CyberWell is a non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating online antisemitism through driving the enforcement and improvement of community standards and hate speech policies across social media platforms. Through data, we identify where policies are not being enforced and where they fail to protect Jewish users from harassment and hate. Our unique methodology consists of identifying antisemitic keywords, applying a specialized dictionary based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and human review. Our professional analysts are trained in antisemitism, linguistics, and digital policy, and vet each piece of content both based on the IHRA definition and according to what, if any, policy that content violates. For more about our methodology, check out our policy guidelines.
CyberWell currently monitors Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and YouTube in both English and Arabic. We serve as trusted flaggers for both Meta (Facebook, Instagram, & Threads) and TikTok, enabling us to escalate policy-violating content and advise content moderation teams directly. As part of our strategy to democratize data, since May 2022, CyberWell compiled the first ever open data platform of online antisemitic content.
In the months leading up to the US election on November 5, 2024, and as part of CyberWell’s ongoing efforts to monitor antisemitic content across social media platforms, we conducted a deep-dive and reviewed the antisemitic discourse related to the US elections as well as the Republican and Democratic parties and their candidates: President Elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
After collecting the relevant data using our monitoring technology, CyberWell confirmed 131 pieces of content posted between April and November 2024 across five social media platforms as antisemitic according to the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. 93.13% of the posts were in English, while the remaining 6.87% were in Arabic.
According to social listening tools that CyberWell utilizes, this dataset of just 131 pieces of content gained over 3 million views, while reaching an engagement rate of almost 200,000.
Due to policy/enforcement gaps regarding election content, we can see that the average rate of removal of antisemitic content related to the US elections is 20.59%, which is lower than the removal rate documented in CyberWell’s 2023 annual report (32.1%).
Facebook | 24.32%
Instagram | 40%
TikTok | 16.67%
YouTube | 0
Aside from the mentioned dataset, CyberWell conducted limited research using social media listening tools to better understand the scope and trends of online antisemitism related to the US elections.
CyberWell selected three prominent antisemitic terms which CyberWell found to be associated with US election discourse – “Jewish/Zionist puppet”, “Khazarian mafia”, and “Zionist Occupied Government”.
Most of the posts in our dataset include content related to IHRA example 2 (90.84%), followed by example 3 (10.69%) and example 9 (8.4%). According to CyberWell’s data, these three examples from the IHRA definition of antisemitism tend to be found in the majority of cases of social media content that violates digital hate speech policies.
Example 2: “Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.”
Example 3: “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews”.
Example 9: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis”.
NOTE: Not every post that is antisemitic according to the IHRA definition necessarily violates social media platforms’ policies and community guidelines. For example, IHRA examples 7-10 in general, including example 9, relate to antisemitic content directed towards the State of Israel and therefore do not violate the platforms’ policies as the State of Israel is not a protected category. On the other hand, content related to examples 2 and 3, which refer directly to Jews – a protected group – violates platform guidelines in most cases.
Three main antisemitic narratives were identified in this dataset.
NOTE: View the Appendix at the end of this report for additional examples of blatant antisemitic content linked to the following narratives.
This narrative falls under the classic antisemitic claim that Jews are puppeteers insidiously controlling the world’s governments, presidential candidates, other officials, and the election process itself.
NOTE: The word “Zionists” is sometimes used as a proxy term for “Jews” to avoid explicit mention of the word “Jewish” while spreading antisemitic content. This way, the users can slip under the radar and remain online despite violating
community standards and hate speech policies. Lately, Meta and TikTok have recognized the use of the word “Zionist” as a proxy for “Jew”.
Claiming that the US presidential candidates and/or other American officials are controlled by their Jewish relatives to act for the benefit of Jews (e.g., Kamala Harris is controlled by her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff; Donald Trump is controlled by his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner).
A narrative promoting the antisemitic trope claiming that Jews/Zionists are associated with wealth and therefore dominate the global economic system. In this context, the narrative asserts that Jews control the US presidential candidates and/or other American officials through the money they donate to political campaigns.
Following the assassination attempt against then presidential candidate Donald Trump on July 13, social media platforms were flooded with posts promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories claiming that Jews were responsible for the incident or orchestrated/staged the assassination attempt.
This narrative includes discourse surrounding the US presidential candidates alongside content associating Jews with sexual deviance and immoral behavior.
This category includes antisemitic discourse linking denial of the October 7 massacre and the US elections/presidential candidates.
It is important to note that the dominant IHRA examples and the antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes detailed above are reminiscent of CyberWell’s data regarding the UK general election on July 4, 2024.
Unfortunately, this is not surprising. Many major global events throughout history, and elections in particular, are often accompanied by a wave of antisemitic campaigns and narratives portraying Jews as the root of all evil – from being behind social ills to puppeteering political outcomes. In the current climate, where social media spreads hate at far more rapid rates than ever before, there has been a documented overall increase in real-world antisemitic attacks in the US, with a sharp escalation following the violent terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7.
The year 2024 is notable for the large number of elections taking place worldwide. In fact, it has been called “the year of elections” and is expected to have a significant impact on global politics as more than 100 countries go to the polls. Thus, CyberWell expresses its concern that antisemitic conspiracies, accusations, and hateful rhetoric will continue to rise online and in the real world. Unfortunately, one of the few things that opposing parties and sides have agreed on throughout history is the use of antisemitic tropes to blame the other for perceived failures and harms. This is especially true during times of social and political upheaval, as seen in this report.
