasts with failures elsewhere.

Unchecked Political Ads: Pro-Russian Propaganda on Meta Ahead of EU Elections

Between May 1-27 2024, Meta approved at least 275 pro-Russian propaganda ads (lacking required disclaimers) targeting Italy, Germany, France and Poland, reaching over 3 million accounts.

Antisemitic Admins: Meta's failure to moderate large Facebook Groups

Meta failed to act on admins spreading anti-Jewish hate to 300K+ Facebook Group members.

Confusing Google predictions and unbalanced politics on TikTok and Instagram

CrossOver Finland analysis found politically unbalanced content on TikTok and Instagram alongside confusing Google search predictions ahead of the 2024 elections.

Assessing cost-effectiveness: responses to the Doppelganger operation

Assesses responses to the Russian Doppelganger operation that clones media outlets and spreads links/ads across X, Facebook and Telegram.

Impact of regulation on children’s digital lives

Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap made 128 documented child-safety and privacy changes between 2017 and 2024, peaking at 42 changes in 2021 when the UK Age Appropriate Design Code took effect; Meta alone accounted for 61 of the changes. Only 8 of 50 companies contacted with information requests responded.

Ticked off: TikTok approves EU elections disinformation ads in Ireland

TikTok approved all 16 election-disinformation ads ahead of the EU parliamentary elections; X rejected all of them and YouTube rejected all but two.

Shrinking democracy, growing violence: Internet shutdowns in 2023

Annual #KeepItOn documentation of shutdowns and platform blocking worldwide in 2023, tying disruptions to elections, protests and conflict.

No Embargo In Sight: Meta Lets Pro-Russia Propaganda Ads Flood the EU

A moderation loophole let pro-Russian propaganda run on Meta; under 5% of undeclared political ads were caught, and one campaign reached 38M+ users in France and Germany. The European Commission opened proceedings citing this report.

Full Disclosure: Stress Testing Tech Platforms' Ad Repositories

With CheckFirst: tested ad-transparency tools of 11 companies; none rated 'ready,' with major data gaps and inaccuracies.

Mozilla commissions CheckFirst to conduct a stress test of Ad Repositories

First comprehensive report on DSA-strengthened platform ad libraries, finding the ad transparency tools failing to meet their intended purpose.

Hate Pays: How X accounts are exploiting the Israel-Gaza conflict

10 X accounts pushing anti-Jewish/anti-Muslim/anti-Palestinian hate grew ~4x faster after October 7.

'Votes will not be counted': Indian election disinformation ads and YouTube

In a joint test with Access Now, YouTube approved 100% (48/48) of ads containing blatant election disinformation in English, Hindi and Telugu, all violating YouTube's own policies.

Digital Disparities: the global battle for reproductive rights on social media

Meta restricts reproductive-care information in Africa/Asia/Latin America while allowing anti-choice misinformation ads.

Instagram Creators: Check If Your Posts Are 'Political'

After Meta stopped 'proactively recommending' political content, The Markup built a tool letting creators test whether their posts would be classified as political and thus algorithmically limited.

CheckFirst & Faktabaari: Finnish far-right videos highly recommended by YouTube

First CrossOver Finland report showing significant over-representation of right-wing/far-right voices in YouTube's recommendations during the 2024 Finnish presidential election.

How Automated Content Moderation Works (Even When It Doesn't)

Explainer documenting the automated techniques (hash-matching, classifiers) platforms use to moderate billions of posts, and where these systems routinely fail.

Safe by Default (People vs Big Tech briefing)

Argues engagement-based recommender systems amplifying borderline content is a feature not a bug; calls on regulators to require non-profiling feeds as the default.

Platforms, Promises and Politics: a reality check on election pledges

Finds platforms' election interventions in the Global Majority are template-copied and far weaker than those offered in the US/EU.

In Transparency We Trust?

On platforms' AI-generated-content disclosure mechanisms; finds detection tools unreliable and disclosure approaches inconsistent across platforms.

Demoted, Deleted, and Denied: More Than Just Shadowbanning on Instagram

An investigation found Instagram heavily demoted nongraphic Israel-Hamas war images, deleted captions, hid comments without notification, and suppressed hashtags, well beyond classic 'shadowbanning.'

It's not a glitch: how Meta systematically censors Palestinian voices

Documents systematic censorship of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content since October 7, 2023, driven by Meta's vague 'Dangerous Organizations' policy and discriminatory enforcement (e.g., lowering the hide-threshold to 25%).

