Explosive Media seeming a little desperate of late. LEGO videos are only novel for so long.

Iranian diplomats using X to crowdsource soldiers seems bad? Also, spotted some unimpressive CIB around this effort, apparently tied to the Ahlulbait Indonesia.

The Economist cited our findings. On an unrelated note, I'll be retiring now. www.economist.com/culture/2026...

I'm going to continue live tweeting my spreadsheets. Collectively, Iranian diplomats on X have received 30 times more likes since the war began than during the same period before it. It jumped from 660K likes to 21M likes. Stunning numbers.

Iran’s embassy in South Africa gained more views on X in the first 49 days of the war than 150 diplomatic accounts did in the 49 days before the war. A masterclass in shitposting (and potential bot use).

Something big funky going on with Iranian embassy posts. Iran's embassy in Tajikistan posted an AI video of Jesus knocking Trump's head off. It gained 13 million views in a single minute.

Messed around and found a couple pro-Iran networks on X that gained more than a billion (with a B) views in a month. They were boosted by X's For You feed and alerts. Iranian and Russian diplomats reshared them. These are great examples of small networks gaming X. www.isdglobal.org/digital-disp...

Iranian diplomats on X are going insane and putting up insane numbers. It's a total reversal of what they were doing pre-war. Here's the numbers for 125 embassy / diplomatic accounts: 46 days before the war: ~ 500K likes on 9K posts 46 days since the war: ~ 18M likes on 39K posts

I usually don't like to brag, but I can spend full days pulling data, adjusting the query, and pulling it again. That's probably my most valuable skill.

Iranian diplomats on the blockade

BREAKING: Orbán defeated in Hungary after 16 years in power

I'm a huge fan of PBS. It's so cool to see our research, which we'll published a piece on in the next couple days, highlighted in this piece. www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...

Spoke to AFP about how Iran has crafted a wartime propaganda strategy tailored for the age of AI slop. It's amazing how shitposting (and bad US policy) has helped recast one of the world’s most repressive regimes as a witty underdog. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

The numbers in my first post were for the past week. Since the start of the war, Iranian diplomats on X have had 193 posts with 1M+ views. State media has had 14. Wolf warriors are looking very quaint these days.

Very cool minute-by-minute breakdown of how Iran spread a claim that it shot down an F-18. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

1516 is going pretty hard at the Hungarian election. By my count, its volume of campaigns targeting Hungary is roughly on par with the number it carried out ahead of the 2024 US presidential election.

Iranian diplomats are shit posting their way to massive engagement numbers. The Iranian embassy accounts we track on X have nearly 50 distinct posts with over a million views. Iranian state media accounts have hit that number just four times.

SCOOP The Iranian group producing the Trump LEGO videos have a secret weapon.....Americans who send them tips and ideas to make their content better www.wired.com/story/inside...

Iranian diplomats are taking a victory lap

Russia, if you're listening, LEGO videos are big right now, not whatever this animation is.

He's back! And with more 1516

Someone is paying YouTube accounts to post AI-generated videos of Iranian women telling people to visit Iran. There are so many of these.

Spoke to the Observer about the pro-Iran content we're seeing spread across platforms. This is the first time I've worked the word "vibes" into an interview. I'm officially hip and young. observer.co.uk/news/interna...

Iran's LEGO videos put up numbers. But that's an anomaly. Their propaganda and IOs before the war consistently fell flat. So, before we give them credit for studying and learning how to exploit American culture. Maybe we should consider how we've become such an easy target over the past few years.

its_The_Dr's X account is no more. It was one of the most popular accounts that consistently shared Storm-1516 content. But it's not the only one. Last week on a whim, I looked at accounts that shared links to a sample of Copy Cop articles. 50+ accts with over 100K followers that had done so.

It’s a huge moment for pro-BRICS grifting on X. We’re looking into two separate networks: one with ~50 accounts and over 750M views since the war, and another with only 9 accounts and 145M views. Crazy numbers.

This post kinda explains why YouTube did that

Spamouflage finally did it

I just reviewed the 20 most-liked X posts about the bombing of the Iranian girls’ school for each day during the two weeks following the attack. RT appeared on that list more often than any other media outlet. The next closest was Al Jazeera, followed by Reuters.

this is just open and abject corruption, but the way U.S. journalism frames it you'd not really understand that there's anything untoward

Wow, the Russians were only paying $100 a post ahead of the 2024 election. Crazy inflation.

If any of my 16 followers are tech geniuses with a lot of resources, please build a social listening tool that allows people to put images into queries.

X appears to be more responsive to media reports on CIB than in the past. There has been a lot of reporting on Iran's Storm-2035, including from companies like OpenAI, but named X accounts largely stayed up. Many of the accounts cited in Clemson's Storm-2035 report have been taken down, though.

I guess all those people on X who claimed it was an Iranian missile and Bellingcat had lied about it being a Tomahawk are rushing to correct themselves - U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/u...

Example of X's AI policy in action. Same image: one post with 4M views has no AI label, another with 304K does.

Good coverage of a pro-Iran network we spotted pushing Epstein conspiracies and AI nonsense about the war. We're continuing to monitor as it churns out new accounts. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Absurd propaganda

This is interesting. But it is more interesting that Trump is rewarding Moscow for doing this by helping Russia sell oil, repeating Russian propaganda points, and senselessly burning through weapon stocks. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Bit of a spike in X followers for Iran's foreign minister. Decided to take a look after seeing accounts like Kim Dotcom's advocate for people to follow him.

Since the conflict in Iran began on 28 Feb, ISD has been tracking narratives from Russian, Iranian or Chinese-state backed and state-linked actors on social media. Our second update below ⬇️

A month after 1516 targeted Macron with Epstein lies, they go after Zelensky. They really don't like Macron.

There's a war happening, but Russian IOs are going local today. Here's 1516 targeting a mayoral race in France, and Overload has been targeting local elections in Germany.

It’d be a good time to have CrowdTangle.

If DeepSeek is such a Chinese threat, why aren't Chinese threat actors sticking to it? edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/p...

My X account is such a cesspool of pro-Iran AI content that I don't even know where to begin research. It's the worst I've ever seen my algorithm.

In the recent weeks our team identified several disinformation campaigns around the upcoming parliamentary election in Hungary, which appear to be conducted by the Storm-1516 operators. The election seem to be critical for the rule of Viktor Orban, the biggest Russian ally in EU

Wow. In ten minutes of scrolling X, my For You page served me three Overload posts and a Storm-1516 post. That's insane. What a megaphone for Russian info ops.

Overload has been grabbing Cameo videos from random celebrities and using AI audio to make it sound like they're calling for Zelensky to be killed. Those videos have been on X for five days now. Absolutely wild. H/t @ushadrons.bsky.social, who spotted this last week.

Really interesting alleged leak from a former Prigozhin project now tied to the SVR. One thing jumped out to my nerd brain: The mention an op targeting the French firm Orano, which was active in Niger. Back in 2024, Storm-1516 circulated disinfo about Orano’s role in Niger. Quite a coincidence.

This isn't getting near enough attention. Within the span of a week, Russia's most sophisticated information operation laundered two narratives through Chinese state media. Seems like a signal that Russia and China are willing to cooperate more closely on IOs?