CyberWell

The threat of AI-generated misinformation is part of the active battle for public perception amid the ongoing Iran conflict, as CyberWell Founder & CEO @talor_cohen Montemayor said on the panel alongside Prof. Gabriel Weimann of @reichmanuni, hosted by @indianaftali on @ILTVNews. The impact is significant enough that social media companies are stepping up countermeasures and the U.S. Military is dedicating resources to debunking AI-generated misinformation online.

Two of the most pervasive forms of antisemitism online today are denial and conspiratorial self-victimization. Denial involves rejecting, dismissing, or minimizing a violent event targeting Jews. Conspiratorial self-victimization goes further to claim that Jews or Israelis staged the attack for sympathy, political or financial gain, or public manipulation. As CyberWell Director of Research Yonathan Hezroni explains, these narratives are found on all major social media platforms, but predominantly on X, and generate enormous engagement — making denial and CSV a dangerous, ecosystem-wide phenomenon.

Following a violent weekend of anti-Jewish attacks worldwide, we are seeing an eerily familiar response online to this targeted hate. It's a dangerous trend we call "conspiratorial self-victimization": blaming Jews for attacks that are happening to them, and even dismissing the attacks as "false flag" operations. As CyberWell Founder & CEO @talor_cohen Montemayor explains, this antisemitic narrative is perpetuating violence against the Jewish community around the world.

CyberWell alerted our partners at major social media platforms after monitoring a sharp rise in antisemitic incitement and hate speech online following the outbreak of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war on Feb. 28. cyberwell.org/news-releases/…

Social media platforms made strides last year in improving removal rates for online antisemitism, CyberWell found in our 2025 annual report. The average removal rate crossed the majority threshold, reaching 52.4%. A major improvement we saw was on TikTok, with a removal rate of 88.8% — making TikTok the most consistent enforcer in our 2025 dataset. Removal rates on X declined to 29.5% in 2025, down from 54.1% the previous year. X's "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" approach, in which they limit visibility on potentially policy-violating posts, coincides with this decline. More in our annual report: cyberwell.org/reports/the-st….

Just two days after the U.S./Israel-Iran conflict broke out, the phrase "H!tler was right" in English surged by 304% on X, according to preliminary data. That's in contrast to the daily averages CyberWell observed in the six months prior to the present conflict, when we found the phrase in about 1,355 posts per day on X. Arabic versions of the phrase like "هتلر صدق" and "هتلر كان على حق" rose even more dramatically on X, with one phrase up by 3,450%. The bottom line: Real-world events are being seized as pretext for antisemites to spread violent Jew-hatred online. When this event-driven hate stays online without consistent enforcement, their visibility and virality significantly increases the risk of further harm to the already targeted Jewish community.

What drove online antisemitism in 2025? In our annual report, we surfaced three narratives that shaped the landscape of online hate in the last year: 1. Classic world domination conspiracies 2. Scapegoating of the Jewish people 3. Conspiratorial self-victimization Instead of relying on general or vague stereotypes, antisemitic actors are actively hijacking real-world events. Whenever there is a modern crisis or tragedy, they try to find — or invent — a way to blame the Jewish community, even when Jewish people are the ones being attacked. This reinforcing cycle of violence defined online antisemitic discourse in 2025.

With the recent discussion being had this week online by well-known antisemites, it looks like now is a good time to refresh everyone's memory about this false and deeply antisemitic trope.

It's here! CyberWell's fourth annual report reveals the state of online Jew-hatred in 2025: the most common forms of antisemitism we tracked, the newest threats, and what the platforms are doing about it. Check out our findings on the changing landscape of online hate: cyberwell.org/reports/the-st….

Social media platforms should enforce a zero-tolerance policy for the denial of all violent antisemitic events. This content only serves to erase Jewish victimhood and can perpetuate real-world harm. Get the facts: cyberwell.org/reports/denial…

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pause to remember the 6 million Jewish people murdered in the largest genocide in human history. Despite being extremely well-documented, the Holocaust remains a target of denial and distortion online. Adapting the same denial tactics, social media users are also denying and distorting the facts of modern-day violent attacks against Jews. Major social media platforms action against Holocaust denial, but contemporary denial and distortion has been enforced differently. Our research found only an 18.5% removal rate of posts containing these narratives according to our dataset.

With the return of Ran Gvili’s body, a painful chapter comes to a close — bringing home the last hostage and reminding us that every life, every name, must be accounted for. On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, this moment underscores the moral urgency of remembrance: that the world must never look away when human lives are taken, erased, or left behind.

The Bondi Beach attack's digital aftermath highlights the reality that online and offline antisemitism are directly connected. As featured in global media including @ca_thej, @thenightlyau, @IsraelHayomHeb, and more, we found that our dataset of social media posts denying the attack and claiming Jews orchestrated it against themselves reached over 14 MILLION views. See all of our findings at cyberwell.org/reports/denial….

The Bondi Beach attack set off not an outpouring of support for the Jewish community but a disturbing antisemitic response online. The hate went beyond comments calling Jews "pigs" — though those were bad enough. We also tracked coordinated disinformation, claiming that a Jewish man was the "real" attacker, as part of the conspiratorial self-victimization trend we see after violent events targeting Jews. And as CyberWell's Australia Lead Researcher explains, it happened not just in traditional feed posts but also in comments sections, legitimizing violence as a part of the online discourse.

When it comes to attacks on the Jewish community, we’ve reached a dangerous point where even video evidence and survivor testimonies aren’t enough to stop the hate. @montanatucker sat down with @CyberWell_org to read real comments tracked on social media after the Bondi Beach incident. From claims of “false flag” to “crisis actors,” the denial of our lived experiences is a new, dangerous form of Jew-hatred. For Montana, as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, hearing people deny events that happened in real-time is terrifyingly familiar. We cannot let history repeat itself through algorithms and comments sections. We have the proof. We have the data. It’s time to face the hate head-on. Get the facts. Read the report at CyberWell.org.

The online celebration of terror only incentivizes the next attacker, creating a permission structure for real-world violence. Social media platforms must enforce their policies against this unacceptable content and take action to interrupt the cycle of online-to-offline hate.

Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, suffered extensive damage after an arson attack early on Shabbat morning. CyberWell found antisemitic narratives spreading online in response: praising the attack, calling for more violence, and even claiming Jews orchestrated the attacks against themselves.

From coded terms like "noticers" to "blood libel" accusations in multiple languages, these narratives repackage old hate for new headlines. We continue to work with social media platforms to address content that promotes this baseless, targeted hate toward the Jewish people.

New research: CyberWell has tracked antisemitic conspiracy theories around U.S. actions in Venezuela spreading across X, TikTok, and Instagram. Amid geopolitical tensions, we’re seeing a familiar and dangerous pattern: the scapegoating of Jews and Israel.

After the Bondi Beach attack, social media users jumped to poke holes in the details of the attack. It's all part of the conspiratorial self-victimization narrative we see after violent events targeting Jews. One thread within this narrative targeted human rights lawyer @Ostrov_A, who was in Israel during the Oct 7th attack and was one of the victims of the Bondi shooting. AI-generated images of Ostrovsky being painted with "blood" surfaced as "evidence" that the attack was staged. We uncovered posts conveying these narratives across all major platforms, with some posts going viral and spreading these falsehoods to millions of users.