TikTok removes views from hashtags

TikTok obscured hashtag view counts, reducing transparency for researchers studying harmful content.

Disinformation on YouTube: research and content moderation policies

Factsheet documenting how disinformation on YouTube is researched and how the platform's content-moderation policies operate.

Disinformation on TikTok: research and content moderation policies

Factsheet documenting how disinformation on TikTok is researched and how the platform's content-moderation policies operate.

When Kindness Kills: How Algorithms Accelerate Savior Swarms

Introduces 'savior swarming,' algorithmically amplified surges of well-intentioned collective action that overwhelm and harm the communities they aim to help (cases: Twitter trending, r/BlackPeopleTwitter).

Each Facebook User is Monitored by Thousands of Companies

A study of 267,000 users found the average Facebook user had activity sent to Facebook by roughly 2,230 different companies, exposing the scale of third-party tracking.

Disinformation on X: research and content moderation policies

Factsheet documenting how disinformation on X is researched and how the platform's content-moderation policies operate.

Disinformation on Facebook: research and content moderation policies

Factsheet documenting how disinformation on Facebook is researched and how the platform's content-moderation policies operate.

The New Climate Denial

'New' denial narratives attacking climate science/solutions made up 70% of climate-denial content on YouTube in 2023.

Quantifying extremism: UK riot-related far-right Telegram networks

Data-driven analysis of ~45,000 messages during the 2024 UK riots mapping far-right Telegram networks.

Reckoning with Mis/Disinformation in 2024 (series)

A reflection series revisiting a decade of mis/disinformation research in the context of the 2024 US election, examining how platform information systems continue to be gamed.

In the Blind Spot: Right-wing Extremists on Alternative and Established Platforms

Analysis of how German-language right-wing extremists build and migrate infrastructure across both mainstream and alternative platforms, exposing moderation 'blind spots.'

Algorithms of Trauma 2: 'Anxious about your health? Facebook won't let you forget'

Case study showing Facebook's ad-delivery algorithms push distressing health/illness ads exploiting users' mental vulnerabilities; disabling 'sensitive interests' limits advertiser targeting but not Facebook's own profiling.

Violent and sexualised hate speech targeting women journalists (South Africa)

Nearly all 40 misogynistic test ads (in 4 languages) were approved; Meta and TikTok approved all 40 within 24 hours. Concludes automated moderation is 'not fit for purpose.'

Facebook Watches Teens Online As They Prep for College

A Pixel Hunt investigation found Meta's tracking pixel embedded on school, test-prep and college-application websites, letting Meta monitor students as they browse education sites.

Not a solution: Meta's new AI system to contain discriminatory ads

Meta's 'Variance Reduction System' for biased US housing-ad delivery is 'more band-aid than AI fairness solution'; reporting gaps make it impossible to verify.

More Tools, More Control: Young Users on Handling Unwanted Messages

Young users want more granular controls to manage unwanted messages; current platform tools are insufficient, with design recommendations for youth safety that preserve autonomy.

TikTok's Role in Youth Mental Health

With Amnesty International: a two-part audit found TikTok's recommendation system could rapidly lead young users toward content glorifying self-harm and suicide.

Under the Radar: Vast Networks of Fake Accounts Raise Questions About Meta's Compliance with the EU's New Digital Rulebook

Uncovered an ad network of at least 242,000 fake Facebook pages, alongside a second ecosystem of more than 340,000 pages, pushing Russian propaganda and scams across 32+ EU countries; despite prior warnings from September 2022, Meta had failed to act, making this one of the earliest and most-cited DSA compliance challenges to Meta.

Platforms' policies on AI-manipulated and generated misinformation

Maps how major platforms address AI-manipulated and AI-generated misinformation in their policies.

TikTok's Toxic Trade

Videos glorifying steroid-like drugs got 587M+ US views in three years, some linking directly to sellers.

Platforms' policies on climate change misinformation (V1)

Maps how the five platforms address climate misinformation, revealing uneven and weak climate-specific rules.

Towards Meaningful Fundamental Rights Impact Assessments under the DSA

The paper argues DSA Article 34(1)(b) fundamental rights impact assessments (FRIAs) risk becoming ‘tick-box’ exercises without harmonized minimum standards. It sets six benchmarks papers must meet — governance grounded in the EU Charter, full scope, sufficient methodological detail, public transparency, a harmonized-but-flexible structure, and regular external stakeholder consultation — plus separate benchmarks for algorithmic content-moderation risks.

