Cyabra Reports Coordinated Fake-Account Activity in Five U.S. Midterm Races

Israeli technology company Cyabra released findings on October 28 that it said identified coordinated inauthentic accounts with high confidence in five of six competitive U.S. midterm races. The Tel Aviv-based company's analysis covered Senate contests in Kansas, Maine and Michigan and gubernatorial contests in Georgia, Nevada and Ohio. Cyabra said it examined approximately 274,000 posts and comments on X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram between August 31 and October 19. About one in nine candidate-related posts came from accounts it classified as inauthentic, with roughly equal rates for Republican and Democratic candidates. Co-founder and CEO Dan Brahmy said: “Our standard is the same for every candidate and every party.” The company estimated that inauthentic accounts generated about one in four candidate-related posts on TikTok, one in seven on X, one in eleven on Instagram and fewer than one in twenty on Facebook. In four races, it found coordinated attacks aimed at candidates from both parties. It said activity peaked around mid-October debates, with operations still active in Ohio and Michigan at the October 19 cutoff. Cyabra said it used the same methodology, platforms and observation period for both candidates in each race, drawing on publicly available data and reporting confidence levels and attribution limits. The disclosure concerns the company's assessment of online activity during that period. Cyabra and Carahsoft also announced a December 9 luncheon for public-sector leaders and election stakeholders to introduce a global protocol for collecting and analyzing election narratives; registration details are to follow.