The first challenge wasn’t finding online antisemitism. It was deciding where to look.
Before beginning this report, I contacted a child safety intelligence researcher to ask how researchers navigate extremist spaces. Their advice was straightforward: stay within publicly accessible platforms. Exploring the more extreme corners of the Internet, particularly the dark web, can raise legal and ethical questions depending on the material being accessed.
In truth, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. Accessing the dark web requires software and technical knowledge well beyond an ordinary web browser.
So I stayed on the open Internet.
For seven days, I watched the conversations unfold.
Every few minutes, another thread appeared on 4chan’s /pol/ board – an anonymous, politically incorrect, and highly volatile discussion subforum known for far-right politics and conspiracy theories.
On Telegram, one channel pushed a steady stream of posts praising Hitler, recycling Holocaust denial, quoting Mein Kampf, and blaming Jews for everything from global conflicts to social decline. The language quickly became familiar: “ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government],” “false flags,” vulgar slurs, “the Jew.” References to the Mossad surfaced across unrelated conversations, whether the subject was Jeffrey Epstein, the war in Gaza, or the latest tensions in the Middle East.
The conversations rarely stayed on one subject for long. Instead, they moved from one conspiracy theory to another, each reinforcing the same conclusion: Jews were responsible.
This was not the darkest corner of the Internet. Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, founder and CEO of CyberWell, draws a distinction between mainstream social media platforms and the darker spaces she previously researched.
The darker spaces, she said, are “definitely more graphic and more violent.” But what has changed since October 7, she said, is the scale of open antisemitism on major platforms – and the way violent attacks against Jews are recorded, shared, and pushed into powerful engagement algorithms.
That shift is what CyberWell was built to monitor.
CyberWell describes itself as the first open database of online antisemitism. The nonprofit works directly with major social media platforms to help them enforce their own digital policies against hate speech, with a focus on antisemitism.
Its analysts use social listening tools to track developing antisemitic narratives, then evaluate the content through both the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and the platforms’ own trust-and-safety rules.
“We’re not only looking at it from an antisemitism perspective,” Cohen Montemayor told The Jerusalem Report. “We actually look at it from the perspectives of the platforms themselves.
“The way that we work with platforms is we’re trying to identify where the chinks in the armor of their enforcement system are,” Cohen Montemayor said. “What are the high-impact trends or analyses or examples that are going to help them enforce their policies more effectively at scale?”
Language of conspiracy
Within a day of monitoring public forums, certain patterns emerged.
The subject matter changed with the news cycle, but the conclusion rarely did.
One 4chan thread titled “F*** THE JEWS – GUIDE” opened with a list of actions users claimed would help “destroy Jews and Israel.”
Other threads framed wars, geopolitical events, and international politics as elaborate “false flag” operations orchestrated by Jews.
Some discussions drifted into the absurd. One thread asked, “Are Jews afraid to shower?” The responses quickly turned to Holocaust denial, with users mocking survivors and inventing theories that gas chambers had created an “intergenerational trauma” that made Jews fearful of bathing. The claims throughout were baseless, but that was beside the point. The conversations were built less on evidence than on repetition, with each post reinforcing the next.
Telegram followed a different rhythm.
One broadcast channel with nearly 7,000 subscribers consisted almost entirely of antisemitic content. Posts praised Hitler, quoted Mein Kampf, and blamed Jews for major historical events. Members could not start discussions of their own, but they could respond to the administrator’s posts, creating a steady stream of affirmation rather than debate.
According to a CyberWell analyst, the channel’s administrator had already been removed from multiple platforms before resurfacing elsewhere.
That migration illustrates one of the central challenges facing online moderation.
Accounts disappear. Communities do not.
The moderation challenge
It is tempting to assume social media companies simply refuse to act. Cohen Montemayor argues the reality is more complicated.
“The policies and the platforms themselves are actually very similar, and they’re really not bad,” she said. “The issue is enforcement and the issue is enforcement at scale.”
CyberWell has already pushed for concrete changes. After October 7, Meta updated its policies to clarify that “Zionist” can function as a proxy term for Jews when used to spread antisemitism.
Cohen Montemayor said that change followed consultation and data-sharing by CyberWell. TikTok also clarified that denial of the October 7 attacks is prohibited on its platform after CyberWell shared data about the trend.
But policy changes do not solve the entire problem.
Cohen Montemayor pointed to two areas that remain especially vulnerable: comment sections and engagement algorithms. Comment sections are where antisemitism often appears beneath unrelated posts. Engagement algorithms, meanwhile, can reinforce biases about Jews or Israel by rewarding outrage, anger, and disgust.
The challenge is no longer finding antisemitism online. It is keeping pace with the speed and flexibility of the ecosystem around it.
Beyond the fringe
Perhaps the most dangerous misconception is that online antisemitism exists only in extremist spaces.
Cohen Montemayor’s concern is broader. In her view, online antisemitism has become one of the most common ways Jews encounter antisemitism at all. Citing American Jewish Committee statistics, she noted that one in five Jews reported feeling a lack of physical safety as a result of exposure to digital Jew-hatred. She also said that 45% of non-Jewish Americans reported seeing antisemitism in the past year, and that 70% of them saw it in digital spaces.
CyberWell’s own tracking shows a shift from conspiracy into more explicit violence. Before October 7, Cohen Montemayor said, verified calls to violence and justifications of violence on mainstream platforms were below 10% of the content CyberWell monitored. After the attack, that figure moved into double digits. In CyberWell’s 2025 verified dataset, she said, it stood at 15%.
The problem, she said, is not only one viral post or one violent account.
It is repeated exposure.
“The issue with online antisemitism is repeat exposure,” Cohen Montemayor said. “That’s how democratic societies become widely antisemitic because the threshold of what is considered acceptable treatment of Jews just goes up and up.”
After seven days of watching these communities, one thing became clear: the greatest challenge wasn’t finding antisemitism online. It was realizing how little effort it took to find it.
The darkest corners of the Internet may still exist, but many of the ideas that sustain them are no longer confined there.
They are only a few clicks away.■