A world of online hate and lies: Mapping our investigations

A synthesis of 10+ country investigations concluding platforms systematically fail to enforce their own hate-speech/disinformation ad policies, with weaker moderation outside the US.

X Content Moderation Failure

X still hosted ~86% of 300 reported extreme-hate posts a week after they were reported.

Fixing Recommender Systems: From Identification of Risk Factors to Meaningful Transparency and Mitigation

Sets out six hypotheses on how recommender-system design choices (engagement-driven ranking, addictive features, data-driven personalisation) generate DSA Article 34 'systemic risks,' plus a technical checklist of disclosures VLOPs/VLOSEs should make to regulators, auditors and researchers.

Social media algorithms are harmless, or are they?

Critiques the Meta-partnered 2020-election studies, arguing behavioral data showed the algorithms increased uncivil-content exposure, removed cross-cutting content, and boosted time-on-platform.

Facebook Hustles: The Belgian spin-off

Deep-dive into a scam network of 1,500+ Facebook ads luring users to fake media sites impersonating Belgian outlets and politicians.

Platforms' policies on elections misinformation

Maps and compares how five major platforms address election misinformation in their policies.

Platforms' policies on health misinformation

Maps and compares how five major platforms address health misinformation in their policies.

Facebook Hustles: The Hidden Mechanics of a Scam Machinery

A month-long investigation uncovered a large-scale scam operation recruiting victims via 1,500+ Facebook ads and fake media sites impersonating news outlets/creators.

'We need to kill them': Xenophobic hate speech approved by Facebook, TikTok and YouTube (South Africa)

Violent xenophobic test ads were approved by all three platforms; nearly every ad passed, with only one Facebook rejection.

Twitter fails to act on 99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate

Twitter failed to act on 99% of hateful posts by Blue subscribers and appeared to algorithmically boost them.

Lost in Translation: Large Language Models in Non-English Content Analysis

Multilingual LLMs used for content moderation perform substantially worse in non-English (especially low-resource) languages; cautions against treating them as a fix for global moderation.

YouTube's Climate Denial Dollars

200 climate-disinformation videos (half breaching Google policy) drew 73.8M views with ads placed against them.

State Hate: How Iran's Press TV Uses Social Media to Promote Anti-Jewish Hatred

With ADL: Iran's state broadcaster weaponizes social platforms to spread antisemitic conspiracy content.

Toxic Twitter: How Twitter Makes Millions from Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric

Anti-LGBTQ+ 'grooming' rhetoric jumped 119% under Musk while Twitter profited from ads placed against it.

Reels of Fortune: Instagram-shaped memories for a bigger reach

Qualitative story on how Instagram's pivot to Reels/video pushes users to curate memories 'for the algorithm,' generating training data that teaches the platform to rank memories automatically.

Horizon Worlds Exposed

Minors were routinely harassed and exposed to adult content in Meta's flagship VR social network.

Antisemitism on Twitter Before and After Elon Musk's Acquisition

With CASM Technology: weekly average English-language antisemitic tweets rose 106% after Musk's takeover and new antisemitic-posting accounts more than tripled, with no evidence 'deboosting' reduced engagement.

Toxic Twitter: bringing back banned accounts generates ad revenue

Previously banned accounts reinstated by Musk are generating millions in ad revenue for the platform.

Extreme and violent anti-LGBTQ+ hate approved for publication by leading social media platforms

Test ads with extreme anti-LGBTQ+ hate were almost all approved: YouTube and TikTok approved all 10 ads, Facebook rejected only two, and all three approved the 'burn all gays' ad.

What does TikTok know about you? Data donations deliver answers!

Launch of the DataSkop TikTok data-donation campaign, detailing TikTok's extensive data collection and the opacity of the 'For You' feed.

Why is 'Nazis' regularly trending on Twitter in Belgium?

Analysis showing how Russian official narratives get amplified on Twitter in Belgium whenever 'Nazis' trends, revealing coordinated pushing of pro-Kremlin framing.

Pathways: How digital design puts children at risk

Using avatar (test) accounts posing as 13-year-olds, researchers found children were directly targeted with harmful content — including material promoting eating disorders, extreme diets, self-harm and suicide — within 24 hours of creating an account on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. Child accounts also received contact from unknown adults directing them toward further harmful content.