Rabbit Hole
See what people are claiming online - rumors, conspiracy theories, and questionable content.
What is this?
We collect stories that are spreading online - things like conspiracy theories, fake videos, and propaganda - so you can see what's being said and make up your own mind about what's real.
Propaganda
Agenda-pushing content
Rumor
Unverified theories
Deepfake
AI-generated fakes
Influence Ops
Organized campaigns
Analysing Multidisciplinary Approaches to Fight Large-Scale Digital Influence Operations
Crime as a Service (CaaS) has evolved from isolated criminal incidents to a broad spectrum of illicit activities, including social media manipulation, foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), and the sale of disinformation toolkits. This article analyses how threat actors exploit specialised infrastructures ranging from proxy and VPN services to AI-driven generative models to orchestrate large-scale opinion manipulation. Moreover, it discusses how these malicious operations m...
DarkGram: A Large-Scale Analysis of Cybercriminal Activity Channels on Telegram
We present the first large-scale analysis of 339 cybercriminal activity channels (CACs). Followed by over 23.8 million users, these channels share a wide array of malicious and unethical content with their subscribers, including compromised credentials, pirated software and media, social media manipulation tools, and blackhat hacking resources such as malware, exploit kits, and social engineering scams. To evaluate these channels, we developed DarkGram, a BERT-based framework that automatical...
Foreign influencer operations: How TikTok shapes American perceptions of China
How do authoritarian regimes strengthen global support for nondemocratic political systems? Roughly half of the users of the social media platform TikTok report getting news from social media influencers. Against this backdrop, authoritarian regimes have increasingly outsourced content creation to these influencers. To gain understanding of the extent of this phenomenon and the persuasive capabilities of these influencers, we collect comprehensive data on pro-China influencers on TikTok. We s...
Buying Spying: How the commercial surveillance industry works and what can be done about it
Official Blog
Simulating and Experimenting with Social Media Mobilization Using LLM Agents
Online social networks have transformed the ways in which political mobilization messages are disseminated, raising new questions about how peer influence operates at scale. Building on the landmark 61-million-person Facebook experiment \citep{bond201261}, we develop an agent-based simulation framework that integrates real U.S. Census demographic distributions, authentic Twitter network topology, and heterogeneous large language model (LLM) agents to examine the effect of mobilization message...
ALETHEIA: Combating Social Media Influence Campaigns with Graph Neural Networks
Influence campaigns are a growing concern in the online spaces. Policymakers, moderators and researchers have taken various routes to fight these campaigns and make online systems safer for regular users. To this end, our paper presents ALETHEIA, a system that formalizes the detection of malicious accounts (or troll accounts) used in such operations and forecasts their behaviors within social media networks. We analyze influence campaigns on Reddit and X from different countries and highlight...
False Information, Bots and Malicious Campaigns: Demystifying Elements of Social Media Manipulations
The rapid spread of false information and persistent manipulation attacks on online social networks (OSNs), often for political, ideological, or financial gain, has affected the openness of OSNs. While researchers from various disciplines have investigated different manipulation-triggering elements of OSNs (such as understanding information diffusion on OSNs or detecting automated behavior of accounts), these works have not been consolidated to present a comprehensive overview of the intercon...
Disinformation actors share misconstrued narratives about coronavirus spike protein to push vaccine skepticism
Vaccine misinformation concerning the coronavirus spike protein has again picked up in recent days. Vaccine skeptics and deniers have weaponized this medical term to deter people from trusting Covid-19 vaccines, which have been proven effective and safe. Natural News, InfoWars and other well-known disinformation actors intentionally misinterpreted a recently published paper on a potential mechanism […] The post Disinformation actors share misconstrued narratives about coronavirus spike protei...
Australian election misinformation playbook
The challenge of monitoring, understanding, defining and responding to mis- and disinformation is exacerbated during election campaigns. This report outlines tactics used by agents of disinformation to undermine elections as observed by First Draft’s global monitoring since 2015. This is placed within a brief overview of the characteristics and vulnerabilities that bear consideration during elections […] The post Australian election misinformation playbook appeared first on First Draft .
Five Shots in Five Minutes: Analysing One Federal Agent’s Use of Less-Lethal Launcher in Minneapolis
This investigation is part of a collaboration between Bellingcat and Evident Media. You can watch Evident’s video here. The fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 sparked nationwide protests, with often violent clashes breaking out between protesters and federal agents. Some of […] The post Five Shots in Five Minutes: Analysing One Federal Agent’s Use of Less-Lethal Launcher in Minneapolis appeared first on...
Alex Pretti: Analysing Footage of Minneapolis CBP Shooting
To stay up to date on our latest investigations, join Bellingcat’s WhatsApp channel here On January 24, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, was shot and killed by federal agents on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The shooting comes just over two weeks after Renee […] The post Alex Pretti: Analysing Footage of Minneapolis CBP Shooting appeared first on bellingcat .
Identifying ‘Less-Lethal’ Weapons Used By DHS Agents in US Immigration Raids and Protests
To stay up to date on our latest investigations, join Bellingcat’s WhatsApp channel here. Federal agents have frequently used so-called “less-lethal” weapons against protesters, including impact projectiles, tear gas and pepper spray, since the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration raids began last year. The use of less-lethal weapons (LLWs) has been controversial. While designed to incapacitate or […] The post Identifying ‘Less-Lethal’ Weapons Used By DHS Agents in US Immigration Ra...