As mentioned above in the section entitled “IHRA Breakdown”, the vast majority of the antisemitic content in this dataset was associated with the policy category of hate speech. Therefore, we examined how the four mainstream social media companies – X, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube – address the issue of hate speech in the context of election-related content.
It should be noted that there is a consensus among the four platforms that content containing elections misinformation such as misleading content about the voting process or intent to influence the election results is violative content. However, when it comes to election- related hate speech, the platforms take three different approaches.
X explicitly mentions that inaccurate and controversial content about politicians or politics in general is not considered violative content in the absence of other policy violations. In its Civic Integrity Policy X states as follows:
“Not all false or untrue information about politics or civic processes constitutes manipulation or interference. In the absence of other policy violations, the following are generally not in violation of this policy:
In CyberWell’s capacity as an expert in both antisemitism as well as digital platform policy, after analyzing X’s policy related to both hateful conduct and civic integrity, our analysis indicates that content related to elections and including antisemitic conspiracy theories or harmful content towards Jews is in violation of X's Hateful Conduct policy. Therefore, in cases where there is a contradiction between the Hateful Conduct Policy and the Civic Integrity Policy (statements such as “The Democratic Party is controlled by Jewish money” or “Donald Trump and Kamala Harris act in accordance with the interests of their Jewish relatives”, etc.) the content should be actioned and removed.
However, in reality, CyberWell’s data indicates that this is not the case – as reflected above, X contained the most antisemitic content regarding the US elections with the highest number of posts and engagement, while their rate of removal for reported content is extremely low – out of 82 posts only 18 were removed (21.5%).
The low removal rate could be explained by X’s moderation team taking the stance that antisemitic content referring to politicians or politics does not violate its community guidelines in light of their interpretation of the Civic Integrity Policy, or it could be a simple lack of enforcement of their existing policy. However, the current climate where there is a significant amount of blatant antisemitic content allowed to remain online is unacceptable and requires a thorough internal re-examination of their policies and enforcement.
(Lacking a Specific Policy regarding Election-Related Hate Speech)
In their Community Guidelines, Meta and TikTok focus on election misinformation and do not include a special section regarding platform policies on posts referencing elections and including hateful tropes, dehumanization, or harmful conspiracy theories.
One possible explanation is that, for these two platforms, any election-related hate speech content may fall under their general hate speech policy. This is consistent with what appears in CyberWell’s dataset regarding the number of posts and engagement on Facebook and TikTok, which is lower than on X. In CyberWell’s capacity as a digital policy expert, we recommend that both platforms should include a targeted and specific policy regarding this issue in order to guide content moderators on how to address such posts during known volatile times such as election campaigns. This would further enable moderators to properly enforce the removal of such hate speech content.
YouTube is the only mainstream social media platform that indicates special awareness on the problematic phenomenon of election-related hate speech. Under its Election Misinformation Policy, YouTube mentions, among other topics, that:
“Content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes isn’t allowed under our Hate speech policies. This includes, for example, content that shows a political rally attendee dehumanizing a group based on a protected attribute, such as race, religion, or sexual orientation.
[…]
Content that contains external links to material that would violate our policies and can cause a serious risk of egregious harm, like […] hate speech targeting protected groups […]. This can include clickable URLs, verbally directing users to other sites in a video, and other forms of link-sharing”.
YouTube's awareness that videos related to the elections may contain blatant hate speech, including antisemitism, led them to emphasis this matter in its election policy. It also may indicate that they successfully remove such content, a conclusion that may be further supported by CyberWell’s dataset, which indicates that YouTube is the least problematic platform for antisemitic content related to the US elections. Out of a dataset of 131 pieces of content, only one was from YouTube.
This report is CyberWell’s second publication regarding election-related antisemitic content – the first concerned the UK election in July 2024, while the current publication refers to the November US election. These publications illustrate that the appearance of harsh antisemitic content on mainstream social media platforms during election campaigns is a recurring and worrying phenomenon that requires special handling. Below are several recommendations that CyberWell suggests the platforms incorporate to better approach the issue:
This appendix includes several examples of each of the antisemitic narratives detailed in the report above. The selected examples represent patterns that were found in numerous posts in the dataset. Monitoring these patterns on the platforms may help to identify additional posts rooted in the same patterns.
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
2.1. Jewish Relatives Conspiracies
2.1.1
2.1.2
2.2.1
2.2.2
2.3.1
2.3.2
Content Description: A YouTube video promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that the assassination attempt against Trump was staged as part of a Jewish ritual.
Video Title: "Proof That The Trump Assassination Was A Jewish Ritual?"
Audio: "[...] Sent me this video here about a Jewish rabbi [...] A brother sent me this thing about the thing of the Donald Trump assassination [...] The current non-Jewish Messiah was chosen to be of service to the Jewish people and the Jewish Messiah. President Trump's right ear was grazed in a symbolic gesture of Exodus 21:6 where the Torah states that a servant who wants to remain with his master needs to have his right ear pierced [...] You mean it was staged?" - [00:29-01:50].
In addition, the user claims that the modern Jews aim to create a "new world order" and refers to them as enemies: "[...] They're pushing for a new world order run by the Jews [...]" - [07:36- 07:40], "[...] The Jews are our enemies right now [...]" - [08:03-08:06].
2.3.3
2.3.4
2.41
2.42
3.1
3.2
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